Sherman Oaks Just Became the Western Anchor of a 21-Mile Bikeway

"I want to build a city where you don't have to get in the car for every single trip, where families feel comfortable biking together, where seniors feel safe crossing the street, where infrastructure actually reflects how people live." That's Councilmember Adrin Nazarian, describing the Chandler Bicycle Connection at its groundbreaking this past March. On the ground in Sherman Oaks, the description sounds a lot less abstract: it's the orange cones and shifted lane markings that have been sitting on Chandler Boulevard between Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Colfax Avenue since early June, quietly rearranging how that stretch of the corridor works.

Most residents driving past have probably clocked it as ordinary roadwork. It isn't. It's the last unbuilt piece of a bike route that took many years of planning to fund, and its western end sits at Leghorn Avenue, just inside Sherman Oaks.

The Gap That's Finally Closing

For years, the Valley has had two separate bikeways that almost, but didn't quite, connect. The Orange Line and G Line Bike Path runs alongside the Metro busway. The Chandler Bikeway picks up on the other side of a three-mile stretch that was never built out to match. That gap ran between Vineland Avenue in North Hollywood and Leghorn Avenue in Sherman Oaks, and closing it turns two disconnected paths into one continuous route: 21 miles, running from Mariposa Street in Burbank to Lassen Street in Chatsworth, tying directly into the Metro North Hollywood station along the way.

The funding took time to line up. Then-Councilmember Paul Krekorian secured the initial commitments in 2022, and Nazarian, while still a state assemblymember, added $1.9 million in state funds on top of the federal dollars already routed through Metro. Construction broke ground in March 2026, and as of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation's August 6 weekly update, work is officially underway.

What's Actually Being Built

The existing bike lanes on this stretch of Chandler are the ordinary kind: five feet wide, painted, with nothing separating a cyclist from moving traffic. What's replacing them is a protected Class IV facility, with physical barriers, bollards, separating riders from cars. LADOT is billing the whole thing as a Vision Zero project, which means the scope goes beyond paint:

That last line matters for a neighborhood with a lot of longtime residents. LADOT coordinated with Access Paratransit specifically to identify those 12 loading zones, which means the redesign isn't only solving for cyclists. It's also rebuilding how people who don't drive, seniors, riders with mobility needs, get on and off buses along this stretch.

What You'll Actually Notice This Fall

If you've driven Chandler between Laurel Canyon and Colfax recently, here's what's behind the temporary striping. On June 8, LADOT reconfigured northbound traffic to a single lane for six to eight weeks to allow construction of a new bus platform and bus pad. On June 17, restriping and bike-lane detours began, starting near Ethel Avenue. LADOT has been explicit that the vehicle lanes are being shifted, not closed, and that there are no peak-hour lane closures planned. If your commute runs through that block, the slowdown you're feeling is a lane shift, not a full closure, and it's tied to a specific, finite scope of work rather than an open-ended project.

Why 2028 Is the Actual Deadline

Every LADOT update on this project points to the same finish line: completion in time for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. That's not a coincidence. The Chandler Bicycle Connection is one piece of a larger push to rebuild Valley mobility ahead of the Games, and it isn't happening in isolation. Metro is simultaneously building the East San Fernando Valley Light Rail Transit line, a 6.7-mile route with 11 stations running along Van Nuys Boulevard from the G Line down to San Fernando Road. Put the two projects on the same map and the pattern is a Valley that's being wired for people who aren't in cars, on a schedule that has an actual deadline attached to it rather than an open-ended someday.

What This Means for a Sherman Oaks Saturday

Once the gap closes, a rider starting near Leghorn Avenue in Sherman Oaks will be able to head east on a protected lane through Valley Village, past the North Hollywood Metro station, and on toward Burbank, all without leaving a barrier-separated bikeway. Head the other direction along the existing G Line path and the route continues out past the Sepulveda Basin toward Chatsworth. That's the practical version of "21 miles": not a single ride most people will do end to end, but a spine that makes it realistic to bike to the Metro station, to a kid's school, to a friend's house in Valley Village, on a route that doesn't require sharing five feet of painted lane with rush-hour traffic.

None of this changes what Chandler looks like today. The construction is real, the detours are real, and the completion date is still roughly two years out. But the fact that this project broke ground at all, after Krekorian's 2022 funding commitments and years of subsequent planning, is itself the story. Sherman Oaks isn't picking up a bike lane. It's picking up the missing western end of a route that finally connects a neighborhood with genuinely flat, genuinely bikeable streets to the rest of the Valley's bike network, on a timeline the city has now committed real construction crews to.

If you want to see where the work currently stands, LADOT posts block-by-block construction updates on the project's official page, and NBC Los Angeles covered the groundbreaking in detail back in March.

Sherman Oaks changes in small ways most years and in bigger ways occasionally, and a protected bikeway reaching Leghorn Avenue is one of the bigger ones. If you're curious how a specific block or street near the new route is holding up, or just want a local's read on what's changing in the neighborhood, Joan Duffy is happy to talk it through. Let's connect.