The sharp enhance within the variety of Angelenos killed or critically injured in visitors collisions needs to be of concern to anybody who walks town’s streets. Final 12 months, 336 individuals have been killed in automobile accidents, greater than in any of the final 20 years. There have been extra visitors fatalities than homicides.
However as a substitute of working to assist clear up this disaster, a few of the metropolis’s strongest pursuits try to sabotage efforts to make the streets safer for pedestrians, bicyclists, and sure, even motorists. The goal is Measure HLA on the March 5 poll, which might require town to comply with its personal mobility plan and construct the road security, bike, bus and pedestrian enhancements that the Metropolis Council and then-Mayor Eric Garcetti put ahead practically a decade in the past. .
However whereas the initiatives have been on the books for years, town’s prime price range official final week launched a questionable new estimate of $3.1 billion for the plan, whereas the union representing town’s firefighters argued that making the streets safer will decrease response instances.
It is fear-mongering, designed to scare Angelenos into voting towards the measure. However what’s actually scary is that LA leaders might have began constructing a extra walkable, bike-friendly, transit-friendly sustainable metropolis years in the past and might need averted a few of the current deaths. That they had the plan to make the streets safer, however did not make it a precedence. Due to this fact, goal HLA is critical.
It is price taking a more in-depth take a look at arguments from the United Firefighters of Los Angeles, which is bankrolling an opposition marketing campaign towards Measure HLA. Union leaders stated initiatives like bike and bus lanes, which generally require the elimination of a automobile lane, might make it harder for hearth engines to navigate by means of visitors for hearth or medical calls.
It’s doable that for this reason the Mobility Plan requires the hearth service to evaluate some proposed modifications to visitors lanes. However the plan is environmental influence report discovered that avenue realignments would really assist emergency response by including middle left-turn lanes and bus lanes that will permit ambulances and hearth vans to zip previous automobile visitors.
And if the mobility plan is not carried out and other people do not have secure, handy choices to stroll, bike and take transit, LA’s visitors congestion will solely worsen. That might make it much more troublesome for emergency personnel to journey by means of town.
Measure HLA is a reasonably modest proposal. It would not set a deadline for initiatives, and solely requires town so as to add bike lanes, bus lanes or different visitors fixes outlined within the Mobility Plan when greater than one-eighth of a mile of the road is paved.
Supporters of Measure HLA, together with enterprise teams like BizFed and the Valley Trade and Commerce Assn., say it is a smarter use of taxpayer cash. When town workers has to repaint the traces when realigning a avenue, it additionally saves money and time to re-stripe the roads in accordance with the Mobility Plan.
That is the rationale why the most recent price forecast of three.1 billion USD from Metropolis Administrative Officer Matt Szabo appears wildly inflated. His report instructed that including a motorbike lane on a avenue would price $1.76 million per mile. That is 9 instances greater than what town at the moment spends per mile on bike lanes, based on StreetsblogLA.
Councilman Bob Blumenfield, chairman of the Metropolis Council’s price range committee, was skeptical of the projection, noting a number of flawed assumptions, together with imposing a man-made 10-year deadline on the initiatives and having to interchange each inch of pavement as streets are improved for pedestrians.
Nowhere within the CAO’s report was there an evaluation of the worth tag for failure to implement the mobility plan. The financial price of visitors deaths in Los Angeles alone in 2023 was $3.9 billion when contemplating the worth assigned to human life. Moreover, town typically faces authorized legal responsibility for failing to handle unsafe avenue situations with urgency.
What number of extra individuals will needlessly die simply attempting to cross the road or trip a motorbike if LA’s mobility plan languishes for one more decade?
Los Angeles can have safer streets. Passing Goal HLA is how we get them.