A Streetsblog Public Records request has revealed a few additional details about recent cemetery opposition to safety improvements on Forest Lawn Drive.
Responding to deadly conditions on Forest Lawn Drive, the L.A. City Transportation Department (LADOT) and City Councilmember Nithya Raman proposed the Forest Lawn Drive Active Transportation & Traffic Safety Project. The current plan is to reconfigure nearly one mile Forest Lawn Drive, eliminating one car lane, and installing plastic bollard protection to existing bike lanes.
In both 2023 and 2024, Glendale-based Forest Lawn Memorial Parks & Mortuaries submitted comment letters against the safety project.
At various points the mortuary has termed the project "alarming," "crippling," "unnecessary," punishing," and "disastrous."
The 2023 Forest Lawn letter focused on critiquing the project itself. The mortuary trotted out a tired bike facility critique, "we have not observed substantial bicycle use on Forest Lawn Drive." Essentially it's their equivalent of "nobody bikes there." On a street where drivers regularly speed in excess of 50 miles per hour, the mortuary is opposing changes that would save the lives of cyclists (and motorists and others) who currently use the road, and could make the road more welcoming for bicycling.
The mortuary letter asserts that the project would not only inhibit access to the Memorial Park, and "adjacent streets and freeways would be adversely affected." Multiple freeways affected - by a project that LADOT analysis found would have a negligible impact on travel times.
The mortuary's Save Forest Lawn Drive website claims safety upgrades will cause "severe gridlock" in places near and far: Toluca Lake, Burbank (both over a half-mile bike ride or drive from the project), and even Los Feliz (about five surface street miles from the project limits) "and beyond." The website also claims the project will cause "massive traffic backups" on Barham Boulevard (a half-mile away), and the 101 and 134 Freeways (respectively two miles and a quarter mile from project limits). If these assertions were true, the Forest Lawn upgrades would be more impactful than any bikeway project in human history.
The later 2024 Forest Lawn letter shifted tone somewhat; instead of criticizing the safety project itself, the mortuary criticized the city's process. Forest Lawn Memorial-Park claimed to be "shocked and dismayed at how poorly and disrespectfully the City is treating Forest Lawn [mortuary]." The city's offense: not giving a business (already opposing the project) project plans in advance of those plans being publicly announced. The cemetery equated this withholding to lying. The mortuary letter claims:
"We requested a copy of any plans in advance of a meeting... [but we] were told by the Council office that no plans or presentations were available. That clearly was not true."
As Streetsblog reported earlier, at that time the mortuary interests were campaigning against the safety project, via their website, door-knocking, fliers, and social media.
Safe streets advocates are similarly campaigning in favor of the project. One of these project proponents is Streets Are For Everyone (SAFE) Executive Director Damian Kevitt, a cyclist who lost part of his leg in a Griffith Park car crash (about two miles from the Forest Lawn Drive project.) "It's sad that the Forest Lawn Memorial-Park's CEO is taking part in such inflammatory tactics," Keavitt wrote, "spending money to promote their scare-mongering agenda with false and inflammatory opinion-based statements about the Forest Lawn Drive safety project."
On January 20, the public comment period for the project had been due to close, but LADOT extend the comments deadline indefinitely. Express your support or concerns via LADOT's one-page online form.
Per LADOT's project website implementation is anticipated in "early 2025."
Streetsblog reached out to LADOT for an update on the project, and will update this post when that becomes available.
