Keep L.A. Moving Continues Lawsuit, After City Undid Safety Improvements

Vista Del Mar as returned to four car lanes in August. Photo by Joe Linton/Streetsblog L.A.
Vista Del Mar as returned to four car lanes in August. Photo by Joe Linton/Streetsblog L.A.

Despite the city of Los Angeles undoing its Playa Del Rey road diet safety improvements, Keep L.A. Moving are not backing down from their lawsuit.

For readers unfamiliar with the timeline:

  • In June, responding to earlier deaths and injuries, LADOT implemented road diet safety improvements on four Playa Del Rey streets: Culver Boulevard, Jefferson Boulevard, Pershing Drive, and Vista Del Mar. The projects, designed to reduce speeds, quickly triggered a backlash from drivers claiming huge commute delays.
  • In August, Redondo Beach-based Keep L.A. Moving (KLM) filed a lawsuit to restore the four streets to their original condition.
  • From July through early October, LADOT took several steps to partially undo the improvements, including restoring four lanes to Vista Del Mar in August.
  • In July, Councilmember Mike Bonin formed a Playa Del Rey street safety task force to review data and make recommendations. Task force member Peter Flax reported that when data showed minimal traffic delays, complaints shifted to subjective impacts on businesses.
  • On October 18, Bonin and Mayor Eric Garcetti announced full undo of PDR lane reductions.
  • By the end of November, LADOT completed on-the-ground work restoring all PDR travel lanes that had been eliminated.

One would think that once a bunch of drivers get “their” car lanes back, they might stop complaining.

Nope.

These sore winners seem incapable of just declaring victory.

Now they complain that the PDR undo is not good enough… because – get this – the lanes have been narrowed!

An LADOT legal memorandum states that because the department acted “to rescind the Playa del Rey Project in its entirety… all travel lanes were restored as existed” the PDR lawsuit is now “moot.” Responding to this, at this week’s City Council Transportation Committee meeting (audio – item 12), KLM lawyer Kristina Kropp stated that appellants would continue “until full restoration is achieved.” The appellants’ legal comment letter clarifies that “the roads have not been restored to their original, pre-May 2017 condition … and maintain bicycle lanes and lanes which are narrower than existed before.” (emphasis added)

Note that two bike lanes – on Pershing, and on Culver through downtown PDR – have already been removed. The only bike lanes remaining are on streets where there was sufficient space to squeeze the bike lane in alongside the pre-existing car travel lanes. Since the 2013 passage of AB417, adding these sorts of bike lanes does not require environmental review.

The KLM folks complain about city fiscal responsibility, spreading the lie that the city “misappropriated Measure M funds” on safety improvements installed in June before the Measure M sales tax went into effect in July. They now perversely waste city funds in extending their legal fight long after their demands were met.

Does KLM really want the city to spend more money doing extensive Environmental Impact Report studies when it narrows the width of car lanes?

Note that they are not complaining about car lanes on Vista Del Mar now being wider than they were before. Modifying streets to be faster and more deadly doesn’t rate a mention.

Doubling down on the lawsuit seems to point to a vindictive streak. Continuing the lawsuit now seems designed to put the city on notice that these reactionaries will fight tooth and nail to preserve PDR streets in a frozen 20th-century state, even as much of the rest of the world works to make places safer and healthier.

Let’s hope that the courts see this matter for what it is: whiny entitled spite, held tightly long after common sense would dictate otherwise.

36 thoughts on Keep L.A. Moving Continues Lawsuit, After City Undid Safety Improvements

  1. I drove here the other night during rush hour, it’s a crazy insane speedway for drivers taking a shortcut. Should be one lane for cars

  2. well if politicians didnt do such stupid things with zero outreach and zero common sense we would not have such stupid lawsuits.

  3. Vooch – Where? What street? Rush Hour has lots of traffic? There is no time to even drive the speed limit – it’s mostly stop and go through the lights. Now late at night when most accidents and the 2 deaths happened in PDR – not from speeding cars by the way, there might be space for some cars to speed. I love your anti car icon – maybe bike riders should be safe and not ride at dangerous times or ride on the safe beach bike path like most people do.

  4. Joe Linton – how about showing both sides of the story… even the Argonaut with Peter Flax has done that: Here are some of the facts getting both local and national press: National News on PDR ‘Road Diet’ updates below:

    The last 2 weeks have seen both sides in the local Playa del Rey paper – The Argonaut – http://argonautnews.com/a-lesson-in-democracy/

    in response to Peter Flax’s inaccurate and inflammatory story before – http://argonautnews.com/the-bullys-playbook/

    and now national news has two stories coming from these:

    http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/lawrence-solomon-how-road-diets-are-making-our-car-commutes-even-more-painful

    http://business.financialpost.com/opinion/lawrence-solomon-ban-the-bike-how-cities-made-a-huge-mistake-in-promoting-cycling

  9. Wow. Pure vindictiveness. They even want to get rid of the meager protected shoulder (not really a bike lane) on Culver?

    It’s interesting to note that no one is talking about how Culver eastbound has turned back into the morning parking lot that it was before May 2017 (since there was always only one lane across Ballona and Lincoln). Emotion trumps data every time I guess.

  10. If you’re going to generously refer to Financial Post as a reputable national news site, make sure it’s the right nation. FP is Canadian.

  16. Actually, 1/17 million is 99.999999941176471% to be more exact. ;-). I rounded up for Vooch and friends to comprehend.

  18. If most drivers were homicidal manics (like terrorist mowing people and bike riders down or blowing people up with car bombs), we wouldn’t have a problem with bike riders or pedestrians. You all would all be dead. Since, you are not, you prove my point – 99.99999% of drivers who are soccer moms are not. ;-)

  19. Tell that to the 2,500,000 Americans hospitilzed by drivers every year.

    and the 40,000 Americans killed by homicidal maniac drivers.

  20. Let’s get some perspective here, my friend. Number of deaths per year by ACCIDENTS ARE ONLY: 5.6 percent : 146,571
    CAR ACCIDENTS are only 27% of that or 40,000. US population is over 350,000,000. So .01% die in car accidents. Since you like statistics – enjoy causes of death and the odds! https://danger.mongabay.com/injury_death.htm

  25. Cars protect people from other cars, pedestrians and crazy cylists. If you don’t want to be hurt take a bus, subway, train – as they tend to win in crashes or accidents with smaller mass cars. Simple physics my dear. ;-) F=MA.

  26. Vooch, I look forward to the day of self driving bikes as much as cars and robot dogs protecting pedestrians from walking into oncoming traffic without looking.

  27. Drivers need to drive safe speeds whenever the possibility of people are about.

    A safe speed on a residential street is about 18 mph.

    Any street that’s likely to have children on it drivers should safely drive at no more than 5 mph.

    killing people to save a minute or so is a sociopathic worldview

  28. a perfect example of the homicidal thinking of most drivers

    thanks for illuminating just how depraved drivers are

  31. Road Capitalism. It makes our country work. Remove cars and trucks and we will be like Cuba and other @#$ socialist countries on bikes. But hey, you can’t tell the difference between crash and accident. It doesn’t surprise me that you don’t know the difference between socialism and capitalism. Keep riding my friend. Like skydiving, sooner or later you might have an accident or crash. Just don’t blame the cars will ya when you run into them. ;-)

  33. article is fake news

    approx. 700.000 bike trips are made every day in NYC

    in the CBD over 10% of roadway traffic consists of bikes

    in lower manhattan, avenues with protected bike lane see 40-60% roadway traffic being bikes; especially during rush hour

  34. Oh Vooch, It’s so sad how out of touch you are. Look at the world’s biggest projects with billions being spent to modernize and yet I don’t see any bike lanes EXCEPT in backwards LA and NY. Maybe, you should take a junior college history class on industrialization and see how nations are built. Short Answer – big infastructure – roadways, trains, airports – NOT BIKEPATHS – Yawn… so so 3rd world. Check out this great video and channel to learn more and see what Africa, China, India, etc are doing to compete with the western world – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiQ874ZuIno

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