A crash from 2022 that left one person dead on Forest Lawn Drive
In 2023, LADOT launched its Forest Lawn Drive Safety and Mobility Project in response to “recent collisions” and stated that the project would reconfigure the road to “reduce speeding, prevent unsafe lane changes, provide physical separation between cars and bicycles, and improve safety and mobility of everyone traveling on Forest Lawn Drive.” In other words, the city acknowledged a dangerous status quo, and is trying to prevent another crash (and potentially having to pay out in a wrongful death lawsuit).
According to NavigateLA, this section of Forest Lawn Drive was last repaved in 1994, and has a Pavement Condition Index of 31, a failing grade. Since the street has to be resurfaced anyway, the City was trying to kill two birds with one stone: repave the street, and make it much safer for pedestrians, joggers, cyclists, drivers, and street vendors.
Three years later, the project is still not in the ground. After years of outreach and community engagement, StreetsLA is finally ready to repave the street, and LADOT has finished its final design. Work was set to move forward in early May, but was rescheduled to early June in order to not interfere with Mother’s Day or Memorial Day, busy days for the two cemeteries that share this road – Forest Lawn and Mount Sinai (you can see their letters here and here).
Last week, Mayor Bass intervened and asked StreetsLA to pause the work (here’s her memo to city departments). The reason? Cemeteries have been lobbying state representatives to insert language in Sacramento’s budget trailer bill to try and kill this project. Yes, you read that right: the two cemeteries – perhaps in a bid to get more customers – are not only opposing a road safety project, but are asking legislators in Sacramento to have the state interfere with a road safety project in Los Angeles.
Thanks to a public records request, we know that a couple of weeks ago, the legislators gave in to the cemeteries and sent a joint letter to Mayor Bass, asking her to pause the work, and allow for time to figure out how to protect the bike lanes “while preserving two lanes for cars in each direction.” They even sent in their own concept plan, claiming it could be done for under $1M (the true cost is easily $10M+). Even if it was $1M, it’s $1M the City of Los Angeles doesn’t have.
Here’s what the cemeteries, the Mayor, and the state legislators who signed on to the letter refuse to understand: this is a road safety project, not just a bike lane project. If LADOT just physically protects the bike lanes but leaves 4 lanes for cars, it doesn’t solve any of the other stated goals of the project: reducing speeding and preventing unsafe lane changes. This stretch of Forest Lawn Drive is more like a highway – there is no street parking, and very few traffic lights, so drivers often drive far above the speed limit. The only way to truly solve these issues is by using proven design changes like road reconfigurations to reduce speed.
Why do the cemeteries say they’re against the project? Despite LADOT’s traffic count numbers showing the street is overbuilt for the amount of daily traffic, or LADOT’s recognition of event-related congestion, leading to them proposing to more than double the length of the turn lanes into the cemeteries, the cemeteries are convinced that if this project goes through, it will destroy their business, making access by car nearly impossible. Apparently, no amount of data and studies will convince them otherwise.
Back to Mayor Bass. In her letter she directs the departments to revise their plan to preserve all current travel lanes while protecting the bike lane – defeating nearly all the safety improvements the project was meant to bring.
And the worst part? The Mayor is setting an awful precedent here. By siding with cemeteries’ unfounded concerns and giving in to state legislators interfering with the project, she’s setting LA up for this to happen again and again. In her letter, Mayor Bass directs the departments to conduct “essential, immediate outreach to gather feedback on the new plan and achieve a resolution for all partners.” More outreach! Apparently, three years wasn’t enough. But this isn’t general public outreach – reading between the lines, this is outreach to two parties only – Forest Lawn and Mount Sinai. The Mayor is directing city departments to waste taxpayer dollars coming up with a plan that doesn’t solve the safety concerns, and is giving the cemeteries equal footing to city departments, by insisting they sign off on the plan before it moves forward.
Los Angeles deserves safer streets, and voters agree, with ⅔ saying yes to Measure HLA in 2024. It’s a shame that our Mayor – who, as far as we can tell, has no strong convictions on road safety or building a multimodal city – is giving in to NIMBYs of the worst kind, who are data and logic-resistant, and who went to Sacramento when local leaders rejected their unfounded arguments.
This is an example of why simple things in Los Angeles cost so much more and take so long to get in the ground, and why it’s so hard to get safer streets.