I took another look at Van Nuys Blvd., a reader request from a while back, just to re-think what its design intent was. At the 2010 StreetSummit, someone mentioned a little-known DOT rule mandating that portions of certain roads be wide + straight enough to serve as an airplane runway. Mystery, solved. It's a reasonable bit of contingency planning (better safe than sorry), but one that I feel is still woefully inadequate. It doesn't take into account, for example, the case of two jumbo jets landing at the same time, potentially in opposite directions. (It's happened before.) And Mayor Villaraigosa has already pledged to ensure Van Nuys' future as a mixed use district, providing shopping, parking, residences, parking, spaceport facilities, as well as serving as an ideal landing site for potential future (and inevitable) visits by extra-terrestrials, whose looming ships tend to be large + awkwardly shaped (eg. V, District 9). Van Nuys Blvd., currently only eleven (11) lanes wide, needs to be built further out with these New-new Urbanistic goals in mind. Widened, it accommodates a breathtaking 19 lanes — big enough to handle almost anything the Universe can throw its way. See it widened!
(happy April fools day!) :)