Streetsblog Los Angeles

This Wednesday at 2:00 P.M., the Los Angeles City Council Transportation Committee meets to deal with a backlog of speed limit increases and setting "prima facie" limits on several other streets.

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.

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On March 24, the City Council Transportation Committee, partially at the urging of Councilman Paul Krekorian, tabled three proposals to increase speed limits for three streets in the San Ferndando Valley.  The increases for Arleta Avenue, Sheldon Street and Hollywood Way were previously discussed in this Streetsblog article.  There's nothing new to report on these proposals, they're the same as they were three months ago, another limit proposal has found its way onto the Council agenda for this Wednesday's meeting.  This proposal would set the speed limit for Hatteras Street., between Hazeltine and Sepulveda, at thirty miles per hour.

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.

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The 1-10 and I-15 Interchanges in San Bernadino County. Photo: Cocoi_m/Flickr

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?

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Overhead shot of the calmed streets in Pacific Palisades.  No, those aren't apartment buildings.

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.

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Photo: -db-/Flickr

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.

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Megan McArdle at the Atlantic, writing on
today’s Toyota hearing in the House oversight committee, hears
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood claim that "lowering the speed
limit to 30 mph would not save any lives, which is why we have minimum
speeds on highways."

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.

Photo: Magic Man/Flickr

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.

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Photo: Magic Man/Flickr

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.

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Photo of Olympic Blvd. in Santa Monica via Friends 4 Expo

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.

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