Today, Measure HLA turned one. HLA - also known as the Healthy Streets Initiative - requires that L.A. City gradually implement its Mobility Plan bus/bike/walk upgrades during street projects, mainly when repaving at least 1/8 mile. Voters approved HLA in March 2024; it became law on April 9.
Measure HLA requires the city to create a public-facing dashboard to help the public track bus/bike/walk improvements required by HLA.
Here is the pertinent ballot language:
The City shall deploy an Open Data portal or project website that will provide the public access to monitoring and evaluation data for the implementation of the Mobility Plan as required by this Ordinance. The City shall make the following information publicly available shall post the following information on the Open Data portal or project website before any improvements are commenced:
(A) A brief description of each Improvement project that is completed, ongoing, or planned within the City, including the distance covered by the project;
(B) The location of each Improvement project;
(C) The status of each Improvement project (e.g. completed, in progress, approved);
(D) The Enhanced Complete Street System enhancements that are planned to be installed or completed; and
(E) A list of all improvement projects on Mobility Plan Streets that the City has determined are not required to be improved pursuant to subsection 85.11(b)(1) [that section states what triggers HLA] and the reason the City determined it does not apply.
The City shall make the Open Portal or project website, including information about relevant improvements, available to the public one (1) year after the effective date of the Ordinance.
Yesterday, the city Transportation Department (LADOT) shared that that their Mobility Plan Dashboard is available. There's an introductory page that leads to the main map/portal.
And what's there - and what isn't there - is pretty astonishing.
LADOT leaned heavily into the projects "not required to be improved" and left out everything else.
The website lists just seven projects, all of which LADOT claims do not trigger Measure HLA.
The seven projects are:
- Cesar Chavez Great Streets (see SBLA coverage of early pedestrian improvements)
- Hollywood Boulevard safety/bike upgrades (opened 2024, with short second phase east of Virgil Avenue pending)
- Mid-City Low Stress Bicycle Enhancement Corridors (future)
- Mission Road bike lanes (under construction)
- Roscoe Boulevard bus lanes (opened 2024)
- San Vicente protected bike lanes (future - completing and extending this 2022 project)
- Washington Blvd Pedestrian Transit Access Phase 2
The website includes no status, no dates for these seven projects. Most are pending; it appears that just one (Roscoe) has been completed.
What's not on the map? In late 2024, LADOT claimed that three projects had been triggered by HLA: Hollywood, plus Reseda Boulevard and Manchester Boulevard. Reseda and Manchester are absent. The ballot language states that the website shall include completed projects. It's not clear why they have been omitted.
Then there are the LADOT's rationales for why these seven projects don't trigger HLA. For example, take Hollywood Boulevard.
In 2024, the city's Bureau of Street Services (StreetsLA) reported that its Pavement Protected Program (PPP - the city's main routine resurfacing - which is generally expected to be the main trigger for HLA upgrades) had repaved nearly a half mile of Hollywood from Taft Avenue to Gower Street, completing the work on June 23. That segment is now missing from StreetsLA PPP map (see FY2324). LADOT now claims that HLA does not apply on Hollywood because "the project involved large asphalt repair that did not go through the intersection and re-striping the street to create a protected bike lane."
Large asphalt repair? That's a phrase that this SBLA editor never encountered prior to HLA, though the StreetsLA website mentions it (two sentences noting it's done "after water main breaks" after LADWP "repairs are completed.")
On Hollywood and others, the city claims projects do not trigger HLA as they are only "restriping." HLA specifies that upgrades are not triggered by "restriping of the road without making other improvements, routine pothole repair, utility cuts, or emergency repairs."
In the Measure HLA text it sounds like "restriping" means basic maintenance - re-doing existing stripes that have worn away. As LADOT applies "restriping" it appears to include reconfiguring striping, reconfiguring lanes and parking, adding plastic bollards, signage, plastic wheel stops, etc.
LADOT's ambitious Hollywood Boulevard project was planned before HLA, and installed after HLA took effect. It's unclear why LADOT is attempting to exempt Hollywood from HLA.
The new website, required so that the public has access to track Measure HLA work, appears to be mostly an assertion that, a year into HLA, no city projects triggered HLA upgrades.
