While this part of Chandler Boulevard was not up for limit increases, it speaks a lot to how safe cyclists feel in a bike lane when they ride to the right of it. Photo: Joe Linton/Eco-Village

A diverse team of advocates teamed up to beat back a proposal by the LADOT and LAPD to raise speed limits on five segments of streets in the San Fernando Valley.  Arguing that public outreach for the proposals had been inadequate and raising speed limits while the city is attempting to de-emphasize a dominant car culture in its planning was a great example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

For a breakdown, and map, of the proposed changes, please visit this story previewing yesterdday’s meeting written earlier this week.  The proposed limit increases may come back to the Committee in ninety days after better crash data is analyzed and outreach is completed with the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“All future speed limit proposals should have a sign-on by L.A. Unified,” declared City Councilman Tom LaBonge, setting a new standard to earn his support for limit increases.

While a pair of assistant general managers for LADOT sat in the audience, it was transportation manager Brian Gallagher who explained the rationale for raising the limits.  Basically, state law requires that speed limits be set so that at the “prevailing speed” or “85th percentile” of drivers for the city to be allowed to use radar to enforce speed limits.  All of the road segments discussed at Wednesday’s meetings had been under discussion for so long that radar enforcement was no longer allowed.

While Gallagher pushed the “we have no choice” argument that has been a hallmark of the debate over limit increases, he also argued that setting limits at the prevailing speed makes the road safer.  “When we set a speed limit lower than the prevailing speed,we’re more likely to have accidents,” Gallager claimed.

Gallagher based his claim on a 1992 report by the Federal Highway Administration that showed that adjusting speed limits to the speed which people drives reduce “accidents.”

The Councilmen’s reactions to this argument represents how much the debate has changed in City Hall.  In 2009 and 2010 when limit increase proposals were common on the Transportation Committee, there was much wringing of hands and then the limits would pass.  This week, Councilman Bill Rosendahl muttered that he disagreed with the two-decade old study by the FHWA and Councilman Paul Koretz blasted holes in the argument that Chandler Boulevard, located in his district, should see higher limits.

Gallagher argued that there were no conditions on Chandler Boulevard that would cause LADOT to “artificially” deflate the speed.  When Koretz pushed Gallagher, noting that the stretch of Chandler in question has bike lanes, schools and Orthodox Jewish Synagogues; Gallagher responded that there wasn’t a lot of “accidents” on Chandler.  A flummoxed Koretz then asked, “If the stretch of road is safe, why do we want to change speed limits and change that?”

But the strongest opposition came from a parade of advocates representing the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, Los Angeles Walks, The Safe Routes to Schools National Partnership, a handful of Neighborhood Councils and the Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee.

Vice-Chair of the Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee Glen Bailey picked apart the idea that Kester  street does not have the physical characteristics that would call for a lower limit.  Bailey noted that there are middle and high schools facing the street and a series of jut outs.  Bailey’s testimony, followed testimony by Los Angeles Walks’ Deborah Murphy who argued that increasing limits to 45 miles per hour on streets with schools is going to create crashes as “school zone” limits will drop the limit by 20 miles per hour all at once.

The parade of advocates continued to poke holes in the argument that faster streets are safer streets, but the testimony that stuck with the Councilmen was Murphy’s who presented a list of school officials who were not notified that the speed limits would be increased outside of their walls.

“I’m shocked that L.A. Unified wasn’t part of the discussion,” added LaBonge.

The proposals could come back to the Committee as soon as mid-May, but before the Committee will consider them they asked for crash data based on state SWITRS data and the approval of local LAUSD officials.

A trio of speed limit proposals head to the City Council Transportation Committee tomorrow.  The proposals total 5.4 miles of city streets that would see a limit increase. Half of those miles would see a dramatic increase from 35 miles per hour to 45 miles per hour. The areas due for an increase are:

• Kester Avenue between Saticoy Street and Victory Boulevard (35 mph increased to 40 mph for 1.5 miles),
• Kester Avenue between Magnolia and Ventura Boulevards (35 mph increased to 40 mph for .9 miles),
• Chandler Boulevard between Lankershim Boulevard and Coldwater Canyon Avenue (35 mph increased to 45 mph for 2.1 miles)
• Chandler Boulevard between Lankershim Boulevard and Vineland Avenue (35 mph increased to 40 mph for .3 miles),
• Clybourn Avenue between Strathern and Cohasset Street (35 mph increased to 45 mph for .6 miles)

A team of advocates including representatives from Los Angeles Walks, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition and Ridazz, an online general assembly of concerned cyclists, is planning to lobby the Committee to hold back the limit increases.  Councilmen have begrudgingly passed similar increases in the past in an effort to support LAPD traffic enforcement.

Until 2004, speed limits were set at the 85th percentile of driver speed on a section of road rounded to the nearest 5 mile increment.  A.B. 529, authored by San Gabriel Valley Democrat Mike Gatto and passed last year,  allows municipalities to round the posted speed limit down no matter how the 85th percentile is to a higher limit.  For example, if the 85th percentile of drivers is driving at 39 miles per hour, and the municipality considers a 40 miles per hour speed limit too high for that stretch of road, it can “round down” to a 35 miles per hour limit.

Don Ward, one of the organizers of Ridazz, writes a personal story explaining why drivers shouldn’t be allowed to set speed limits based on their driving over what is safest for all users, a process Councilman Tom LaBonge referred to as “voting with their pedal.”

“When I think of the lunacy of setting 45mph speed limits on streets like Chandler or Kester or any of the other residential streets of LA I think fondly of my pops, a depression era man and pure fiscal conservative – may he rest in peace. He refused to drive more than about 25 miles per hour any where in LA. This would drive me absolutely bonkers,” writes Ward.

“To which he would chuckle and go into his spiel about the fact that he had carefully crafted his driving style in order to conserve gas, brakes and engine wear… In fact he was a scientist about it…. citing the Burbank traffic grid as the best suited for his methods. And it was true… I would see car after car race ahead of us at 40-50mph only to slam on the brakes for a red light that he eventually floated through on the green, passing those same impatient drivers who now revved their cars back up to speed only to repeat the same mistake again at the next light. “Those people are idiots” he would quip. “They’re wasting their money. Learn to time the lights sonny.” I miss my old man.”

Not anymore. Photo: Freaky Humor.com

“I promised residents that I would do something about those who speed through our neighborhoods,” says Gatto, “I am proud to have delivered that promise today, and proud to know that our local authorities will be given another tool to protect the safety of drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists in our communities.”

Until 2004, speed limits were set at the 85th percentile of driver speed on a section of road rounded to the nearest 5 mile increment.  A.B. 529 allows municipalities to round the posted speed limit down no matter how the 85th percentile is to a higher limit.  For example, if the 85th percentile of drivers is driving at 39 miles per hour, and the municipality considers a 40 miles per hour speed limit too high for that stretch of road, it can “round down” to a 35 miles per hour limit.

While other legislation designed to help municipalities fight rising speed limits has faced fierce opposition from powerful speeding traffic supporters such as the AAA and California Highway Patrol, this legislation enjoyed unanimous legislative support and AAA and CHP remained on the sidelines.  The only opposition came from advocates who believe that extended yellow light times are the key to traffic safety because Gatto’s legislation also allows shorter yellow light times. 

One of Gatto’s key supporters was the City of Glendale, which also backed stronger legislation offered by Paul Krekorian in 2009.  Supporting changes in state law that would allow municipalities to resist speed limit increases is a component of the city’s groundbreaking Safe and Healthy Streets plan.  The city used Glendale Police Officers as lobbyists in Sacramento to push the legislation from a safety standpoint.

Captain Carl Povilaitis of the Glendale Police Department testified in Sacramento in favor of the legislation. “AB 529 will improve traffic and community safety by giving communities more flexibility in setting speed limits,” says Povilaitis. “That’s good for drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists.”

Glendale also showed how rising speed limits are bad for local economies, and not because it means the police can issue fewer tickets.  Wayne Ko, traffic engineer for the city of Glendale, notes that 44% of Glendale’s locally set speed limits would have been forced upward in the next year before A.B.. 529 passed, resulting in the city having to replace 44% of their expensive metallic signs.

A.B. 529 seeks to counter the trend of rising speed limits throughout California and has sailed through both houses of the legislature. Image:Auto in the Know

While most California cyclists are thrilled that the Senate and Assembly agree that car drivers should give cyclists a three foot berth when speeding past them, the legislative session in Sacramento was mostly positive, but still somewhat mixed.  As the Senate and Assembly prepare to go into recess, here’s where many important pieces of legislation that pertain to traffic safety, and livable and complete streets stand.

On the Governor’s Desk

A.B. 529 – Assembly Bill 529 was introduced to bring California into compliance with federal standards by giving municipalities greater say on setting local speed limits.  The legislation still requires municipalities to set speed limits based on the 85th percentile of drivers, but allows them to “round down” if conditions allow.  In short, if the 85th percentile of drivers is clocked at 44 miles per hour, the city could set the speed limit at 40 m.p.h. in certain conditions.  The bill wasn’t opposed by any special interest groups and had unanimous support in both legislatures.

A.B. 650 – Assemblyman Bob Blumenfeld wrote a powerful op/ed for Streetsblog about the role that transit should spend in the state’s future.  The next step for California would be passing of his legislation, A.B. 650 which will create a panel to propose solutions to improve buses, light rail, and other public transit options throughout California. It was passed by both houses on the legislature, and the League of Conservation Voters has created an action alert to urge the governor to sign the legislation.

A.B. 147 – A.B. 147 is one of those pieces of legislation that few people understand but could have a huge impact.  Basically, the Subdivision Map Act allows municipalities to charge developers fees to defray the cost of building  thoroughfares bridges to serve their project.  A.B. 147 would allow them to include fees for constructing bicycle, transit, pedestrian or traffic calming measures as well.  That could be a lot of new funds for local projects.

S.B. 910 – We’ve covered the status of the “3 Foot Passing Law” earlier this week, but it still awaits the Governor’s signature.  Given his startling veto of S.B. 28 (see below), anything is possible.

Still Moving?

S.B. 791 – Senate President Darrell Steinberg’s legislation that would allow local governments to raise the gas tax with the support of 50+1% of voters is stalled for now.  This is perhaps the most important piece of legislation for transit advocates, but has become a partisan issue as “taxpayers associations” claim the legislation is the same thing as a tax hike.

A.B. 710 - A.B. 710 would drop minimum parking requirements for infill development in “transit intensive areas” down to one car per residential unit or per 1,000 square feet of retail space.  Infill development is defined as any new project that is built on a currently unoccupied space.  The legislation is popular with new urbanists and many transportation reformers, but affordable housing advocates are concerned it could undermine the parking exemptions developers can earn for building affordable housing units.  Bizarrely, the League of Municipalities derailed the bill’s passage in the Senate (it sailed through the Assembly) even though the legislation requires nothing from municipalities and gives them more flexibility.  The bill needs one more vote to pass the Senate, but none is scheduled now.

Dead

S.B. 28 -  Senate Bill 28 would have increased fines for scofflaw drivers caught using their cell phones will driving for first-time violations from $20 to $50 and for subsequent violations from $50 to $100 each.  However, Governor Brown bowed to the unsafe drivers lobby and vetoed the legislation proclaiming that current fines are a sufficient deterrent.  The fine for throwing a hamburger wrapper out of the window is $100.  The fine for driving in a carpool lane illegally is $100.  Neither of those illegal acts are tied to multiple car crashes every year.  I mean, even AAA was on board with passing this increase into law.(H/T to the California Bike Coalition for providing the information on fines.)

A.B. 345 – It’s actually good news that this legislation is stalled, at least for now.  A.B. 345 would have mandated that Caltrans allow a seat at the table to non-motorized transportation users on the powerful  California Traffic Control Devices Committee.  Currently, there are two seats on the committee for citizens, and both are held by unsafe and speeding traffic advocacy groups AAA of Northern California and the Southern California Automobile Club.  However, Catrans adopted the goals of A.B. 345 and made space for walking and bicycling advocates in response to A.B. 345′s introduction.  The legislation is considered inactive.

It’s hardly a state secret that California’s speed limit laws are designed to increase traffic speed at the expense of communities and urban design. AB 529, a hot piece of legislation by Assemblyman Mike Gatto that already quietly cleared the State Assembly, seeks to give communities a little more leeway in setting local speed limits.  The Senate has yet to assign the bill to committee, but Senate Transportation Committee staff have told me they’re expecting it “any day now.”

While campaigning last year, Gatto says he was repeatedly asked to do something about speed limits, which has been a major issue throughout both Valleys and Glendale.  But Gatto didn’t need much urging to take up this issue, “I was born and raised in my district and I know there are speeding problems in the streets,” he told Streetsblog in an interview last week.

State law involving how speed limits tilted even more towards maximizing car travel speed in 2004, often times at the expense of creating and maintaining roads that are safe to live and walk on.  Before that, cities could set speed limits within a range of the speed at which traffic traveled on a street.  After the 2004 change in law however, cities have been forced to round up their speed limits starting at the eighty-fifth percent of car travel speeds, which some drivers treat as permission to drive even faster. AB 529 gives local governments the option to round speed limits down after a traffic survey, which will slow the process of escalating limits on roads unsuited to higher speeds.

In other words, speeders won’t have as much leeway to set speed limits under Gatto’s legislation as they currently do.  AB 529 isn’t as strong as past pieces of legislation, such as A.B. 766, then-Assemblyman Paul Krekorian’s “Safe Streets” legislation in 2009.  But that’s one reason that no groups are opposing AB 529, not even AAA.  While “Safe Streets” stalled in committee, A.B. 529 was unanimously passed by the Assembly.

Which isn’t to say that Gatto expects his legislation to be passed as smoothly in the Senate as it was the Assembly.  The Assemblyman expects “a little bit of a battle” in the other chamber, but does expect it to ultimately pass.

“I promised residents that I would do something about those who speed through our streets,” says Gatto, “and I will continue to work hard to address this problem.”

Supporting AB 529 are the Glendale Police Department, City of Glendale, Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC), City of Santa Rosa, League of California Cities, and the City of Long Beach.  Gatto’s office supplied a fact sheet for the legislation, that can be found here.

Not everyone at the conference got the memo that it wasn't about encouraging speed. Photo: Michael Cahn

The Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) is like a daughter of Caltrans. The mothership builds the roads, then Traffic Safety comes on the scene, addressing the safety deficits with education and enforcement efforts. The OTS conference, scheduled every other year, is a forum which unites local government, safety advocates, and a whole lot of police officers. MADD, Mothers against Drunk Driving, set the tone. The 2011 Leadership Seminar was held last week in San Diego. The agency offers a number of scholarships covering tuition, travel and accommodation. I attended the Bicycle and Pedestrian track, other tracks covered DUI, drug impairment, collision investigation, engineering and leadership.

The good news is that California fatality rates are low, the lowest since 1949. The bad news is that pedestrians and cyclists are greatly over-represented in these crashes. Simply put: Speed and distracted driving kills.

In California we call it Complete Streets, on the federal level it is called Sustainable Communities (DOT, FHWA, HUD, EPA), the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health have PLACE and RENEW programs: They all describe broad policy goals that have grown together over the last few years. Together they offer a new framework to work for more transportation choices, improved air quality and public health. Traditionally, traffic safety tries to compensate for the defects of an infrastructure that is designed for unsafe speeds. Historically, OTS moves into action after the roads are built and drivers have yielded to the temptations of overbuilt infrastructure and high performance machinery. Attempting to move away from this position of the latecomer, OTS is now spending time on educating planners on street designs where safety standards for vulnerable users are not an afterthought, but included from the outset. The attempt to educate engineers and advocates on new engineering standards for streets that serve all users is part of a broad wave of new handbooks and guidelines such as Smart Mobility Framework, Complete Streets Manual, Model Streets Manual etc. They all try to encroach upon the hegemony of Caltrans Highway Design Manual, which is no longer considered sufficient in accommodating non-motorized road users.

Of course, many obstacles to the implementation of such policies can not be overcome with design handbooks. To ease the way of these grand policies into local reality on the ground, events like this OTS training seminar serve to share best practice with local agencies, and to equip transportation advocates with the tools that allow them to make their case locally. Yes, the advocacy community has a firm place in the delivery of these broad policies. You may think you just wanted your kids to get to school safely on a bike, but before you realize it, you have become a important piece in this complex puzzle of ending the national dependency of  fossil fuels.

How?

If this seminar is anything to go by, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) mapping will become an important avenue to include community based groups in this larger policy shift. The geography of social inequities, the digital analysis of environmental injustice is the tool of choice. Geographical Information Systems and community organizing are coming together to form a powerful brew: For instance, healthycity.org displays a wide variety of social indicators. Likewise, the Transportation Injury Mapping System tims.berkeley.edu is set to become a remarkable tool for crash analysis displaying and selecting road collisions in a compelling manner that can inform and guide planners and elected officials towards the enlightened choices we need. Through these tool the memory and the structure of traffic injuries and fatalities translates into prime political capital. Some bicycle advocates have known this all along: Witness the series of highly publicized bike fatalities in New York City which eventually paved the way for Sadik-Khan. But other advocates are reluctant to exploit this gruesome capital – during my tenure on the board of the LACBC I encountered this resistance: Many organizations do not see the benefit of dwelling on “roadkill” and prefer to look away. It is not about a morbid fascination with fatalities: it is about utilizing them properly to advance improvements and changes in culture.

At least for the OTS there is no “looking the other way” when a fatality occurs. We were treated to elaborate marketing tool called Communication for Pedestrian Safety. Funded by CA Public Health, NHTSA et al, it offers a timely reminder, and an elaborate tool, for advocates to be ready for the press when the next fatality occurs on our roads. Who would want to waste a valuable advocacy and education opportunity? With the right preparation you can direct the attention of the media onto the factors which contributed to this crash, especially those which can be addressed with enforcement or changes to the street design. This can transform a tragedy into the natural stepping stone towards a better and safer transportation system.

Design Guides, mapping tools, crash marketing. The fourth leg of the OTS stool is the police.

Removing the bias of California car culture from the mental system of law enforcement is not going to be easy. It has been said that it takes 20 hours to change the mind of a police officer. Those who represent the law on our streets are right by default, making it difficult to address the latent prejudice against non-motorized transportation from the equation. The conversation between safety advocates and police officers is not simple. We often speak different languages. Yet we urgently need to have this conversation. Police forces can benefit from the collaboration with community based organizations because they can carry the message much further. At the same time, pedestrians and cyclists are desperate for better enforcement of distracted or impaired driving. A local example where this collaboration was successful occurred in San Diego where the SDPD launched an effective campaign together with community groups in the wake of series of fatalities involving young children.

Perhaps future installments of the OTS seminar could specifically and expressly invite engineering and enforcement staff from those cities which lead the annual OTS statistics of bike and ped crashes, and tailor the remedial training to the statistically determined deficits in those high ranking cities. Some car-centric police departments still perceive the dangers of “traffic” as a natural force against which they are powerless. Not only do they become deaf to the safety concerns of the community, they also become immune to the improvements this training can yield for their city.

Traffic safety is really simple: Speed and distraction kills. Look again, and it is really complex, requiring dialogue between agencies which speak different languages, have different skills, come from different planets, all competing for the same piece of real estate, the street.  The OTS does a sterling job trying to facilitate these conversations and collaborations. The methodical background for this is the Strategic Highway Safety Plan which includes an ongoing process of identifying challenge areas (16 so far) and develops strategies to address them. But then step back for the bigger picture: “The risk of being injured or killed in a traffic crash is disproportionately high for members of certain groups as defined by race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and cultural practices.”(OTS) Acknowledged or not, such findings put transportation advocacy firmly in the context of social equity issues: It is poverty which kills.

Dr. Michael Cahn is the Secretary of Sustainable Streets (www.sustainablestreetsla.org)

In one plot, Claire, the mother of a nuclear family is on the warpath against a woman who is speeding through their neighborhood.  At first, she tries to memorize the license plate while screaming at the car through a mega-phone as it zooms past.  Later, we realize that the driver was on the phone with Claire’s husband during the drive by.  Her next plan is to create signs with the car’s license plate that reads “Slow down your neighbors.”  Because what’s the one thing a speeder cannot outrun?  Shame.

Eventually, Claire realizes that her nemesis is also her husband’s top client (which explains why his stack of signs hasn’t been put up).  From there things go down hill.

While Claire is certainly presented as though she’s on a crusade, the speeding driver is portrayed as a borderline maniac in her personal dealings with the husband and certainly when she’s behind the wheel.  At one point, she nearly runs over her real estate agent as he stands in her driveway and sees a couple of prospective drivers off.  The only bad part of the story is that we don’t get to see the ending.  Does the speeder come to justice?  Is she eventually shamed in to not putting the entire community in danger so she could get somewhere ten seconds quicker?  Or does she just sell her house and move on to terrorizing another community?

“There’s a bunch of cool kids who ride their bikes to school everyday. I thought I’d join them.” explains Manny, the Colombian immigrant, and teen (or maybe pre-teen) stepson of “Jay.”  After realizing that Manny’s bike has training wheels, Jay berates his wife for not teaching his stepson to bike earlier, and they decide that Jay will teach both of them to ride that weekend.  The wife dresses her son in a suit of armor for the lesson, but he’s a natural and takes to it immediately.

On the other hand, the wife does not.  She crashes in to the bushes and insists on a new teacher.  When her 10 year-old nephew is asking her what her fears are, he seems incredulous that being snatched off her bike is a concern.  The lesson?  Adults find riding a bike a lot scarier than kids do.

In short, in one half hour episode, the show covered unsafe neighborhood driving and irrational fear of cycling.  It’s too infrequent that these issues are given a fair shake on network television.  As much as I like Modern Family, it would be nice to see kids bicycling and safe driving get this sort of play on something besides an absurdest comedy show.

Police pull over speeders in Playa del Rey in 2007. Photo:Magic Man/Flickr

Yesterday, we discussed how a change in the threshold for a crime to be considered “Grand Theft” could impact cyclists who find their bikes stolen.  Today, we’ll look at how a series of new laws could make our streets safer and more sustainable.

The biggest change is that local traffic officers now ticket scofflaw drivers for violating state laws and not under local ordinances.  The goal of the law is to make uniform the fines and penalties for motorists breaking the law.  While much of the public discussion of the law focused on “uniform punishment” throughout the state, the larger impact is that all traffic violations will be reported to the Department of Motor Vehicles.  Under the previous practice, officers enforcing local ordinances would not have to report violators to the state, because they hadn’t violated a state law.  This should result in more reckless drivers losing licenses or getting them suspended as bad drivers will be “get points on their license” regardless of where their lawbreaking occurs.

The law was authored by Long Beach Senator Jenny Oropeza, who passed away in October of last year.

Never would have been an issue if Mike Feuer had been Assemblyman in the early 1990's.

A new law penned by Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Hollywood), makes adults liable if an underage guest gets drunk and causes a car crash.  This provides greater incentive for adults to think twice before allowing their kids, or their friends, to drink even a little bit before getting behind the wheel.  Ironically, is the Assemblyman for Beverly Hills because an incident with parents giving teenagers champagne before prom sparked the oft-mocked “Donna Martin Graduates” episodes on the original Beverly Hills 90210.

Other safety changes require all motorcycle drivers to complete a fifteen hour training course before earning a learner’s permit and laws increasing reckless driving penalties for paparazzi chasing celebrities.

California’s Personal Vehicle Sharing Law, first reported by San Francisco Streetsblog, also goes into effect.  This law makes it illegal for insurance companies to cancel insurance for personal vehicles that are being used for car-sharing.  City Share, a personal car share company based in the Bay Area, is already taking advantage of this new law.

But my favorite new law doesn’t effect moving cars, but parked ones.  A new law, AB 2567 authored by Gardena Assemblyman Steve Bradford, authorizes cities to install and operate cameras on street sweepers to digitally photograph vehicles that are parked on streets when street sweeping is posted to occur.  Critics of the law are already comparing the plan to an Orwellian Big Brother plot, but this program literally would only photograph cars that are parked illegally.

Thanks to cuts to the state’s Medi-Cal program, motorists caught breaking the law will be charged $4 for the next six years to pay for emergency air-lifts.  This seems like a random place to generate revenue for this program, until you consider how many of these airlifts are needed because of unsafe driving.

Four more years!

And a last new law wasn’t about change but about preserving the status-quo for “clean cars” and the state’s HOV Lanes.  Hybrid vehicles adorned with the “yellow sticker” advertising its clean air status will be allowed to use HOV lanes as though they had multiple passengers until July 1 of this year.  Cars with “white stickers” showing that they are electric or “compressed natural gas” will have HOV privileges until January of 2015.  The new law creates a third sticker, for plug-in hybrid vehicles, to be issued and to allow access to HOV lanes also until 2015.

At this point, you have to feel bad for the City Council when it comes to the issue of raising speed limits. Despite the pleas from community groups and road users, the Council feels stuck when the LAPD and state law are telling them that the benefits of raising the limits on certain local roads outweigh the costs. As we’ve covered in the past, state law requires that every seven years municipalities that use radar to enforce speed limits do speed surveys and adjust the speed limit to the eighty-fifth percentile.

Efforts to change the state law have run in to opposition from the California Highway Patrol, AAA and other speeding traffic advocates and have never escaped one of Asm. Mike Eng’s transportation committee hearing. Thus, this Wednesday, the City Council Transportation Committee is faced with the sad task of voting on whether to increase speed limits on five streets in the Valley. You can read the full list of proposed increases on the agenda, or visit my Google map above to see what local streets are due for a bump in car traffic speed.

Ironically, listed right after the increases on the agenda is a report from the LADOT on their plans pedestrian safety applications for federal “Highway Safety Improvement Projects” funds.  In an effort to be more involved in project planning in their districts, Council Members Bill Rosendahl and Bernard Parks asked LADOT to continue to update the Council throughout the application process.

Most of the projects listed are to install traffic lights or widen sidewalks.  One is a road widening in the name of “congestion relief.”  Three others are actually more interesting and complex projects that might one day be responsible for maintaining or lowering a speed limit in the future.  Not coincidentally, two of those three projects are in Parks’ and Rosendahl’s districts.

Standing in the intersection of 11th Ave and 48th Street, looking east. Looks like a good candidate for a diet.

The first is in Parks’ South Los Angeles District.  The project would cost $750,000 and the city is asking for $675,000 of those funds.  What make it interesting is that the LADOT is proposing a road diet and bike lanes for 48th Street between Normandie and the city limits as well as a two-way left turn lane at 48th and 11th. Another road diet? This is the third time this year we’re discussing Road Diets and LADOT in the same breath. in addition to the “famous” diet on Wilbur Avenue in the valley, there was also a diet on James M. Wood Boulevard.

The second highlighted project falls in Jan Perry’s District along the Central Avenue Corridor Project between Slauson and Washington Boulevard.  The city is asking for over $800,000 to widen sidewalks and improve pedestrian crossings at ten intersections along Central Avenue.  Bulbouts, smart crosswalks, streetscaping…it sounds like the CRA, the sponsor for the project, is trying to “Portlandize” this slice of South L.A. with the goal of making pedestrian’s lives a little safer and encouraging more people to use transit.

The third project that works outside the box is in Bill Rosendahl’s 11th Council District.  The project would basically recreate the sidewalk along a stretch of Entrada Avenue and identify and improve the best crossings along the road.  The project has a low budget of $1 million, and city is hoping the federal government will pitch in 90% of those funds.

Poor Paul Koretz.  He’s stuck with the road widening project as the soul applicant for his District.

All in all, the LADOT’s proposed list of federal grant applications looks pretty good.  Of course, a list of projects is only as good as their applications.  Hopefully, LADOT (and its partners with the Community Redevelopment Agency and Bureau of Street Services) can bring home the bacon and make these corridors and intersections a better place to live, play and walk.

Earlier this month, the New York City Department of Transportation announced plans to experiment with 20 mph zones -- replacing the city's default 30 mph speed limit in one pilot neighborhood. Whoever gets the first 20 mph treatment will see benefits that residents of British cities and towns have become increasingly familiar with in recent years.

In the UK, some 3 million people live in areas with 20 mph speed limits. The experience there shows that not only do slower speeds save lives, but lowering the limit to 20 mph improves the way local streets function in more ways than one. According to the 20's Plenty for Us campaign, the change has produced wide-ranging benefits, including less traffic, increased walking and biking, greater independence for children, the elderly and infirm, better health, and calmer driving conditions for motorists.

The mission of 20's Plenty For Us is to establish 20 mph as the default speed limit on all residential roads in the UK. I recently met up with the campaign's founder, Rod King, as well as other advocates in the towns of Warrington and York, to understand how the idea of slowing down traffic has spread so fast throughout the country.

For any new readers, state law requires that speed limits be set at the 85th percentile of automobile traffic speeds to avoid being labeled a "speed trap."  If a municipality fails to set the speed by these standards, then they lose enforcement power with radar devices.  Because Los Angeles is a city designed to move car traffic as quickly as possible, you can imagine what happens when surveys are done to see how fast people are driving.  If there is a provable compelling reason, the city can round down.  But as we saw last month, people walking on the road in an area with higher than average crashes partially caused by the speed of the vehicle is not a reason to keep speed limits below the 85th percentile.

The first street on the docket for an increase is Branford Street between San Fernando Road and Woodman Avenue.  This 2.3 mile stretch of road runs past two parks, but isn't moving enough car traffic.  Pending Council action, the limit will increase from 30 miles per hour to 45 miles per hour on this four lane road.  To be fair to the LADOT, the study area for this traffic speed survey was Glen Oaks Boulevard to San Fernando Road, an additional .7 of a mile.  While the traffic survey showed that traffic on Branford Street between Glen Oaks Boulevard and Woodman Avenue moves at 35 miles per hour at the eighty-fifth percentile, but because there are irregularities in the car parking and a high amount of pedestrian traffic and crossings, they recommended keeping the limit at the current speed for this three-quarters of a mile stretch or road.

The other increase on the agenda is an increase from 35 m.p.h. to 40 m.p.h. along over eight miles of roadway on Sherman Way between Balboa Boulevard and Clybourn Avenue.  There's no silver lining to this story, as the entire segment of roadway, some of which is two lanes and some of which is four, be designated a 40 m.p.h. route.

Last year, responding to a question from Councilman Alarcon, the LADOT promised that even though so far the increases have been confined to the Valley; that's just where they're starting.  In the coming years, the increases will come to a street near you.

Limit will stay at 30 miles per hour on Hatteras between Sepulveda and Hazeltine

It's a curious proposal, because the speed limit along this stretch of road is already at thirty miles per hour, and there is no change proposed for the road.  Instead, the proposal serves as a justification of why the limit should stay at thirty miles per hour and illustrates how stacked the deck is against setting speed limits for maximum safety instead of speed.  Before we go on, just a reminder that state law requires that speed limits be set within the nearest five miles per hour of the eighty-fifth percentile of drivers unless there's a compelling reason to keep the speed 5 miles per hour lower than the "85th percentile."  In this proposal, we can see how hard it is to convince traffic engineers that there's a compelling reason to reduce speeds.

The segment of Hatteras Street between Hazeltine Avenue and Sepulveda Boulevard is a distance of approximately 1.5 miles, with an average critical speed of 31.5 miles per hour. The average lower limit of pace is 24.5 miles per hour, and the average median speed is 27:5 miles per hour.

In other words, most drivers drive below the thirty mile per hour limit.  However, those that drive more quickly, drive much more quickly.

A review of field conditions and accident records for this segment indicates that there are no observed conditions that objectively could be considered as not readily apparent to motorists, and could justify a speed limit of 25 miles per hour. For the two block segment of Hatteras Street. between Tobias Avenue. and Vista Del Monte Avenue, where parked cars force pedestrians to walk in the roadway, the combination of the residential character of these two short blocks, low volumes of pedestrians and vehicles, and the absence of any accident pattern, and a 30 foot wide roadway without a centerline that can be shared by pedestrians, bicyclists .and motorists, is not significant enough to justify a speed limit reduction for just two blocks.

If pedestrians being forced to walk in the street isn't cause to lower the speed limit for "two short blocks;" I have to wonder what exactly could happen on these teeny-tiny little blocks to justify slowing traffic.

Although the accident rate for Hatteras Street between Hazeltine Avenue and Sepulveda Boulevard of 3.63 accidents per million-vehicle-miles is considered higher than usual, most of the accidents occurred at signal or all-way stop controlled intersections, and only two of the thirteen accidents (15 percent) that have occurred on Hatteras Street between Sepulveda Boulevard and Hazeltine Avenue during the most recent two year period can be attributed to speeding traffic on Hatteras Street.

And here we see that the crash rate is higher in this area than the average, and that "only" fifteen percent of the crashes in this area are caused by speed.  Neither of these are significant reason to lower the speed limit.

In total, we see that most drivers are driving nearer to the twenty five mile limit than the proposed 30 mile limit, there's a segment of the area where pedestrians have to walk in the street and there are a higher than average number of crashes in the area, partially as a result of speed.  None of this is significant enough to call for the limit to be lowered.  Critics of LADOT and speeding traffic often argue that it takes a death for speeding traffic issues to be taken seriously; let's hope that's not the case on Hatteras Street.

Back in January, the Daily Beast, listed nation’s most congested highways.  The I-101, aka the Hollywood Freeway, was ranked #1, aka the most congested highway in the country.  Earlier this week, they came out with a list of the "deadliest" highways, and two Southern California roads, the I-15 and I-10 finished fourth and fifth, respectively.

The methodology for the study is pretty simple.  The Daily Beast took the total number of fatalities on a highway over a five year period and divided by lane miles to see how many people died on the highway every mile.  For the I-15, that number was over three dead people for every two miles.  Closer to home, the I-10 is "only" home to 1.4 deaths per mile.  Honestly?  These numbers are pretty sickening.

Because while there are always infrastructure changes proposed when someone is killed crossing the street, or riding their bike; there is rarely a call to slow down or otherwise calm traffic on freeways even when the "let’s move as many people as fast as possible" mantra is literally leading to an intolerable level of carnage on the highways.

Of course, we know that there are few ends that speeding traffic advocates won’t go to justify keeping limits as high as possible.  It was less than a year ago that the California Highway Patrol and AAA teamed up to torpedo legislation that would have calmed traffic on local streets.  Can you imagine the outrage if laws were proposed to slow traffic on highways?

Speeding traffic advocates like to point to "efficiency" as a reason to keep traffic on every road moving as quickly as engineers can help them move.  Whether it’s highways or local streets, this kind of thinking leads to more death in the name of speeding traffic.  You can look at all of the data in the world about the correlation between car speed and fatalities; or just look at the two Daily Beast studies.  You won’t find any of the "top 10"  most congested highways, i.e. the ones with the slowest traffic, appearing on the list of deadly highways.

It's a common complaint of community groups that they are powerless to slow down speeding traffic in their neighborhoods.  While there are many barriers to reducing average traffic speeds in L.A., state law and the LADOT to name a few, two relatively well-off communities may be on their way to slower cars on their local streets.

In a well-to-do section of Pacific Palisades, residents on two streets, Corona Del Mar and Alma Real Drive thought the speed limit of thirty miles per hour was too high.  After discussing the issue with their Councilman, Transportation Committee Chair Bill Rosendahl, a motion was created to lower the speed limit to 25 miles per hour.  The Calfironia Vehicle Code allows for residential streets to have 25 m.p.h. limits, but if an engineering survey determines that more than fifteen percent of drivers drive faster than that limit, then police can't use radar to enforce the limit.

The survey for this street shows that the speed should be 30 m.p.h.  The residents didn't care about radar enforcement.  After all, this is hardly a street that sees a lot of traffic cops.  The motion passed Committee unanimously, and can be read here.

The second community was a little more proactive than the one in Pacific Palisades.  Over two months ago a motion to allow the Mt. Olympus Community to install its own traffic calming was stalled in committee because the LADOT had concerns about the placement of the speed humps.  You can read the report from that meeting here.

Over the last two months, those issues were worked out, the motion to allow them to buy their own speed humps and install them was passed unanimously as well.  Installation, could happen as soon as the end of June.

While both of these victories are rare pieces of good news; it's hardly time to crack open the champagne.  When neighborhoods in the Valley and N.E.L.A. are given control of speed on their streets as these more affluent communities are, then L.A. will be on its way to being a truly livable city.

The move to speed up Los Angeles’ streets continues unabated.  Less than a week after hundreds of people gathered at the L.A. StreetSummit to discuss how to tame traffic and make Los Angeles’ streets more livable, the City Council Transportation Committee is expected to hear, debate, and pass three speed limit increases in the San Fernando Valley at 2:00 p.M. this Wednesday in City Hall.  In a way, its kind of a sobering crash back to reality.  After a week of being reminded of what could be, activists are back to where we are…fighting speed limit increases that represent the exact opposite kind of thinking to what we talked about all weekend.

So what streets are up for a change? 

First up is Arleta
Avenue, in the Arleta community.  In the stretch
between Devonshire Street and Roscoe Boulevard, a cool
three and a quarter miles, the speed limit will be increased from
thirty-five to forty miles per hour so that radar enforcement of the
limit can be maintained. LADOT documented their efforts to
contact the local Neighborhood Council without getting much in return. 
It would have been nice if they had made the effort with other groups
that operate in that area, but this is where we are.  The Arleta Community is represented by Paul Krekorian in City Hall, who in the past has insisted that the neighborhood be involved in this process.  Whether the Neighborhood Council being asleep at the switch changes his view remains to be seen.   You can read all about the Arleta Avenue increase, here.

Next are two streets in Sun Valley, which is in the sixth Councilmanic District represented by Tony Cardenas.  The first is the world
famous "Hollywood Way" between Burbank city limits and Glen Oaks
Boulevard; which would also see an increase from thirty five to forty
miles per hour.  The local LAPD first signed off on the increase in
March of 2007, three years ago.  There’s some irony with this
particular increase, because just last week, Burbank implemented a road
diet on some of its local streets…which is the exact opposite of
increasing the speed limits as Los Angeles plans to do right up to Burbank’s doorstep.  You can read more about this proposal, here.

Last up is another increase from thirty five to forty miles per hour on Sheldon Street between Glen Oaks Avenue and Roscoe Boulevard.  This time, residents expressed concern that the area included a school zone, but LADOT assured them that the zone could and would remain at twenty-five miles per hour and signs would warn drivers as they approached.  How having drivers drop their speed limit fifteen miles per hour in a short period of time is safer than the way the street is now is beyond me, but that has never been taken into account in the state law.  You can read more about this proposal, here.

At least this time nobody can say they were caught off-guard by the increases.  After the strong push back against increases by the Woodland Hills-Warner Center Neighborhood Council last year; this time it appears that LADOT did contact the local neighborhood council’s BEFORE coming to the City Council.  It doesn’t appear to have changed the results, but at least the City didn’t skip a step in its outreach process.  Unlike the Arleta Neighborhood Council, the Sun Valley Neighborhood Council did hear about the increases at a meeting and expressed their concerns.  Whether they’re willing to take the fight all the way to City Hall, as the Woodland Hills-Warner Center Neighborhood Council and others before them have, remains to be seen.

For anyone reading about increases for the first time, the state has a law requiring that local speed limits be set at the eighty-fifth percentile of drivers or the local police cannot enforce speed limit increases.  In other words, the faster drivers go, the higher the limit goes.  Considering that it’s a rule of thumb that most drivers consider five to ten miles per hour over the limit "not speeding" the limits could well go up forever.  Efforts to modify this law were beaten back by traffic engineers, the California Highway Patrol and AAA.  It’s an insidious system, because in addition to encouraging drivers to speed, after all they can always just raise the limit in a couple of years, it also turns local police departments into cheerleaders for increasing speed limits because they don’t want to lose their ability to use radar for traffic enforcement.

LaHood, at left, with the president at right. (Photo: whitehouse via Flickr)

Leaving aside the gaping logical hole in that statement — which Robert Mackey of the New York Times suggests (check out the 12:04 post here)
may have come from Souder’s argument that lower speed limits would save
more lives than "100% safe" cars — there is plenty of research out
there pointing to the beneficial effects of lower speeds on safety.

Traffic author Tom Vanderbilt recently cited
the impact of 20 mile-per-hour urban speed zones on reducing road
injuries in the United Kingdom, and a 2007 study by the AAA Foundation
for Traffic Safety [PDF] outlined the following "general rule of thumb":

When
travel speed increases by 1%, the injury crash rate increases by about
2%, the serious injury crash rate increases by about 3%, and the fatal
crash rate increases by about 4%. The same relation holds in reverse: a
1% decrease in travel speed reduces injury crashes by about 2%, serious
injury crashes by about 3%, and fatal crashes by about 4%.

Could
LaHood be unaware of the relationship between lower speeds and
decreased risk of injury? It’s certainly possible — despite the former
GOP lawmaker’s good record on infrastructure reform and sustainability,
both in concept and in practice, he remains a relative newcomer to the nitty-gritty of transportation, as the Times reminded readers in a highly readable profile last year.

When we last checked in with the City Council Transportation Committee, they decided to table a motion to increase the speed limit on Chandler Boulevard, where the limit would increase from 35 MPH to 45 MPH along the Orange Line, and Riverside Drive which would change the limit from 35 MPH to 40 MPH for its entire length between the Burbank border and Van Nuys Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. The Councilman for the area, Paul Krekorian, wanted a chance for the community to give input on the increases before the proposal went through, and now the increases are back on the agenda for tomorrow's meeting.

So what was the community's feedback? Unsurprisingly, they are concerned that faster speeds for cars will lead to roads that are less safe for pedestrians and cyclists, especially those observing a religious holiday, senior citizens, and school students. Last year, we saw the Woodland Hills-Warner Center Neighborhood Council voice similar concerns but that didn't stop speed limits from being increased near schools, places of worship and shopping malls.

Those fighting the limit increases are in for a long haul. As we've seen before, the scapegoat for speed limit increases used by the LADOT and Council is a state law that mandates that a speed survey be completed every five to seven years and that the new limit be set within five miles per hour of the 85th percentile of drivers. Last year, Assemblyman Paul Krekorian sponsored legislation that would have changed the way limits are calculated across the state; but with Krekorian moving his offices from Sacramento to 200 Spring Street, a new leader on this issue has yet to emerge.

I've been corresponding on this issue with staff from Assembly Transportation Committee Chair Mike Eng, who have been nothing but polite and helpful despite the pounding Eng took on this blog after Krekorian's legislation was bottled in his committee last year. When I asked them if any new legislation had been submitted on this issue, they pointed me to committee staff who basically said, "not that we know of." Last week, over 400 pieces of legislation were filed before a 2/16 deadline, but to the best knowledge of both the Chairman's staff and Committee staff, none of them dealt with reforming the way the state looks at speed limit increases.

One reason that legislators may be hesitant to pick up this fight in Sacramento is because it looks to be a daunting task to get this law changed. First off, there are entrenched interests who will push back both officially, such as AAA, or unofficially, in the form of "expert testimony" given by our friends at the California Highway Patrol. Second, following the Transportation Committee's rejection of Krekorian's legislation last year, Eng and his Senate counterpart Alan Lowenthal held a special "informational" hearing on this issue in October of last year. Attached here, you can find an informational packet that was given to all legislators in attendance, which outlines a major hurdle to reforming the laws requiring speed limit increases.

The process for setting speed limits is guided by federal standards contained in the National MUTCD. Any change to the process in California must be approved by the Federal Highway Administration as being "in substantial compliance" with the National MUTCD. The process for setting speed limits on California streets and highways is contained in the Californiasupplement to the MUTCD, which is known simply as the California MUTCD. Caltrans is responsible for maintaining the guidance and standards in the manual and receives input on changes to the manual from the California Traffic Control Devices Committee (CTCDC), an advisory body convened by Caltrans.

In other words, even if a legislator is successful in guiding reform legislation through the Assembly and Senate. And then is successful in getting our car-loving, jet-setting Governor to sign the legislation; before it can become law it must be approved by the Highway Division of the federal government. In the era of term limits, a legislator could spend his entire time in office focused solely on this issue and not get anywhere.

There are plenty of people who have argued that the problem isn't that the law doesn't provide enough flexibility to keep speed limits low, but that our roads in Southern California are designed to move cars as quickly as possible at the expense of other modes.  Thus, limits are going to keep rising on arterial streets until capacity issues cause them to slow down.  The response from those fighting the increases in Sacramento and locally has been that a legislative victory is a heck of a lot easier than reforming the LADOT.  However, if that's not the case, then the time is ripe for communities to take control of their streets through better design and traffic enforcement rather than focusing on the limits by themselves.

As mentioned in a post yesterday, the Los Angeles City Council Transportation Committee will vote tomorrow at 2:00 P.M. in City Hall on whether or not to raise speed limits on three local streets Chandler Boulevard, Riverside Drive and Beverly Glen Boulevard. In the past day, three outraged pieces have attacked the limit increases and challenged the Council to defy state rules that require the increases for the LAPD to use radar to enforce the law.

There is some debate over whether or not the speed limit changes at Beverly Glenn Boulevard are necessarily a bad thing.  Instead of just raising limits, the proposal seeks to normalize the speed along the road so that the limit is consistent and predictable.  In some areas, the speed limit could actually be decreased.  You'll note as you read some of the coverage of the increases, that some of the articles, notably the one by Stephen Box in City Watch, only refer to two of the changes as "increases" worth fighting.

For anyone that doesn't remember last year's fight over speed limit increases, allow me to summarize what's going on and where we stand.  Last year, a series of increases were proposed by the LADOT throughout the San Fernando Valley.  The shocked reaction of the local neighborhood councils and a coalition of bicycle and pedestrian advocates managed to stall some of the increases, but an arcane state law meant to stop small towns from creating speed traps requires regular engineering surveys that set the speed limit at the upper fifteenth percentile of drivers.  An attempt to change that law by Assemblyman, and now L.A. City Councilman, Paul Krekorian was stopped in committee.

And now here we are a year later, with new speed limit increases moving through the city's Transportation Commission and now City Council Transportation Committee with no fix at the state level in site.

Of more immediate concern, three local streets could become a more dangerous place to walk or ride a bicycle after a vote by the Council tomorrow. At LAist, Zach Behrens, who also served on the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council, explains the individual speed limit raises and some of the issues.

The most drastic proposal is for Chandler Boulevard, where officials want to see a speed limit increase from 35 MPH to 45 MPH along the Orange Line busway and bike lanes (a small section between Vineland and Lankershim would change from 35 mph to 40 mph, too, according to the proposal) . A proposal for Riverside Drive would change the limit from 35 MPH to 40 MPH for its entire length between the Burbank border and Van Nuys Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. And Beverly Glen Boulevard would see some increases and decreases along a short section, between Ventura Boulevard and Mulholland Drive.

LAist, also has a map of the changes and a quote from City Councilman Krekorian, who's new district will see some of the increases.

"I'm very concerned about increasing posted speed limits in my district where people are already driving too fast in the first place," explained Paul Krekorian, the newly elected Councilmember, who as an Assemblyman last year, introduced the Safe Streets Bill--it was later voted down--to give cities more flexibility in changing the limits. "This next round of proposed increases just makes me frustrated that the state legislation that I introduced did not advance because I think it would have given local governments the ability to protect public safety."

Also at issue, the traffic reports weren't up to the Councilman's standards.  The reports barely mention cyclists and pedestrians, even though Chandler Boulevard runs, for a brief time, along the Orange Line busway and bike lanes.

At Westside Bikeside, Alex Thompson posits that this is a major test for the progressive Committee Chair, Bill Rosendahl.  Will he resist the changes and push for a fix to the state law, or will he go with the flow as his predecessor did and let the limit increases go through?

At City Watch, after haranguing all parties involved in the limit increases, Box gets to the heart of the matter.  Because the city designs streets that are meant for cars and not for people, it's natural for drivers to move as quickly as they can.  Instead of just fighting the increases, communities need to fight for better streets.

It's at this point in the repetitious debate over speed limits that I'm challenged to offer other solutions. I typically start by saying "Bulb-outs, speed tables and road diets!" and the resulting confused look on the faces of those I'm talking with tells me that the transportation experts who are in charge of our streets have one tool in the toolbox and it is 50 years old.

Our City is in the middle of a budget crisis. Why don't we put this energy into pursuing funding sources that would allow us to improve the quality of life on our streets, that would allow us to put people to work, that would allow us to work together to make Los Angeles a walkable, rideable, livable city that works for everybody. It's time to put down the old paradigm and to work together to make people a priority.

If you're not planning on making it to City Hall tomorrow, you can either wait and read the results here at Streetsblog, or listen in via Council Phone at 213-621-2489.

Recently, the City of Santa Monica completed a series of speed surveys on it’s streets, as required by state law.  The result might be a surprise to people that have followed the inability of the City of Los Angeles to maintain lower speed limits when these surveys are done.  In Santa Monica, fourteen street locations are seeing their speed limits lowered while speeds will be increased in only two areas: on
Colorado Avenue between Ocean Avenue and Lincoln Boulevard and on
Second Street between Wilshire and Colorado.

So what’s the difference between Santa Monica and the Valley?  The main difference is that the road design is almost completely different.  When I’m traveling down streets such as Ocean or Main, I can’t help but notice that almost every intersection has a marked crosswalk.  Several of the streets that are being slowed down have bike lanes, or at least signage encouraging cyclists to use the road. 

It’s true that some streets are seeing an increase in some areas, but that’s not a bad sign when one looks at the entire picture.  Santa Monica is controlling traffic flow by the way they design their streets.  They slow down traffic in many places and speed it up in a few others which will encourage automobile traffic away from the more pedestrian friendly areas.

That’s a process that will lead to slower traffic speeds and slower speed limits when the time comes to do a state-mandated traffic survey.

In the Valley, we’ve seen almost no efforts to control traffic speeds and then a helpless shrug of the shoulder when the community is outraged that they’re local streets are being made less safe by faster speeding cars.  The community may succeed in stalling the increases, but when the LADOT enlists the aid of the local division of the LAPD, who can’t use radar to enforce limits unless they comply with the survey, eventually the City Council approves the speed limit increases.  Over a dozen Valley Streets have had their limits increased, with more on the way.

While the efforts of Assemblyman Krekorian to change the laws regarding speed limits are laudable, what would be better would be a culture change at LADOT to commit to designing roads that are built for all users.  A road designed for commuters, visitors and the local community will naturally see its speed limits maintained or lowered, even under the state’s somewhat inflexible law that allows speeders to set the speed limit.

As much as we can appreciate what the City of Santa Monica is doing, it’s not exactly a secret how to design safe streets.  Why just earlier today I read an op/ed in the Boston Globe that outlines such designs.  Maybe we should buy LADOT a subscription?