Last week saw two tragic Westside car crashes where drivers killed four people.
- On February 5 on Westwood Boulevard in Westwood, a 92-year-old driver crashed into a bicyclist then into a supermarket, killing three people and injuring at least six additional victims - two of whom required hospitalization.
- On January 31 on Pershing Drive in Playa Del Rey, an 87-year-old driver crashed into cyclist Regan Cole-Graham, killing her and her unborn child.
Both killings took place in locations where livable streets advocates had pushed for safety upgrades that were denied when L.A. City caved to to vocal opposition from some drivers.
These gruesome preventable killings have renewed calls for safer streets. This is an oft-repeated pattern repeated on So. Cal streets. Cities delay/scale-back/cancel safety upgrades that would marginally inconvenience drivers. Only after a driver kills a person, does a city install (generally too modest) safety upgrades. For examples, see 4th and New Hampshire in Koreatown, Fountain Avenue in West Hollywood, Rowena Avenue in Silver Lake/Los Feliz, Hyperion Avenue in Los Feliz, and others.
L.A. City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky has issued a bold call to end L.A. City safety project delays that are literally killing people.
Yaroslavsky's predecessor, Paul Koretz had long opposed multimodal/safety upgrades including several in Westwood. Koretz killed planned bike lanes just a few blocks away from the recent supermarket crash.
Yaroslavsky was elected in 2022 pledging her support for "walkable, bikeable, diverse urban neighborhoods and business districts." She worked with the city Transportation Department (LADOT) to get a multi-year process underway for a $10 million Westwood Boulevard Safety and Mobility Project.
LADOT solicited public input via an online survey, now closed. Now the public is expected to wait until late 2026 for a second round of public input.
Note that when LADOT adds car parking [various examples] or other car capacity [example] they routinely do so with no survey nor any other community input process, even when LADOT installs changes that conflict with approved city plans already vetted via community input processes. Also note that LADOT community input processes tend to result in scaled-back projects [example] that undermine facilities already approved by council via the city's Mobility Plan.
At last Friday's council meeting [video - remarks start minute 1:26], Yaroslavsky adjourned the meeting in remembrance of the Westwood crash victims. Yaroslavsky questioned, "Why does it feel like safety improvements take forever even after we know where the risks are?" She noted the current LADOT process for Westwood, pledging to accelerate, "I am calling on LADOT to return with an accelerated timeline for Westwood Boulevard - including immediate quick-build safety measures while longer term work continues."
"We shouldn't be waiting years for basic interventions while Angelenos die."
Yaroslavsky noted that traffic violence and safety project delays are not limited to Westwood, but are citywide and need to addressed broadly; streets need to be safe for all users. The councilmember summarized this in a subsequent email newsletter:
What happened in Westwood reflects a broader challenge across Los Angeles. The city relies on systems that move slowly and operate in silos. Departments struggle to align. The city patches problems instead of systematically fixing them. Street paving has stalled. Speed cameras remain uninstalled. Sidewalks continue to buckle. Over time, those delays compound risk and leave people exposed to injury or worse.
Hopefully Yaroslavsky (and the rest of the council) will follow through on accelerating multimodal/safety projects, including the city's astonishingly slow implementation of speed cameras (recently permitted under state law, now operative in San Francisco and Oakland, and starting this year in Long Beach and Glendale). If speed cameras are ever to make L.A. street safer, the city council needs to champion the program.
The Playa del Rey killing also saw some response from its City Councilmember Traci Park. Via her email newsletter, Park stated she had visited the crash site and was working with city departments "to re-assess the area for additional lighting and speed safety improvements." Park noted that bike improvements there were installed and removed in 2017, and that "it's time to re-open that conversation." She listed two bike/safety projects she is working on nearby.
