Councilman Tom LaBonge directs traffic at the 2008 Tour LaBonge "Positively 4th Street" Ride. Photo:Ingrid Peterson/Flickr

(The LACBC’s 4th Street Campaign has an open meeting tonight at the Halal Indian restaurant at 4th and Highland at 7:00 P.M. Just got word that the location has moved to Larchmont Bungalow, 107 Larchmont Blvd. Sorry for the last minute change.)

As a city that has for so long embraced car culture in its personality and planning, a change to pushing for bicycle and pedestrian projects is bound to create confusion and anger in some quarters and provoke a backlash from communities. After the battle on Wilbur Avenue in the Valley, where angry car drivers lobbied their City Councilman to remove a chunk of a road diet that proved popular with cyclists and the residents who lived on Wilbur itself.

LADOT expected to be on friendlier ground when pushing its concept for a Bicycle Friendly Street on 4th Street. Not only has the concept of a 4th Street Bike Boulevard has been a sort of holy grail for many cyclists, there are many more bike commuters on and near 4th Street than there are on or near Wilbur Avenue. The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition has a campaign centered around making 4th Street safe haven for cyclists and Neighborhood Councils along the route have backed the concept of a bike friendly 4th Street.

A safe and attractive route off major streets connecting Downtown to the Park La Brea development in Fairfax would be a game changer for thousands of cyclists who would use part of the route or would use it to connect to other locales north or south of the route.  4th Street has even been home to one of Councilman Tom LaBonge’s annual summer rides named “Positively 4th Street.”

But the movement to create a Bike Boulevard on 4th Street, or Bicycle Friendly Street as LADOT prefers to call them, hit a major snag last month. An organized homeowner’s group in well-to-do Hancock Park put together a survey with some pretty slanted misinformation and followed up with a petition that attracted over 200 signatures in an effort to beat off bicycle and pedestrian signal lights at two dangerous intersections, 4th and Highland and 4th and Rossmore. Their combined effort spooked Councilman LaBonge’s office who pulled their support for the proposed signal changes and LADOT has dropped the proposal.

The difficulty in explaining new infrastructure is perhaps best exemplified by an article on the controversy between LADOT and the homeowners in the Larchmont Chronicle.  Everything from the title to the text creates more confusion about what LADOT is proposing.  Crossing signals for bicyclists and pedestrians are not traffic lights and they’re certainly not stop signs.

Some proponents of the concept of a completed Bicycle Friendly Street claim the Hancock Park Homeowner’s Association is against the project because of some sort of Not-In-My-Back-Yard syndrome. Others have speculated that the group was spooked that LADOT had only one plan, instead of a variety of options, for the signals and that the residents were reacting to a “design and defend” approach to transportation planning. The Homeowners Association didn’t respond to requests to comment for this story so all we have is speculation.

But the real question is where does the campaign for a safe 4th Street go from here? Some are trying to revive the campaign for the signals at Rossmore and Highland, but the LACBC is hoping to move the campaign farther east to support the LADOT’s proposal for traffic circles in other parts of 4th Street before coming back west to complete the Boulevard on Hancock Park.

The LADOT is licking its wounds but promises to press forward in other areas of 4th Street and other projects. Traffic circles remain on the to-do list as does placing way finding signage along the route.

The Homeowner’s Association remains riled up. A contingent of Hancock Park home owners appeared at last night’s meeting of the city’s Bicycle Advisory Committee angered that an LADOT road crew installed Sharrows on Arden Boulevard in Hancock Park.

At the same meeting of the Mid-Wilshire Neighborhood Council where LaBonge revoked his support for the two traffic signales, he aproposed a road diet on 6th Street to the confusion of many as 6th Street and 4th Street are very different streets. Advocates have speculated that LaBonge is referring to a proposal to put 6th Street on a road diet and add bike lanes that was proposed by planner Ryan Snyder that would travel west from the end of the 4th Street Bike Friendly Street to Fairfax Boulevard. The Councilman’s Office declined to comment or clarify for this story.

But is there a larger lesson here? The lesson from Wilbur Avenue seemed to be that LADOT shouldn’t implement bike projects without informing the community. In this case, LADOT and its allies did go to the local Neighborhood Councils, but word didn’t filter down to the Homeowner’s Association until the project was farther along.  In areas where LADOT is proposing ideas that are new for Los Angeles, greater outreach is probably necessary than the LADOT Bike Blog and a handful of community meetings.

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For a larger image of the Greenway, and more information about the project, click here.

As part of every Policies for Livable Active Communities and the Environment (PLACE) Grants awarded by L.A. County Department of Public Health in 2008, each community had to complete a sample project that demonstrated the types of street improvements that could spread throughout their city as a result of improved planning.  The City of Culver City completed the Downtown Connector project that provides a Sharrowed street connection between the Downtown and the future Expo Station while linking residents to local schools.  Long Beach spent their money on the Green Sharrowed Lane in Belmont Shore.

Glendale’s project is completed yet, the contractor just got approval to begin construction, but it is similar to the other two projects we’ve reviewed.  The Riverdale-Maple Greenway will connect three parks in Glendale: Pacific Park and School, Maple Park and Community Center and Carr Park.  When completed the Greenway will have 124 new trees along the corridor, repaired and widened sidewalks, wayfinding and promotional signage and bike lanes on Riverdale (the western portion of the Greenway) and Sharrows along the rest of the route on Maple Street, Rock Glen Avenue and Lincoln Avenue.

PLACE Coordinator Colin Bogart explains the thinking behind the project.  ”By making it easier to access the park and the areas around the park, you’re going to get more people in the park and more people walking and biking in the neighborhoods.”

While none of the treatments considered for the Greenway are new to Glendale, this is the first time the city is coordinating a group of different designs and additions to create a special corridor friendly to all road users.  “The idea of consolidating it in one place, and to use all these funding sources to create a corridor, that was the leap,” explains Marc Stirdivant with the city’s Parks Department and one of the authors of the PLACE Grant.

Many of the new trees are already in, and what a difference they make for pedestrians. Image via the Los Angeles County Bike Coalition's special webpage for this project.

From a public health standpoint, PLACE is a public health grant after all, it’s a great low-cost investment to provide bicycle and pedestrian access to parks.  Not only does the project, spanning almost the entire east-west portion of the city, connect neighborhoods but it makes it easier for people to get to their local park without having to get into a car.  This will actually increase the physical activity of adults more than kids, as personal experience has taught me that kids have no trouble exercising at parks, and parents can get into the action mostly by exercising on the way to and from the park.

The project is a strong example of the city’s commitment to creating a walkable and bikable transportation grid.  Only $20,000 of the $320,000 from the PLACE Grant is going to cover the physical projects.  The total cost of the Greenway is roughly $500,000.  Also, the original proposal didn’t include the last two segments of the Greenway that connect to Carr Park in the Northeast corner of the map on Rock Glen and Lincoln.  After Alta Planning and Design reviewed the city’s initial plan, they urged Glendale to consider adding the spur to include the third park, and the city embraced the additional project.

At first, it seemed the main barrier to completing the project would be the intersection of Central and Maple.  The intersection was one of the most dangerous crossings, especially for pedestrians, and required Greenway users (riders and walkers) to make a pair of turns to stay on the Greenway.

“If you were a pedestrian and you wanted to cross here, you were essentially out of luck,” Bogart remarked of the road configuration.

Fixing the intersection was going to be a daunting and expensive task, until city staff noted that there was an improvement project already on the books.  Using federal stimulus funds, the city not only added new crossings to the street, but also a series of bump outs to both slow traffic and decrease the length of the crossing for pedestrians.  In addition, the city put in bike detectors connected to the traffic signal and marked their location on the street to make bike crossings easier.

Gunpowder and I rest at the intersection of Riverdale and Central and admire the new bump out.

Glendale was actually a somewhat controversial selection when the PLACE grants were first announced.  According to the census, the city is white (over 71%), middle class (median household income approaches $70,000) and suburban.  Yet, the Greenway demonstrates not just a commitment to creating livable streets where people can walk and bike where they’re going or just be outside without being harassed by traffic, but also a commitment to equity.

View map on GeoCommons

The above map shows that the corridor skirts along the densest, most diverse part of the city.  The blue line represents the corridor, the darker the red the more dense the area’s housing, and the darker the circle the higher the percentage of residents are minorities.  Whatever one’s views of Glendale, the Greenway serves the most urban part of the city.  South of the Greenway, is the civic center and jobs clusters so the residential portion isn’t as dense as north of the Greenway, but connections to jobs is an important part of a working network.

The Greenway also connects to existing infrastructure.  The map at the top of this article shows existing and planned bike routes that connect to the Greenway and one intersection on Riverdale already has a traffic circle.  Riverdale itself already has bike lanes, but they’re incomplete as they don’t have an “inside stripe.”  Once Riverdale is repaved the lanes will be repainted and completed.

As we noted above, the project isn’t completed yet. We’ll go back to Glendale to ride the Greenway and write a full review when it’s completed.

Damien Newton wrote this story while participating in The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, a program of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

Honestly, how the heck does anyone get a ticket when there's signs such as these up? Photo: Zach Behrens/LAist

On Monday, the Los Angeles Times printed an eye-rolling article about the use of stop sign cameras to enforce safe street laws in the state parks surrounding the Santa Monica Mountains.  In response, the Mountains Recreation & Conservation Authority’s executive director, Joseph T. Edmiston wrote the following letter to the staff and board of the Authority.  It’s an instructive read, especially if the traffic scofflaw community decides this is their next battleground.

One of Edmiston’s main points is most interesting.  The cameras are set to only record people blowing through the signs, someone making a “rolling stop” wouldn’t be ticketed based on the cameras settings.

So the people complaining in the Times article are really complaining that they’re really bad drivers. – DN

Dear all,

Two things to report:

1. On the good news side, Friday we got notice that the Appellate Division certified for publication the decision in MRCA vs. Kaufman. That means this decision UPHOLDING ALL ASPECTS OF THE PROGRAM is binding precedent for the Los Angeles County Superior Court. Attached is a copy of the opinion. (We got a copy of the decision and posted it here. – DN)

2. On the other hand, the Los Angeles Times this morning had this really one-sided story. What the Times felt was newsworthy was violators getting angry when they are videoed blowing through stop signs (and who isn’t miffed at getting caught).

My favorite quote in this story is the guy who takes umbrage at getting 8 violations before he noticed the program. How about noticing the stop sign buddy?

This is a good opportunity to recap the program and the rationale for it.

First of all, for those who think the California rolling-stop is a basic civil right, we aren’t impinging thereon. The cameras are set so they don’t record anything under a certain speed. (For obvious reasons I can’t reveal that speed outside of closed session, but it is well below what most people would consider a good faith effort to “stop.”) Issuing a citation isn’t automatic. The citation is issued on an individual basis by a specially trained park ranger who is also a California peace officer. The standard is: If it were your eyes instead of the camera, would you have issued the citation? Ambiguities are resolved in favor of the driver. Moreover, there are no improper incentives. The camera company gets a fixed monthly fee, irrespective of the number of violations, and the park rangers are paid from an entirely separate fund.

It is worth remembering why the program was started in the first place. Neither of the two major areas with video enforcement was ever intended to be a public park. Temescal was a private church camp and Franklin was an L.A. Water and Power reservoir with public access prohibited. If these parks were to be constructed from scratch the layout would be much different—wider roads, better circulation pattern, separation of pedestrians from cars, etc. But that’s not an option now. The environmental damage of such an infrastructure retrofit would be too great, say nothing of public objection to “urbanizing” these rural retreats.

Temescal is a good example: In the mid-1980’s when the plan for Temescal Gateway Park was being considered one of the options called for realigning the road system and bringing it up to design standard for the volume of expected park visitation. There was unanimity within the Pacific Palisades community that a modern road system would destroy the very values for which the land was purchased. Some years later when the city realigned and improved the Sunset Blvd/Temescal Canyon Rd intersection, the local input committee that the Conservancy established, known as the Temescal Working Group, insisted that we promise not to use the city’s improvements as an “excuse” to widen the road! The two stop signs are only placed at intersections where there is cross traffic, hikers vs. cars. Each stop sign location has been validated by a professional traffic engineer.

Franklin Canyon is even worse of a problem. Up until the city of Los Angeles closed it to through traffic, Franklin Canyon Drive was one of the familiar cross mountain roads, a well known cut-off when Coldwater Canyon was jammed. However, the city’s closure didn’t stop the traffic, now the commuters just use the old private reservoir maintenance road which also serves as the internal park access way. Most all of you have been to Franklin Canyon, you know the physical impossibility of widening Lake Drive around the upper reservoir, you also know the practical impossibility of segregating cars belonging to park visitors from commuters, so we are forced to tolerate non-park traffic. Just like at Temescal, the photo enforced stop signs are placed only at points of significant cross traffic and each have been validated by the traffic engineer.

Video enforcement is working. Violations are down over 50% from pre-video levels. (We know this because the cameras ran for a baseline period before enforcement was initiated.) Given that we can’t have a park ranger assigned to each stop sign—there aren’t enough of them and they have other important duties—the video enforcement program is the next best thing for reducing agency liability and ensuring public safety.

To those scofflaw defenders who say we are “over-enforcing” because we haven’t had a traffic fatality, my only reply is “exactly.”

While the Los Angeles City Council didn’t formally vote to end the city’s red-light camera program, the writing is clearly on the wall.  Of the twelve members present, seven voted to end the program, and of the three absent at least Greig Smith has voiced opposition to the program.  To raise the bar even higher, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is backing the Police Commission’s unanimous vote to end the program.

Richard Alarcon and Telfair Elementary School children try out the new Smart Crosswalk in 2007. With the city ending its red light camera program, some of the

While we thank Council Members Richard Alarcon, Tony Cardenas, Tom LaBonge, Bernard Parks and Jan Perry for their leadership, it’s time to turn the page and ask the City Council how they plan to make streets safer for all users if cameras aren’t the answer.  In opposing the motion to continue the program, Councilman Bill Rosendahl claimed the program cost the city $2.6 million a year and Councilman Paul Krekorian argued that “Every cent we spend on this is a cent we’re not spending on something else.”

This implies that the City Council is planning on spending the $2.6 million on something else, and not just using it to fix a small part of the City’s budget deficit.  The question should now be, how can the city most effectively spend those funds.

Obviously, none of the Council stated opposition to safe traffic crossings, although Councilman Dennis Zine is urging motorists not to pay traffic camera tickets after they break the law, and thus the Council ordered a study of whether or not extended yellow lights or short “all red” times in cycles can reduce crashes.  A study is a good first step, but as the city moves farther from the recent debate over cameras, the urgency to fund innovative projects is diminished.

So what can be done?

While the City Council passed millions of dollars from Measure R funds for a Safe Routes to School study that would finally allow the city to take a city-wide look at schools most in need of help instead of the political process it has now.  However, they failed to fund a position to oversee the study or manage the city’s myriad pedestrian safety programs.  This unallocated pot of funds could fund dozens of pedestrian coordinators, but the city only needs one.

The group Safer Streets L.A., in their effort to discredit the red light cameras, published a report back in January listing many of the improvements that they felt would provide greater safety benefits than red light cameras.  Now that the cameras are all but gone, it will be interesting to see if Safer Streets will live up to their name or whether it was all a ruse to get the cameras removed.

In their report, they note that LADOT has a history of removing marked, but unsignalized, crosswalks because it creates a “false sense of safety” for the pedestrian.  Safer Streets, in a laundry list of recommendations, urges LADOT to end this strategy and instead focus on improving these crossings.  While a signal is an expensive way to make the crossing safer, there are many less expensive ways, such as:

1) a two-beacon yielding system, pictured at the right, has been shown to increase traffic yielding to pedestrians by over 75%.  A four beacon system increases the effectiveness up another 11%.

2) pedestrian safety cones inside of crosswalks yielded a 12% increase in drivers yielding to pedestrians in New York City

3) overhead signs are showing less effectiveness than the less expensive alternative traffic cones, but still show nearly 7% improvements in yielding.

4) The most effective signage solution is the overhead “hawk” signal where a special red-light system is put in for pedestrians.  I’ve seen these crossings used in the Fairfax District of the city to great effect.

While these, and other, signage treatments may make things safer throughout the city, the Council now owes the communities surrounding the 32 intersections they chose to make more dangerous with yesterday’s inaction.  Councilman Cardenas, and the LAPD’s Sargent McWilliams both testified that red light running causes more crashes in L.A. than anything else, yet the Council voted to remove a safety measure.

At a minimum these intersections should see regular LAPD stings to nab red-light runners and those who fail to come to a complete stop before making a right hand turn on red.  If the Council believes they can achieve the same 62% reduction in crashes at the intersections that now have cameras just by changing the signal timing, then they should move quickly to implement this signal timing feature across the city.

People are dieing in our streets, and a Council that doesn’t act is becoming increasingly culpable in that carnage.  There’s plenty of treatments that can be applied to roads and signals in addition to more funding being thrown at LAPD Traffic Division.  Do you have a favorite plan or idea?  Leave it in the comments section.

Last week the Los Angeles Police Commission, the citizen panel that oversees the LAPD, unanimously voted to reject the LAPD’s recommendation to extend the city’s contract with an Arizona based group that provides, maintains, and utilizes “red light cameras” at 32 Los Angeles intersections.  The move came as a shock to the LAPD, but has been widely praised, including two editorials in the city’s two largest newspapers.

The City Council can override the Police Commission with a two-thirds vote.  And while it is unlikely they will do so, it’s too bad that the program is going down without a whimper.

Red light cameras have always been a political hot potato.  Privacy advocates have long argued against the government’s right to place cameras at intersections.  Others have argued that those ticketed by the cameras don’t have the right to face their accuser as guaranteed by the Constitution.  But most people just don’t like getting ticketed when they break the law and are caught doing it.  There’s even an Orwellianly named group of “local activists” called “Safer Streets L.A.” that lobbied against the cameras by arguing that cars making right turns on red lights without stopping isn’t really that big of a deal.  Nearly two-thirds of tickets given by red light cameras are for cars making illegal right hand turns.

As we n0ted three years ago, cars making right hand turns without yielding is a major traffic safety concern.

When the Federal Highway Administration discusses the conflict between pedestrians and automobiles it ranks “right on red” as the top concern.  A look at crash fatality statistics nationwide shows that in Los Angeles, almost one quarter of all crash fatalities are pedestrians.

And as the L.A. Times noted in their editorial burying the camera program, the red light cameras are working.

The LAPD cites a 62% drop in red-light-related collisions at the intersections with cameras, compared with a 22% drop citywide during the same period. Yet local activists have questioned whether the improvements are due to the cameras; at the same time the devices were installed, engineers added “all-red” intervals, during which the lights in all directions are red.

While the “all-red” intervals doubtless help the situation, some of those “all-red” times are a total of .1 seconds.  A 62% drop in collisions (not “accidents,” good job Times!) is an amazing statistic and if the cameras and intervals are working that magic together with the all-red signals; I would want to see more cameras, not less.

The Daily News didn’t even bother to mention the number of crashes that have been reduced, hiding behind the dishonest claim that, “Of course, safety is the No. 1 concern. But while the LAPD and the camera’s peddlers quote data showing the cameras help, opponents cite less conclusive evidence. And many skeptics believe the cameras even cause rear-end collisions by prompting drivers to stop abruptly.”  It’s a neat trick to equate statistics with criticism that people make up without doing research, but it tells you more about the Daily News Editorial Board than it does red-light cameras.

However, joining the anti-traffic enforcement organization in opposing the cameras is Councilman Dennis Zine who referred to the program in the Times as “dishonest” and “really mocks the public.”  I wonder if the Councilman would feel the same about a program that caught gang members that saw a 62% reduction in gang related crime.

Another common argument against red-light cameras is that they are a scam to impoverish people by ticketing them hundreds of dollars for minor infractions.  Locally, the red light camera program actually loses money, the program spends somewhere between a half million and 1.5 million a year to reduce traffic crashes by nearly one-quarter at intersections around the city.

A third argument is that red-light cameras ticket scofflaws instead of people that are truly dangerous.  This argument ignores basic criminology that posits that those who commit small crimes are most likely to be the ones to commit car crimes.  When it comes to scofflaw drivers, the argument is that those same drivers are most likely to commit major crimes.  In other words, if you are willing to take a right on red without stopping, you’re probably also likely to drive at unsafe speeds or ignore a bike lane.

There’s clearly some problems with the city’s red light program.  Some intersections were chosen for political purposes, i.e. every Council District gets at least one, and the collection program is in desperate need of repairs.  But the fury aimed at the program has more to do with drivers not liking to get tickets than it does complaints with the particulars of L.A.’s program.

For more images of the Sylmar Vista Project, click here.

Last week, the BID, Councilman Richard Alarcón and the Community Redevelopment Association celebrated the groundbreaking for an interesting and colorful project that will replace concrete medians with plants, flowers, trees, benches and waste stations.  The stated goal of the project is  to beautify an ugly piece of road and create an attractive place for people to walk and bike between Hubbard Street and Polk Street, the entire jurisdiction of the BID.

The commercial property owners within this district pay a self-imposed annual assessment to improve the economic vitality.  In this case, businesses aren’t just committing to maintain the investment in a beautified Sylmar, they’re also putting their own skin in the game by paying for part of the construction.  The CRA has granted another $350,000 towards improving the roadway making the project a true public/private partnership.  The BID already paid for the planting of 36 trees and an entryway to the area announcing “The Vista at Sylmar” and will add the benches and other street decorations.

A typical street section of the improved San Fernando Road includes, from left to right, a sidewalk, car parking, a tree-lined separater, two car travel lanes, a tree-lined medians, two car travel lanes, a planted median, the San Fernando Valley Road Bike Path, and Metrolink tracks.

While the street scaping is designed to make the business area more attractive to cyclists and pedestrians to visit the shops, there are many other benefits to the project.  The trees on the far left will create a buffer between the “car area” of the street and the pedestrian area.  All of those plantings will also act as traffic calming, slowing down traffic and making the street safer.  While the bike area is clearly designated a path because cyclists will only be able to access the shops on the south side of the road at certain intersections; visually it looks awfully similar to a separated bike lane.

The South Figueroa Corridor Plan proposes changes for more than just Figueroa Street.

A standing room only audience descended on the Fashion Institute of Design on South Grand Street to listen to a presentation from the embattled Community Redevelopment Agency for a ground breaking and popular proposal to transform the South Figueroa Corridor.  When people discuss Los Angeles’ streets, they usually use terms such as “car-oriented” or “ugly.”  The new South Figueroa, aka My Figueroa, would be a truly beautiful street designed for people to walk, bike wait for transit or just enjoy life outside as well as a way to shuffle cars from one area to another.

The South Figueroa Corridor Project covers three miles of South Figueroa from 41st Street to Seventh Street as well as a half mile of 11st Street between Figueroa and Broadway, a half mile of Martin Luther King (MLK) Boulevard just south of Exposition Park, and a half mile of Bill Robertson Boulevard from into Exposition Park starting at MLK Boulevard.  While there are different proposals being studied for each part of the corridor, Oliver Schultze, from the world-renowned Gehl Architects in Copenhagen, promised that every part of the corridor would see some sort of improvement.

Good.

The project team offered three proposals for different sections of Figueroa, a “good,” “better,” and “best” options.  Whether a segment qualifies for good, better, or best depends on the amount of funding available and the current level of street life in the segment.  The good option consisted of an eight foot separated bike lane traveling the length of the corridor in each direction, an eighteen inch separator, car parking and bus bump outs, and a transit only lane for buses and streetcars.  In addition to creating a safe place for cyclists, removing them from car traffic and the sidewalk, it also created a 22 foot buffer between the sidewalk and the first regular vehicle travel lane.

As Joe Linton noted from the audience, “I love that protected bike lanes are the base proposal.”  Figueroa street would be the first street in Los Angeles to feature protected bike lanes.  In fact, no city in Los Angeles County has these special bike lanes, although Long Beach is adding some as we speak.

Better

While the base design is pretty amazing “for Los Angeles,” once we get into the “better” and “best” designs one starts to see some ideas that would turn Figueroa into a world class street.  The “better” segment begins to actively re-purpose space reserved for the private automobile and give it back to humans, or as Schultz put it moves “progressively into the carriage way.”  Instead of a separated bike path, there’s a much wider  “flex lane” which serves as a continuation of bike path,  pedestrian walkway and a very limited space for car traffic (deliveries, etc.).  The transit only lane for streetcars and buses remains in the proposal, after a wide divider for bike parking, street trees and other street beautification projects.

Best.

By the time we begin discussing the “best” segments, you might start thinking we actually live in Copenhagen.  Figueroa is shrunk to two traffic lanes, a transit lane and a large pedestrian plaza. The sidewalk is large enough for restaurant or coffee shop seating before we even get to the flex lane.  Then, there’s another space reserved for pedestrians or just sitting outside on a bench.  Schultze noted that in some segments of Figueroa, there will be 5,000 people walking through in just an hour and pedestrians make up the majority of street users.

From parking lot to public space.

For 11th street, Schultze proposes closing the segment to all traffic besides local traffic and deliveries by creating a “Paseo” as seen above.  Bill Robertson Boulevard would undergo a similar treatment, with the north end being closed completely and the south area turning into an adjacent “Olympic Park.”  As for MLK Boulevard, the team determined that the amount of car traffic would make reducing the travel lanes a more difficult proposal, but that other treatments could still transform the area.  In the above image, the project team unveils a linear park proposal that manages to keep most of the parking and still creates a different, more public, feeling for the space.

Jay Varata, the CRA director for the area, summed up the entire proposal by noting that this plan is “…a chance to do something very unique in Los Angeles.  A chance to look at pedestrian space in a new way.”

But the plan isn’t near the final design phase yet.  Currently the team is soliciting feedback from the first designs, getting cost estimates to complete their plans and will hold another series of hearings in April before selecting a “Locally Preferred Alternative.”  From there, the proposal will undergo final design before going through the hearing process for a final project.  Staff didn’t rule out the possibility that the project would be segmented or go through pilot stages in advance of a corridor long project.  However, Melanie Smith, one of the project consultants did note that, “This all needs to happen very fast.”

Friendly comments from the audience asked the speakers to put in more information about the safety benefits of the project to head off political opposition, work with the Downtown Streetcar team to make certain the pictured trolley line makes it from the poster board to the street, and work with planning to make certain the project doesn’t become an engine for gentrification.  The project team noted that the state grant they received to create this project was only possible because of the large amount of affordable housing present and planned for the corridor and that local agencies, including LADOT, are enthusiastic about the project.

Deborah Murphy, the lead consultant for the grant and a member of the L.A. Streetsblog Board of Directors, noted that the connectivity to transit, not just the streetcar, was a key part of the proposal.  “If we were having this meeting six months from now, everyone would be asking how this connected to the Expo Line.”

More concerned comments pressed the team about what would happen to displaced cars and what accommodations were being made for street parking for automobiles.  With the traffic plan not completed, the staff could only hazard a guess on the first question.  The second one was kind of a hilarious statement on the defensiveness of car culture warriors.  There are over 545 acres of car parking garages within a quarter mile of the project.  However, the questioner complained that these spaces were the “most expensive in the city.”  So why was the question so odd?  Because even a cursory look at the plan above reveals that the proposal would actually increase on street parking.

I questioned Schultze about that before the presentation.  After all, it was Gehl Architects who created the graphic illustrating all the car parking along the corridor that we featured last week.  He explained that creating short-term parking that it increases the customer base for business.  With 60% of Figueroa’s facades facing away from the street, creating foot, bike and car customers is a key part of transforming the street into a true public space.

Another question asked whether this was a contained project, or if we could expect more projects such as this in all parts of the city.  Earlier in the evening I joked with Schultze and Murphy that it was nice to discuss a project where Streetsbloggers were asking, “Why not us?” instead of “why us?” when discussing changes.  The team noted that the scope of this project is the Corridor, but they have received feedback from City Departments that this is the test case for a broader remaking of the city.

Murphy summed up the purpose of the program, and the city’s need to embrace this kind of change by noting that the city has invested in infrastructure for cars over all other modes for too long and that, “Everyone deserves a great place to walk, ride their bike, wait for transit or whatever.  We have a lot of making up to do.”

Let the backlash against sustainable transportation practices begin!

Throughout the summer Streetsblog has reported on the Road Diet the LADOT has placed on Wilbur Avenue in the Valley community of Northridge and the backlash the Diet has caused.  City Councilman Greig Smith was so incensed that the Diet was placed without community input that he’s proposing legislation that would require local Neighborhood Council approval before any transportation project moves forward.  Recently, the project has attracted more high-profile coverage in the Los Angeles Times, on KNBC (above) and in City Watch.

Throughout 2009, one of the hottest topics amongst transportation reformers and neighborhood groups was the disturbing trend of speed limits being increased on local and arterial streets throughout the Valley.  Then Assemblyman Paul Krekorian tried to change the state law which was causing the speed limits to increase, but many reformers argued that a better remedy would be to change the design and striping of streets to encourage slower, safer driving.

Of course, now that the LADOT is actually redesigning and striping streets to encourage safer driving, the backlash has begun.

Unfortunately, the debate is being presented in the media as a “car v bicyclist” debate as Wilbur Avenue received two bike lanes after the street was narrowed from four lanes of car traffic to two lanes with a turn lane.  However, there’s a lot of other, more accurate ways, to view the conflict caused by the Diet.  After the jump, we’ll take a look at the framing of the debate, and how it will effect the way people will react to the debate.

Photo by Joe Linton

Bike v Cars

This has become the frame through which the Wilbur debate is most often framed, but its also the one that is least representative of what actually happened and is happening.

This is the easiest way for advocates of speeding traffic, such as Times columnist Sandy Banks and Councilman Smith, to frame the debate to encourage people to view their argument sympathetically.  While CicLAvia should end the false assumption that nobody bikes in L.A., there are still a lot of people that don’t get it, and a lot of those people live in the Valley.

Thus, the debate over the Wilbur Road Diet becomes one about taking something away from the majority, “car drivers” and giving it to a special group of people.  Not only does it mis-represent the point of the Diet by focusing on a side-effect of reducing car travel lanes than the actual purpose, which was to slow down traffic on a residential street that has a middle school.

So cyclists may not be flocking to Wilbur Avenue, at least they aren’t yet.  But making Wilbur a bike street was a secondary reason for making some changes.

Speeding Traffic v Community Needs

The real purpose of the Wilbur Avenue road diet was to slow traffic on a residential street.  In an act of unintentional self-parody, the Times’ Banks made the case that Wilbur Avenue really needed a Diet:

For years, Wilbur Avenue had been a free-flowing community secret, a commuter street that bypassed the congestion of Northridge’s main routes. Then a “street improvement” project last month turned our speedway into a parking lot…

…I don’t mind sharing my local roads with cyclists. But why inconvenience people rushing kids to school, running errands or wrapping up a long evening commute for the sake of prospective bike riders who may never appear?

While Banks embraces the “Bikes v Cars” debate, its the one that requires the least reflection on her desire to speed through a neighborhood street, she makes the case that the people living along Wilbur Avenue are benefiting from the changes.  Wilbur Avenue is not a commuter street, but a local street.  It certainly wasn’t a “speedway”…at least it was never intended to be one.

As for the community itself, thanks to the advocacy of Don Ward, Ayla Stern and other volunteers at the Bikery, we know residents along Wilbur appreciate the diet and the bike lanes because it returns a feeling that the street and sidewalks are safe places for adults and children alike.  Ward and Stern led a door-to-door effort that resulted in “nearly every house” signing a petition to keep the street as it is.

LADOT Public Outreach v Everyone

If Smith’s office is to be believed, one of the main reasons he and his constituents are so upset about how Wilbur was changed from “our speedway” to a street safe for the community to use for multiple uses was the non-existent outreach done for the project before the new striping was painted on the street.

As Streetsblog has reported before, LADOT’s public outreach is so terrible that it has caused major issues on projects in the past.  Westsiders can vividly remember the Pico/Olympic plan that would have increased capacity and speed was presented as a fait accompli in the press before a public meeting was even scheduled.  In City Watch, longtime LADOT critic and City Council Candidate Stephen Box makes the case that their outreach on this project was so bad that the most likely reason was that the agency was trying to mess it up:

All this took place quietly. No outreach, no coordination between the LADOT and the neighborhood councils or the CD12 council office or the cycling community or the local PTA or the local NASCAR chapter. No coordination took place between the LADOT’s Operations, Geometrics, and Bikeways divisions. Nobody notified the City of LA’s Bicycle Advisory Committee. Nada!…

…Conspiracy theorists tend look at situations such as this and wonder if the LADOT simply dropped bike lanes onto Wilbur as part of an engineered conflict strategy, killing any hope of a bikeway network, resulting in an “I told you they don’t fit!” declaration and allowing a return to “business as usual.”

That’s a chilling thought, that somehow LADOT is responding to directives to embrace sustainable transportation options by completing projects that are designed to inflame the community.  Worse yet, that the outreach for the plans is designed to increase the conflict created, not reduce it.

LADOT staff refused to comment on the story, even on background; but did agree that their outreach plans could use improvement.

However, their public statements continue to show a defiance to the criticism that they’re lack of public outreach was a problem.  From Box’s piece in City Watch:

The LADOT argues that they simply took advantage of an opportunity to engage in a “road diet” and to add bike lanes and that they should be congratulated, not criticized. “After all,” says LADOT’s Assistant GM John Fisher, “the 1996 Bike Plan calls for bike lanes on Wilbur Avenue and we had a very small amount of time to design and implement a new striping plan. We had no time for outreach.”

And there is the root of the issue.  “Public Outreach” isn’t looked upon as a part of the plan when planning a project.  It wasn’t on the Westside two years ago, it wasn’t on Wilbur, it wasn’t on the James Wood Road Diet earlier this year…the list of projects that “just happened” is long.

If the goal really was to rally the community against Livable Streets, the kerfuffle on Wilbur may have accomplished its goal.  LADOT is working to “alter” the Wilbur plan to respond to community concerns.

Yesterday, Judge Robert O'Brien of the Los Angeles Superior Court issued a tentative ruling that traffic calming measures in the Holmby-Westood community that were removed by the LADOT and City Council in the summer of 2009 be returned.  The traffic calming was first put in as part of a Neighborhood Protection Plan (NPP) when the Palazzo development was constructed on the west side of the community.  The measures were "only temporary" pending a vote of the neighborhood six months after installation.  However, when LADOT surveyed the community, they surveyed a different and larger area than the one agreed to in the plan.  The vote to keep the traffic calming was approved by "only" 60% of residents who responded to the survey, which was short of the two-thirds needed to keep the calming in place.

O'Brien was as confused by the city's rationale for changing the survey area as project supporters and chided the LADOT and the City for utterly failing to live up to the Neighborhood Protection Plan. Because the agreement between community, developers and city was a condition for the construction of Palazzo, the NPP has the force of law.  By distributing a ballot to areas that were not deemed "effected areas" in the NPP, the City broke the law:

The result?  The city has to put the traffic calming back, and put it in permanently.  No lobbying by the City Council office, or maneuvering by the LADOT can change that simple fact.

Last year when the removal was being debated in City Hall, it amazed me that these measures were so controversial, yet it was an issue that divided the community.  At the two City Council Transportation Committee hearings on the issue there was shouting, accusations of lying, and even charges of rigging the LADOT's survey.  Tough times.  And what were the measures that were so controversial?  I described them last year:

As part of the deal, the city installed traffic calming throughout the community including a restriction prohibiting eastbound and westbound straight through traffic on Le Conte Avenue across Hilgard Avenue, a restriction prohibiting eastbound and westbound straight through traffic on Weyburn Avenue across Hilgard Avenue a restriction prohibiting southbound to eastbound left-turns from Hilgard Avenue to Lindbrook Drive and a median island and a sidewalk bump-out on Lindbrook Drive at Hilgard Avenue.

The judge's decision leaves plenty of people with egg on their faces.  Poor Councilman Jack Weiss, who already lost his election for City Attorney, was the City Council Champion for the residents who lived east of the effected area that wanted the calming removed.  His cohorts on the Transportation Committee, many of whom still sit on the committee, voted unanimously to remove the traffic calming.  Worst of all, LADOT and City Planning both went to the mat to defend the idea that the Neighborhood Protection Plan was not a contract between their departments and residents.  Now there's judicial precedence that these plans aren't just "contracts" but that they actually carry the weight of law.

But the biggest losers are the people of Holmby-Westwood who live east of the effected areas.  LADOT traffic counts showed increased traffic on these streets when the measures were in place.  Doubtless that traffic will return.  Instead of spending the last two years fighting for similar protective measures for their streets that their neighbors will now enjoy; they've spent that time more concerned about speeding up traffic on those streets to their west so the whole neighborhood.

I honestly feel bad for these folks, who seem to genuinely be concerned about the safety of their streets that are being used as a cut-through to Palazzo and UCLA.  After last year's articles, I received several angry emails accusing me of only telling one side of the story.  However, sympathy for their situation doesn't mean I agree with their strategy.  If they wanted similar measures on their streets, Streetsblog would stand with them.  When the message is that the city needs to remove other streets' calming, that's not something that Streetsblog will support.

But the winners are the residents who fought developers, their City Councilman, the LADOT, City Planning, the City Council and heck, just about the entire city bureaucracy for the right to have streets free of people looking for a shortcut to the Palazzo development.  Their tenaciousness is going to bring the measures they desire back to their streets.  Let's hope the news of their happy ending inspires more Los Angeles communities to fight for slower streets.  I had a chance to talk to Esther Magna, who is one of the leaders of the Holmby-Westwood Traffic Committee and sent me the official ruling from Judge O'Brien. She could barely contain her excitement in talking about not just how happy they were with the outcome after the long struggle, but how much she looked forward to cut through traffic for a retail development getting off her street.

Her neighbors are correct when they argue that moving the traffic off a couple of streets on to a couple of others is the proper solution.  If the city really wants to protect this neighborhood from cut-through traffic, they'll find a way to get those cars back on the arterial streets where they belong.

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.

City Councilman Richard Alarcon has always been a vocal supporter for traffic calming and safe streets around schools and other places that children congregate. In 2007, he introduced legislation calling for the LADOT to report on how it prioritizes traffic calming devices around schools, parks and recreation centers. Last year, he introduced the resolution which created the "set-aside" for bicycle and pedestrian projects in the city's Measure R Local Return funds.

We all know that the battle to slow traffic is a hard one, so yesterday must have been a good one for the Councilman. Surrounded by students from Langdon Elementary, Alarcon celebrated the installation of speed humps and curb cuts around eight schools in the 7th Councilmanic District, paid for with Safe Routes to Schools funds. At Langdon Elementary School, where the press conference was held, there have been 28 collisions on that block between 2003-2008, including 2 pedestrian related and 4 bicycle related accidents, as reported by LADOT.

"It is always fantastic to hear of leaders and communities addressing and prioritizing the needs of children and their families to safely and enjoyably access their schools," says Jessica Meaney, California Policy Manager for the Safe Routes to School National Partnership.

Streetsblog had been highly critical of the city's grant writing efforts when it comes to "Safe Routes to Schools," the projects and proposals coming out of Alarcon's district have always been superior to the fare offered by LADOT for the rest of the city. That the LADOT complains about the city not receiving its "fare share" of SRTS funding while eight schools in one district have traffic calming installed with SRTS funds over the course of one week tells the story. If anyone is interested in seeing these kinds of projects for their local schools, there is a Safe Routes to School's training session at the Caltrans building Downtown at 9:00 A.M. If you're interested, email Caltrans' local SRTS Direcyor at dale_benson@dot.ca.gov. The meeting occurs in advance of a July 15 deadline to apply for $24 million in California SRTS grants.

In addition to Langdon Elementary, traffic calming was installed in recent weeks a seven other schools. Here are the schools with the speed humps and curb cuts:

• Pacoima Elementary School
• Rosa Parks Learning Center School
• Sepulveda Middle School
• Chase Elementary School
  
• Maclay Middle School
• St. Didacus Religious Education School
• Sylmar High School.

Fed up with speeding traffic zooming through their local street, residents of the well-to-do Mt. Olympus Homeowner’s Association have approached the city with a plan to pay for the speed humps and speed feedback signs that would make a difference in protecting their street from speeding drivers of all stripes.  A motion to allow them to do just that was heard at last week’s City Council Transportation Committee Hearing, with a resolution expected at next weeks.

Because of the wide nature of Electra and Mt. Olympus roads compared to other roads through the Hills, commuters are using the route as an alternative to the arterial street, Laurel Canyon Road, to the west.  Jerry Lynette, a homeowner near that curve at the bottom-right of the google image, complained specifically that teenagers "playing in their father’s cars" take the turn at excessive speeds.  Just counting his experiences and that of his family, he counted six crashes that occurred getting into and out of his driveway because of excessive speeds.  Meanwhile, Homeowner’s Association President Mel Rumba complains that residents can’t let their children out in the streets.

After years of complaining, the Homeowners approached their Council Member, Tom LaBonge, about paying for speed humps and speed feedback signs on their roads themselves.  They expressed willingness to go through whatever procedural hoops the LADOT required, but just wanted some action done before, in one resident’s words, "this ends in blood."

But not so fast.  LADOT Assistant General Manager John Fisher warned that speed humps wouldn’t be appropriate, because of the grade of the hill, at the places the residents wanted.  Instead he proposed the LADOT complete a study on the best place to place the speed bumps, causing LaBonge and Council Transportation Committee Chair Bill Rosendahl to give them a two week deadline to report to the Transportation Committee with their findings.  That deadline expires one week from today.

Streetsblog has written a lot about the challenges communities in Los Angeles have in reducing cut-through traffic in their local streets; but if this effort goes nowhere, it would be a truly sad statement.  The community has the support of their Councilman, the Committee Chair for Transportation is thrilled about using this as a precedence throughout the city, and their own pot of money to complete the project.  If this project gets stymied, what hope is there for the rest of us?

To read more about this issue, LaBonge’s motion authorizing the community to pay for their own street care can be read here.

Not every transportation reform project needs to bring visionary change to a city to be a good project.  Case in point, the beutficiation project recently started on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood.  Instead of just repaving the road, as is done so often on the streets of Los Angeles, West Hollywood is taking the extra step to also plant trees, fix the sidewalks and improve the crosswalks.  In West Hollywood, a repaving is a reason to re-examine whether or not to re-imagine a street.

So what are West Hollwood's plans for Sunset Boulevard?  According to the project's website:

Despite the length of time since the Sunset Strip has received any serious roadway improvement, the road is basically in good structural condition. Construction will start on January 4, 2010. The Sunset Strip Beautification Project will include the following improvements:

• Pavement resurfacing;
• Replacing damaged sidewalks;
• Improving roadway and crosswalk markings;
• Upgrading traffic signal equipment; and
• Planting street trees.

More importantly than just the improvements that are taking place are the reasons behind them.  West Hollywood has made no secret of the fact that the city hopes the project will re-enliven and bolster the local economy.  Instead of focusing on subsidizing parking through more on-street parking, West Hollywood recognizes that people visit restaurants and shops along attractive boulevards.  Their cars are just a method to get there and don't need to be catered to individually as much as the actual people do.

Now it's time for a confession.  i've never walked the Sunset Strip before yesterday.  As I wandered down the street, I noticed the work crews out surveying the street and that the asphalt was covered with red and white writings and symbols; but I also noticed that despite the wide sidewalks, the area isn't a great one to walk through.  On the plus side, the sidewalks were wide and there were plenty of crosswalks.  The road also featured plenty of nice shops and restarants.  In short, it was the kinds of place that you would love to visit. 

On the other hand, there was so much traffic that it was difficult to hold a conversation.  Hopefully the trees and decorations that are part of the project will be more than just decorative.  A traffic calming impact, and a sound barrier for the shoppers and eaters they are hoping to attract are in the mix as well.

The total cost of the project is $5.4 million.  Over 20% of the project will be reimbursed from American Recovery and Reinvestment aka "Stimulus" funds.  For more details on the project, read the official fact sheet.

Photo: Brandon Wise/Daily Press

Responding to concerns over safety on a 12-block stretch of Ocean Park Boulevard after several pedestrians were struck over the past few years, City Hall launched a pilot project in which they condensed the busy corridor from Lincoln to Cloverfield boulevards from two lanes in each direction to one, hoping to calm the speed of traffic and eliminate some of the dangers posed in the previous configuration.

Nearly two years and several community workshops later, the project is still in its pilot phase, partly the result of an understaffed Transportation Management Division that lost two planners whose positions have yet to be filled. 

The Daily Press takes a neutral view on the controversy between motorists who complain about the traffic congestion and residents who view the 2007 narrowing of Ocean Park as a needed safety improvement.  If you read the article you'll see a rather dispassionate article examining both sides of the issue.  Given that, you might expect a rather even-handed evaluation from the Times.  You'd be wrong.

First, the headline of the LA Now post is, "Traffic is snarled on narrowed Ocean Park Boulevard," and second it only takes one quote from the Daily Press article.  Typically, it's the most inflammatory and pro-car one that you could imagine.

Lloyd Saunders remembers when Ocean Park Boulevard was his go-to route, driving on the neighborhood's main drag daily to reach any points east and west. Today, the 30-year Santa Monica resident avoids it at all costs, opting for other streets because of "bottleneck traffic" that he blames on the current configuration, which city officials changed from four lanes to two in December 2007. "It's hard to get onto Ocean Park because there's just a stream of cars," he said. "It's the sign of the times, there's so many darn people here (in the city) now."

Fortunately, the story does have a temporary happy ending as we wait for the final word from Santa Monica on whether to keep the configuration.  If you read the comments section of the LA Now, article; you'll find that as of this writing they couldn't find one person to back the position that there's something wrong with taking away a travel lane to slow traffic and increase bicycle and pedestrian access.

The California State Assembly recently passed legislation that will allow the family of victims of highway crashes to pay Caltrans to erect signs memorializing the fallen and reminding drivers to drive safely.  However, thanks to opposition from a group of what the Times terms "environmentalists," the legislation is actually watered down so that our state's highways aren't littered with signs ruining the view.

No, really.

"Our highways are not intended to be repositories for memorials," said Mary Tracy, president of Scenic America, a group that advocates against unnecessary signage. "A clutter of signs is the last thing we need along our roadways."

Critics of the bill also note that California already has dozens of signs that name freeway interchanges and bridges in honor of CHP officers and state engineers who have died. The state also has posted hundreds of "Adopt-A-Freeway" signs advertising that an individual or company is sponsoring cleanup of a stretch of freeway.

I'm not actually sure where to go with this story.  Should I point out the traffic calming value of crash memorials, or just wonder how many of these signs Scenic America thinks are going to be on the highways?  I know California's highways aren't exactly "safe" but "a clutter of signs?"

Here's the real kicker.  The state already allows for the "official" placement of DUI memorials, as though an alcohol-related deadly accident is somehow more tragic than one caused by an "accident."

The first draft of this legislation allowed families or friends of any any victim of a traffic fatality to pay $1,000 to have Caltrans officials place a sign at the sight of the deadly crash to both pay tribute to their loved ones and warn others to drive safely.  The families hoped that having professionals place the memorial would remove danger to the mourners and that the more professional signage would last the test of time.

In response to the opposition to this nefarious legislation that would allow families to safely memorialize loved ones killed on our highways, the legislature changed the text so that it now limits the number of new non-DUI memorial signs statewide to twenty a year and each sign can stay up for no longer than seven years.  I'd hate to be the official that has to tell a grieving widow that her loss just wasn't tragic enough to merit a memorial after this year's allocated number of signs has run out.

According to the California Office of Traffic Safety, there were 3,434 traffic fatalities in California in 2008.  While I'm sure that more of them occured on local streets than highways, I'm also sure that twenty signs a year is going to be much lower than the demand.

At an early morning meeting, scheduled for 8:30 A.M. but not starting until close to 9:00, of the Los Angeles City Council Transportation Committee, both sides in the contentious debate over the fate of temporary traffic calming measures placed in near the Palazzo development in Westwood.

The battle between the Holmby-Westwood community and the extended Westwood Village communities.  The result?  The Committee decided to back Councilman Weiss, the extended community and the LADOT and voted to remove the traffic calming so that the field will be clear for a new round of negotiations. For more on the politics of the struggle, click over to Streetsblog stories from yesterday and last month.

Yes, from the people that claim the best way to slow down traffic is to increase the speed limit and that the best way to protect pedestrians in unsignalized crosswalks is to remove the crosswalk comes the new theory that the best way to improve an imperfect traffic calming plan is to rip up the traffic calming and start from scratch.

While the 60% of the residential community that voted to support the current traffic calming measures when it went to a vote were represented by a majority of the speakers, they received a less sympathetic response than last time.  The representative from the City Attorney’s office rejected the resident’s claim that the neighborhood protection plan agreed to by the community didn’t rise to the level of a binding contract, and even if it did that LADOT has the authority to change the boundaries of the agreement.

As for the LADOT, they seemed content to rip out the current measures and start the public process over after a "cooling off period" so that the angry sides from the current disagreement can become friends again.  Once the kumbaya period is over the community can begin to put together a new traffic calming plan.

Probably the lowlight of the hearing came at the end when Councilman Tom LaBonge compared car traffic and traffic calming to damming a river.  Under his analogy, you can damm a river, but the water will flow somewhere else.  Of course, the goal of creating Livable Streets isn’t just to damm that water, but damm it and reduce it.

Nearly a month ago, we discussed the efforts of local Councilman Jack Weiss and the LADOT to remove three temporary traffic calming measures that were placed on streets surrounding the Palazzo development to mitigate traffic on the streets surrounding the large, mixed-use development.  Before the traffic calming can be removed, it requires the blessings of the City Council.  When the Transportation Committee heard Weiss' motion to remove the signs and cones protecting LeConte, Weyburn, and Lindbrook avenues, the hearing wasn't going well for Weiss and his allies.  Thus the motion was pulled  so Weiss could try and negotiate an agreement between the communities.

Tomorrow, the motion is back on the agenda.  Despite some efforts to get the communities to sit down and talk about their disagreements, no meeting has actually been scheduled.  (Update: A meeting between the two sides and Weiss' office did take place last night.  The hastily scheduled meeting was put together after the City Council had scheduled tomorrow's hearing)

For those new to this issue, here's the crux of the problem.  As part of the agreement between the Palazzo Development in Westwood and the Holmby-Westwood Community, traffic calming measures were placed at the intersection between Weyburn Avenue and Le Conte, Weyburn and Lindbrook Streets to prevent cut-through traffic.  For the traffic calming to permanently remain, it would need the support of two-thirds of the effected community in an LADOT mail survey.

The "effected community" as described in the agreement voiced approval for the traffic calming measures by a margin of 72%-28%.  However, the LADOT's standard for measuring community support for traffic calming has a much larger area than what is described in the developer's agreement.  So, the LADOT surveyed a "compromise" stretch of the population which approved of the plan by only a 60%-40% margin.

Of course, by not sticking to either their standard or the protection plan approved in the development agreement, they're basically begging to be sued no matter how this turns out.  But that's another issue.

So what were the impacts of the traffic calming measures?  As expected, on the impacted streets traffic dropped dramatically.  Instead of a large increase, Le Conte, Weyburn and Lindbrook saw large decreases in traffic.  Since they were initially expecting increases, the Homby-Westwood came up with the odd looking estimate of a 124% decrease in traffic.

As you would expect, some of that diverted traffic found its way on to another local street, in this case Manning Street.  Manning was included in the area which supported the traffic calming by a 72% to 28% margin.

So, if not increased traffic, why are other Westwood residents protesting the traffic calming to the point of strong-arming their embattled City Councilman and enlisting the help of LADOTto make their point?

Based on what I heard at last month's meetings, the main reason is they want to be able to drive on Le Conte, Weyburn and Lindbrook and don't like the traffic calming present.  One resident testified that "it shouldn't take fifteen minutes to drive a quarter of a mile," and of course I agree!  It should take five minutes to walk a quarter of a mile. 

Others complained that there wasn't traffic calming on their streets too, but what I don't understand is why not lobby to protect your street instead of lobbying to "un-protect" someone else's?  When the LADOT representative joked that they would have to put traffic calming on every cross street to make everyone happy I clapped.  Apparently, she was joking.

However, the LADOT did make clear that once the traffic calming was removed, they would sit down with the effected communities and try to create a "Plan B" to secure the area.  Councilman Alarcon seemed somewhat incredulous at this statement, wondering why LADOT doesn't wait until after you have a new plan to take out the current measures.  What if they decide to put some, or all, of the measures back?  Wouldn't the city just be paying three times for one set of measures?

Unfortunately, this issue has become intensely personal between Holmby-Westwood and other parts of the area.  Accusations of trying to rig the LADOT's survey, of not caring for the safety of the other sides children and that the other side is outright lieing to protect their position were heard at last month's hearing. Even more shockingly, someone emailed me to question my talents as a writer.

Tomorrow's meeting is scheduled for 8:30 in the morning.  We'll see if the early hour tempers people's tempers and how Weiss and the LADOT plan to proceed.

Yesterday, three-fifths of the City Council Transportation Committee met to discuss the proposed speed limit increases for four stretches of roads in the Valley.  Sue Doyle of the Daily News does a great job describing the issues surrounding the limit increases, how the city pleads powerlessness even as crashes mount in the areas around the effected areas. 

However, there was even worse news than just an increase in danger for valley residents, we can expect similar changes to be coming to streets throughout Los Angeles.  Responding to a question from Councilman Bernard Parks about why all these changes are being focused in the Valley, LADOT's Alan Willis responded that the Valley is just the first place to see their streets re-evaluated under state law and the rest of the city will undergo a similar revue in the coming years.

In other words, just because you don't live in the Valley doesn't mean you won't be seeing speed limits go up in your neck of the woods.

While the City Council has expressed anger over the state law, and has vowed to get it changed, it's also been over eight months since this issue first came up at the City Transportation Commission and so far, to the best of my knowledge, there has been no legislation introduced at the state level that would change the requirement that speed limits be set at the eighty-fifth percentile to allow use of radar.

While we wait for the City Council to pick up the phone and call their state legislators, there's work you can do to protect your streets.  If there is a road where people are constantly speeding, call the police, your neighborhood council and your elected reprsentatives and demand that the speed limit be enforced.  The reality is that no matter the sign, people are going to drive as quickly as they can unless there is a consistent enforcement effort.  If you don't want a local speed limit raised, then work with the police to get people to stop speeding before the LADOT comes to measure the speed on the streets nearest you.

Westwood residents are furious with Councilman Jack Weiss and the LADOT over a resolution appearing on tomorrow's City Council Transportation Committee Agenda which would strip traffic calming off of local streets that were placed in February of 2008 as a "pilot program."  The Holmby-Westwood Traffic Committee had asked for certain traffic calming measures to protect their local streets from traffic created by the Palazzo mixed use development which features a Trader Joes and other retail in addition to residential.

In addition to removing the existing traffic calming, the measure in front of the city would also alleviate Caden, Palazzo's developer, from having to build further traffic reduction measures in disregard of an agreement between the city, Casden and the neighborhood homeowner's association.  By alleviating Caden's responsibilities, the developer could save a quarter of a million dollars.  So if someone ever asks you rhetorically what the value of keeping children safe on the streets is, now you know.  It's a quarter of a million dollars.

As part of the deal, the city installed traffic calming throughout the community including a restriction prohibiting eastbound and westbound straight through traffic on Le Conte Avenue across Hilgard Avenue, arestriction prohibiting eastbound and westbound straight through traffic on Weyburn Avenue across Hilgard Avenue a restriction prohibiting southbound to eastbound left-turns from Hilgard Avenue to Lindbrook Drive and a median island and a sidewalk bump-out on Lindbrook Drive at Hilgard Avenue.

While the traffic calming has been an unparalleled success,  the Holmby-Westwood Traffic Committee claims the measures reduced traffic by 124.3% according to the LADOT's own traffic data.  Yet, for the traffic calming to be permanent, it needed two-thirds support of the community.  Yet, when the LADOT did a mail survey of the target area, just over sixty percent asked that the traffic calming remain on the street.  Thus, the city's transportation planners are working with Councilman Jack Weiss to remove traffic calming from the streets.  Their plan has already been approved by the City's Transportation Commission.

Not so fast cry the residents.  The LADOT's area polled seems designed to make certain the poll wouldn't meet the two-thirds required.  Instead of the area bound by the original agreement with Palazzo, the survey stretched farther east into communities that don't see the benefits of traffic calming.  If the LADOT had restricted their survey to the immediate community, it received the support of three-quarters of the community.

In a letter to the Transportation Commission, the Homeowner's spell out their complaints with the LADOT's survey noting that people were unaware that supporting the traffic calming was "all or nothing" and that over ninety three percent of all respondents favored some form of traffic calming for the area.

The public outreach about the proposal to take away the traffic calming was, as is often the case when it comes to a proposal to speed up and increase traffic flow at the expense of safe local streets, abysmal.  The community didn't receive notice of the plan or its hearing in front of the CTC until three days before the first hearing, which was conveniently held hours before a Jewish holiday.

However, the hearing also provides an opportunity for the City Council.  Do they support the LADOT and Jack Weiss' plan to rip working traffic calming out of the ground, or do they look out for the best interestes of the community.  If they truly are legally required to remove the traffic calming, will they require a new transportation plan to protect the local neighborhood from the traffic created by large developments.  Their actions will send a clear signal to other communities as to what they can expect in the citycontinues to grow.

Hat tip to alert reader Jessica Meaney.

A video by Portugal's "Interactive Ninja" demonstrates a unique approach to crosswalk design.  In this video. some local activists use some spray paint and stencils to add the names of those pedestrians killed in crashes with cars.  The purpose is to both memorialize those who have fallen and to educate both pedestrians and drivers to be more aware of their surroundings.

As the city struggles to figure out the best response to the DASH crash that killed Gwendolyn Coleman, perhaps a more permanent memorial, such as the one in this video, is called for.