Streetsblog Los Angeles

In today’s edition of the Los Angeles Times, Ari Bloomekatz updates the state of the myriad of lawsuits against the City of Los Angeles for the poor state of its sidewalks.  Last year, the city settled a pair of lawsuits complaining that the city was not in compliance with the American with Disabilities Act when it came to street crossings.  The settlement will cost the city $85 million and will build access ramps at thousands of intersections.

Photo: Waltarr/Flickr

But Bloomekatz reports that lawsuit is the tip of the iceberg:

But there are four other cases pending that could leave the city on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Fixing all of Los Angeles’ sidewalks would be a daunting task: Officials estimate the cost of improving them all would top $1.5 billion. But advocates for the disabled hope they can make a measurable dent in the problem.

The article continues with a series of short quotes from pedestrian advocates, including L.A. Streetsblog Editorial Board Member Deborah Murphy, and disabled pedestrians struggling with the city’s broken network of sidewalks.

Next comes a quote from Council Member Bernard Parks who both criticizes the city for not investing in infrastructure and then excusing not making the investment today based on the city’s budget crisis. Read more…

There’s a University of Maryland study making the rounds today that links pedestrian fatalities with the wearing of headphones — a three-fold increase over the last seven years. Judging from the breathless headlines, the causation is clear. “Study Shows Sharp Rise in Accidents Involving Tuned-Out Pedestrians,” reads the Chicago Tribune. “Fatal Distraction,” says MSNBC. “Music to Die For,” sneers the Post.

Jason King was in a Madison Avenue crosswalk when a dump truck driver backed into him and dragged him 30 feet. King's death prompted then-Senator Carl Kruger to take action -- not for tougher penalties for deadly driving, but for a ban on listening to music while walking. Photo: DNAinfo

But a closer look reveals some major caveats. First, the study relied on notoriously unreliable media reports to come up with 116 cases, between 2004 and 2011, in which pedestrians were killed or injured while wearing headphones (total U.S. pedestrian deaths during those years numbered in the tens of thousands). The majority of victims cited in the study were struck by trains, not cars, which as much as anything could call into question the perils of walking on train tracks — or the need for safer pedestrian thoroughfares.

Researchers noted that the overall use of headphones probably increased during the study period. If the study has any evidence that not wearing headphones is safer than wearing headphones, none of the press accounts we’ve seen have picked it up.

Then there’s this detail, reported by NPR:

The study is not the last word on the subject, the researchers concede. Because the data are drawn from media reports, they cannot say conclusively whether accident victims might have also had mental problems or drivers might have been at fault, for example.

Come again? With no accounting for driver error, this study isn’t worth the paper its printed on. In taking motor vehicles and their operators out of the equation, you might as well pin pedestrian deaths on Chuck Taylor tennis shoes or Orbit chewing gum.

Even if you start from the premise that the onus is on pedestrians to protect themselves from powerful multi-ton vehicles, the findings here are suspect at best. And though lead author Richard Lichenstein acknowledges that the study is basically a conversation-starter, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Stories like the ones circulating today lend credence to the idea that traffic crashes are as unpreventable as natural disasters, and the best we can do is remain vigilant and hope we don’t die. When a paper like the New York Post sees a chance to pen a victim-blaming headline, it doesn’t sweat the small print.

For years the LADOT’s applications for state and federal Safe Routes to School (SRTS) funding have been an object of ridicule among transportation advocates.  But over the last year, there are signs that the city is taking the funding and designing of safe school routes more seriously.

Photo:CICLE

Following a batch of applications this summer that included a lot more community outreach than in years past, the City of Los Angeles is looking for two transportation planners to work on a city-wide SRTS plan for one year.  The funding for the positions is part of the “bicycle-pedestrian set-aside” from the city’s share of Measure R “Local Return” dollars.  While there has been some grumbling that Measure R funds are meant to go towards Capital Improvements, spending money to improve the city’s woeful SRTS program was supported in committee by L.A. Walks, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition and the Safe Routes to School National Partnership (the Partnership.)

For now, a top priority is finding two people best able to fill the positions at LADOT.  The job applications can be found on the city’s website by clicking here.  The Partnership urges anyone interested in the positions to apply while noting that even with these positions, the Los Angeles is well behind other cities when it comes to dedicating staff for pedestrian improvements.  Even these positions will be somewhat split between bicycle and pedestrian work as bicycle access is a major component of SRTS planning. Read more…

Councliman Bernard Parks has been making news recently for his proposal to hand over the maintenance costs, and liability issues, for the city’s crumbling sidewalks to the people owning the house adjacent to the sidewalk.  Simply, people that own a house are responsible for the repair of the sidewalk in front of their house.  If someone trips and is hurt it is the home owner’s liability.

Bernard Parks, where the sidewalks aren't so bad.

While Parks’ plan has been jeered by just about everyone who has heard it, the former LAPD Chief’s plan is at least trying to address the third-world quality of the city’s pedestrian network in some places.  Homeowners were in charge of sidewalk repair in Los Angeles until 1974 when the city received a massive federal grant to take on the problem.  However, over nearly 40 years the grant ran out, and the sidewalks have gotten worse.

Parks outlines the depth of the problem on KPCC’s Pat Morrison Show, via KCET:

“(S)ince the 1970s, the city took responsibility for sidewalks that were broken by trees. Over time, they’ve taken responsibility for all sidewalks. The city has tried over the last 20 years to repair sidewalks. They’ve expended over $100 million over a 10 year period and fixed only 500 miles of sidewalks. And the sidewalks – about 10,000 miles of them – are in worse repair [...] than they were before.”

Wow, it’s hard to believe this is the same guy that was worried that the city wouldn’t be able to spend $3 million a year on pedestrian projects in the summer of 2010.

Regardless of one’s views on Parks’ current proposal, there is no doubt that the city does need to get serious about the dismal state of our sidewalks.  A back of the napkin calculation based on Parks’ numbers above would show a $1.9 billion need.  Even if the city were able to magically take the 405 “Sepulveda Pass Improvement Project”money and reprogram it to sidealk repair it still wouldn’t be enough. Read more…

Its difficult to create a safe mid-block pedestrian crossing, but there is always something you can do to make aModel Street Design Manual crossing safer. All images in this story come from

Over the past few months, we’ve checked in on the efforts of five communities in Los Angeles County to create more livable, walkable, bikeable and healthier communities through better transportation planning through the Los Angeles PLACE Grants.  However, Los Angeles County is home to 11 million residents, and less than 750,000 live in PLACE communities.

But that doesn’t mean that the LA County Public Health Department (LACDPH) doesn’t have a plan for the rest of the county.  Partnering with the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, LACDPH awarded a RENEW Grant to create a “Model Street Manual” to help the rest of the county, and anyone else who was interested, begin to think of their streets in a different way.

“It’s time we started designing our streets for people and quality neighborhoods instead of just cars,” explains super-planner Ryan Snyder, the lead consultant for the plan. “We hope the street manual will change the way cities here and across the US design their streets. The manual should be real a game changer.”

The manual starts with an explanation of the difference between traffic control devices, the application of which is controlled by the state, and traffic calming which isn’t.  The state’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices biases streets towards moving traffic makes installing traffic control devices a difficult undertaking.  Making a difference between traffic calming and traffic control is an important legal distinction, because if a municipality deviates from state rules, it could be found at fault in traffic crashes.

For example, stop signs, traffic signals, and flashing beacons are expected to meet minimum thresholds before application. These thresholds include such criteria as number of vehicles, number of pedestrians or other uses, distance to other devices, crash history, and more.

Traffic calming, such as speed humps and bump outs, don’t fall under the same restrictions.  Thus, municipalities are encouraged to adopt a strategy of slowing traffic to increase street safety as one of many practices to make streets safer for all users.

The manual also lists the benefits of adopting a true “complete streets” ideal when completing road projects.  The benefits are many, and this list is probably familiar to many Streetsblog readers, but seeing the list together creates a striking picture.

• The goals of designing living streets are to
• Serve the land uses that are adjacent to the street; mobility is a means, not an end
• Encourage people to travel by walking, bicycling, and transit, and to drive less
• Provide transportation options for people of all ages, physical abilities, and income levels
• Enhance the safety and security of streets, from both a traffic and personal perspective
• Improve peoples’ health
• Create livable neighborhoods
• Reduce the total amount of paved area
• Reduce streetwater runoff into watersheds
• Maximize infiltration and reuse of stormwater
• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollution
• Reduce energy consumption
• Promote the economic well-being of both businesses and residents
• Increase civic space and encourage human interaction

While the manual doesn’t give a list of the potential negative impacts of promoting living streets, we’ve prepared a list for comparison purposes.

• People driving cars will find it more difficult to drive dangerously Read more…

You can view the full map at GeoCommons.

The above map shows Long Beach broken down geographically by census data and racial diversity. The lighter the dot, the higher the percentage of residents are Caucasian. The Vista Street Bike Boulevard, 3rd and Broadway Segregated Bike Paths and 2nd Street Green Sharrow are in the South Central and Southwest parts of the city, leading to charges that Long Beach’s bike boldness has been about servicing well-to-do caucasian areas and not the rest of the city.

During the past three years, Long Beach has shown a commitment to pushing the envelope when it comes to promoting clean and green transportation options.  However, the purpose of this article and last week’s series is to examine if the city has lived up to its agreement with the L.A. County Public Health Department to fulfill its Policies for Livable and Active Communities and Environment (PLACE) Grant the city was awarded in 2008.

The other four communities that received a PLACE Grant used their funds to bring in experts and planners to create master plans.  Long Beach used most of their grant to hire Charlie Gandy, a leader in the field of transportaion infrastructure and a spokesman that oozes charisma, but by his own admission “isn’t much of a master plan guy.”

As a result, the other four communities provided me with hundreds of pages of documents prepared as part of their grant.  Long Beach provided quite a bit less, although what they did provide is part of a Master Plan update that is planned for later this year.  But for now, Long Beach is in first place among the five cities that received PLACE Grants, but they’re in fifth as far as the planning portion of the grant.

That’s the bad news.  The good news is it appears that based on the information available, Long Beach is on the right track.  In the long-run, the content of the final document is what’s most important, not what month it is passed in.

While Long Beach city staff have worked on updating their mobility element, much of the city’s attention has been drawn to the innovative measures bicycle projects and that’s by design.

“We wanted to show people what was possible,” explains Derek Bunham from the city’s planning department.  ”It can be hard for the public, hard for the decision makers, to see the policy on a large scale.  So we decided to show them what can be done with demonstration projects.” Read more…

Thanks to an ADA lawsuit settlement, crossings such as this one may become a thing of the past in L.A. Photo: Ubrayj02/Flickr

Crumbling sidewalks and intersections without curb cuts are a common problem in L.A., but they’re a lot more noticeable when you’re moving with wheels.  Whether it’s pushing a baby stroller, or doing some sidewalk bicycle riding, the lack of curb cuts is suddenly a major issue.  While its a minor inconvenience to someone who is healthy and pushing wheels by choice, people who suffer from some physical ailment can find the lack of a curb cut to be as daunting a barrier as a moat filled with crocodiles.

The state of Los Angeles’ sidewalks is in terrible shape, especially when it comes to following the American with Disabilities Act which requires cuts to make sidewalks accessible to those in wheelchairs.  But thanks to a proposed legal settlement between a group of disabled Angelenos and the City of Los Angeles things might finally be changing.

Rather than battle the plaintiffs in court, the City decided to settle out of court.  But just because the plaintiff’s are settling doesn’t mean that the City is getting off easy.  Assuming the court approves the settlement the city will have to:

• Place curb cuts or access ramps to intersections on 1,000 intersections in less than a year.
• The city will spend up to $4 million each year to improve pedestrian crossings and safety in high-risk areas that have more pedestrian traffic, such as the areas around schools, government buildings and parks.
• Over the next twenty five years, the city will bring all areas to compliance with the American with Disability Act
• The city will complete a survey to see what the needs and cost are to bring the city into compliance with the ADA.
• The City will create an advisory committee to monitor progress in complying with the new settlement
• The Superior Court will have final say, not the City, to decide whether or not the City is holding up its end of the agreement.

The city is playing things close to the vest, they very politely refused comment for this story, but Los Angeles’ advocacy community was effusive.  ”They’ve had plenty of time to fix this ongoing issue, it’s sad that a lawsuit is needed to get justice for pedestrians,” commented Deborah Murphy, the founder of L.A. Walks and Chair of the City’s Pedestrian Advisory Committee (although here she is speaking as the former and not the latter.)

Read more…

At last week’s Art Walk, the monthly event where downtown art galleries open their doors to the public for free, thousands of people gathered to walk through the Downtown.  The event is changing the way people view Downtown Los Angeles, but last week, tragedy struck.

A two-month old infant in a stroller was killed when a Mercedes jumped a curb and struck the stroller and her mother.  It was initially reported that the driver would face no criminal charges, but later it was reported that he might face vehicular manslaughter.  The LAPD believes he was trying to parallel park front first when he hit the gas instead of the brake, careened into a parking meter, and then into a crowd.

Some have responded to the crash by calling for the walk to go carfree.  Others are claiming that Art Walk has become to large an event to be managed efficiently and should be closed.  Streetsblog had a chance to interview Mayor Villaraigosa on the phone today and we asked him about the crash (more on the rest of the interview tomorrow):

First, it’s obviously a terrible tragedy and our hearts go out to the family.  It’s irresponsible to blame Art Walk for this crash, from what I understand it was a freak accident…It’s too soon to talk about what, if any, changes are needed.  I know Art Walk is working with the city to make people as safe as possible when people are crossing the street.

Streetsblog contributor Brigham Yen advances the argument that the City should think of making Art Walk, at least part of it, car-free  on his self-named blog.  Yen points out that New York does the same thing in Times Square on weekends.  Commentors at other blogs are calling for a monthly mini-Ciclavia on Spring and Main Streets between 2nd and 9th, where the Walk regularly takes place. Read more…

We'll never know if the now-funded improvements to Jefferson and Ketzler would have saved the K-Town Ridazz, but we do know it will make the intersection safer for the hundreds of people that climb these stairs to the Baldwin Hills Park Scenic Overlook. Photo: Adventures in Los Angeles, Art and Architecture

Last Friday, the Baldwin Hills Conservancy, a county agency, awarded Culver City $570,000 to improve the intersection of Jefferson Boulevard and Hetzler road, the same intersection where Christine Dahab crashed into a group of stationary Midnight Ridazz early in the morning of June 16.  The improvements include the installation of a raised median near the intersection to differentiate the area surrounding the Scenic Overlook and the rest of the park from the industrial area around it, bike lanes from Duquense Avenue to the west to the City border to the east, a sidewalk on both sides of Jefferson and installation of a pedestrian signal at Hetzler.

Referring to the improvements and the crash, Charles Herbertson, the Director of Public Works for Culver City said, “I’m not sure any of the things we’re proposing would have stopped that, but it couldn’t have hurt.”  Herbertson also stressed that the proposal was before the Conservancy since before the crash and that the city has been trying to find funds to improve the intersection for a long time.

Even while the city scrambled to find funding to fix the intersection as more and more people used it to access the park, city leaders sounded the alarm that the intersection could claim lives before funding is identified.  Consider these two quotes from Culver City Councilmen on the situation at Jefferson and Hetzler from Culver City Patch about a grant application for the Metro Call for Projects:

“My gut tells me that in between those years of waiting, something bad is going to happen across that boulevard and then we will have to react in lieu of waiting for that grant,” Cooper said. Read more…

It's too bad that we often need to see this before we can see real pedestrian safety improvements. Photo:Daily News

The past week has been a dismal one for pedestrian safety issues.  One week ago, the K-Town Riders were probably peacefully planning out their ride, checking their tires, or otherwise going about their business with no idea the carnage that would be unleashed on them.  One week ago the fate of our city’s red light camera program was still uncertain.  But one week ago, one of the deadliest intersection in the city still didn’t have a traffic light.

Well, at least there’s some good news from the last seven days.

Over six months after Emely Aleman, 12, and Angela Rodriguez, 10, were crossing the street in a marked crosswalk when they were hit and tossed fifty feet in the air by a Jeep Cherokee.  Aleman passed away at the hospital, while Rodriguez is on the long road to recovery.  It was the third crash at the intersection of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Archwood Street. in 2010, down from four crashes in 2009.

Yesterday, Councilman Paul Krekorian announced that construction of a traffic signal at that intersection has begun.  Krekorian and School Board Member Tamar Galatzan, who ran against Krekorian for the seat he now holds, teamed together with the community to create the political pressure to expediate the light’s installation.  A council resolution in Aleman’s name was passed by the City Council late last year urging LADOT to install this signal as quickly as possible.

The Council District 2 blog quotes Krekorian: Read more…