There's a new DIY (do-it-yourself) group adding missing safety features to L.A. streets. The Crosswalk Collective L.A. added four new crosswalks at the East Hollywood intersection of Romaine Street and Serrano Avenue. They announced the new facility via Twitter last week.
Streetsblog reached out to the Collective and they responded with a press statement:
We are a small group of community members who have tried for years to request crosswalks and other safe streets infrastructure the official way. At every turn, we’ve been met with delays, excuses, and inaction from our city government, as well as active hostility to safe streets projects from sitting councilmembers. Car crashes are the number one cause of death of children in Los Angeles. If our city won’t keep us safe, we will keep us safe.
The Crosswalk Collective folks have done quite a good job, in that their "professional grade stencil" design really does look like a city standard crosswalk.
The Collective has tweeted that they will soon be sharing their how-to guide so other neighborhoods can do similar improvements.
In the past, L.A. City has been pretty quick to undo DIY improvements. The 2008 Fletcher Drive bike lane lasted under a week. SBLA still feels a pang of guilt for raising the profile of artistic between-the-cracks paint treatment on Hyperion Avenue in Silver Lake, resulting in the city forces buffing it gray within a month.
(The city is not so quick to remove large rocks placed in the public right-of-way. Koreatown's Westmoreland Avenue anti-unhoused rocks have been in place since January, and Streetsblog inquiries have been unable to uncover any future city plans to remove them.)
Hopefully these new crosswalks last a while.
