Last August, after we successfully led a grassroots coalition that collected more than 100,000 signatures for Healthy Streets LA (which would require the City of Los Angeles to implement its Mobility Plan 2035 anytime it repaves a street) and qualified the measure for the ballot, there was a showdown at City Council.
Council had two options under the charter:
1 — Adopt Healthy Streets LA as law immediately (what we wanted)
2 — Push Healthy Streets LA to the next ballot and allow voters to decide (March 2024)
While we pushed hard behind the scenes, we only got to seven votes that would’ve supported adopting it straight away, one vote shy of what we needed. Then Council-President Nury Martinez’s campaign against adoption didn’t help. Nury created a false narrative that our measure was inequitable, and rallied other organizations behind her position. She did this while simultaneously promising that the City would do its own version of Healthy Streets LA, which she said would make up for perceived deficiencies in our measure.
Below is a detailed analysis of the City’s progress and their own version of Healthy Streets LA since last summer. TLDR? Jump to our conclusions here.
The first moving clause of Nury’s version asked that the City Attorney prepare within 15 days an ordinance based on Healthy Streets LA; essentially, to carbon copy ours. Despite Council taking action June 29, 2022, the City Attorney did not produce a draft ordinance until August 7, 2023 — close to a year after the original deadline.
The next moving clause made total sense to us — the City has LADOT, StreetsLA and the Bureau of Engineering all working on and in the street, often without coordination. Additionally, projects would be improved if they included not only street repaving with the Mobility Plan’s bike and bus lanes, but also new street lighting, street furniture, trees, repaired sidewalks, etc.
This moving clause was a response to what Nury believed were equity deficits in our measure. Despite this clause asking for a report back in 60 days, over a year later the City has yet to produce a plan or build any prioritization of equity into their draft ordinance or repaving schedule. There is no sign of local hire, community engagement, or departmental coordination, ideas we support. Equity has always been a guiding principle within Streets For All and nothing listed here conflicts with our measure, which is simply triggered by the repaving schedule. Our goals include improving equity — including prioritizing resources for underserved communities — and including projects that holistically improve streets beyond what can be done with street repaving. HSLA is a bare minimum enforcement mechanism — when the City repaves a street, it would be required to follow its own Mobility Plan, and implement pedestrian improvements, bike lanes, and bus lanes approved in the Plan. These interventions would save lives of vulnerable road users — critical after we passed a two decade high of pedestrian deaths last year. We want to be more ambitious and go beyond the Mobility Plan in the future — but the first step is making sure the City actually follows the Plan they’ve already adopted..
The next moving clause called for the creation of a multi-year work plan from the (still unformed and unplanned for) “Unified Project Coordination Office,” prioritizing the High Injury Network and low-income, transit-dependent residents. We support focusing on the HIN and on low-income, transit-dependent residents — whether the city is implementing HSLA or its own version. But we're disappointed that, a year after the motion was approved, the City has not included prioritizing HIN or transit-dependent Angelenos in its version, nor has it included or moved in any way to actually create the Unified Project Coordination Office, or given any indication that it’s actually going to do so.
The next moving clause was about developing a funding plan for Mobility Plan implementation. We have yet to see any funding plan, or any indication the City is even working on one. One of the reasons why we kept our measure simple, and tied Mobility Plan implementation to repaving, is that there is hardly any cost to implementing bike and bus lanes if the street is being repaved already, since it has to be restriped and can simply be striped differently to add a bike or bus lane. We strongly support adding elements like improved sidewalks, trees, street furniture, and lighting to street overhauls — but those things are much more expensive than just repaving, and require additional funding.
The final moving clause asked the City to create a dashboard to track progress, which is built into our measure, and something we believe is essential to transparency.
So where are we at today? Let’s examine the draft ordinance just released by City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto:
The purpose is to implement the Mobility Plan during repaving, which tracks with ours. Our eyebrows did go up upon seeing “emergency vehicles” specifically called out — LAPD and LAFD often block progressive road design in the name of "public safety” — despite the fact that those same emergency services would actually be more efficient with many of the Plan’s elements, especially bus lanes. In the narrow streets and alleys of old cities throughout the world, people having heart attacks still get ambulance service, and fires still get put out. It’s a false choice to have to choose between safer streets or efficient emergency services.
In our version, any repaving project over 1/8 of a mile is included — the City Attorney changed this to 1/4 of a mile (despite Council’s direction to match what we had). While this may sound inconsequential, it’s not. There are many resurfacing projects that are over 1/8 of a mile but under 1/4 of a mile that, while short, plug key gaps in the bike lane network.
Two examples (of many) of why the City’s version is problematic:
Sepulveda between Fiume Walk and Valley Vista is being repaved this fiscal year. Only one block and just over 1/8 of a mile, it would extend the existing Sepulveda bike lanes under the 405 and give cyclists a way to safely connect to Valley Vista. This would be ignored in the City’s version.
Westwood between Wellworth and Lindbrook is being repaved this fiscal year and is 1/5 of a mile. A bike lane currently on Westwood ends at Wellworth, and doing this 1/5 of a mile portion would get the bike lane past Wilshire Blvd and into Westwood Village, close to UCLA. It plugs a key gap, but would be ignored under the City’s version.
The other problem is that the City Attorney attempts to exclude “slurry seal” work — our version doesn’t. Slurry seal is sort of a “light” version of repaving, but it still requires the City to restripe a street afterwards. It’s often used on residential streets, many of which are part of the Mobility Plan’s Neighborhood Enhanced Network. We did the math, and out of the 28 miles of Neighborhood Enhanced Network streets being repaved this year, 9.4 are over 1/8 of a mile, but only 1.6 are over 1/4 of a mile. In other words, even if the City didn’t exclude slurry seal, the City’s version would ignore over 80% of the opportunities to implement traffic calming on residential streets due to the 1/4 of a mile exclusion. You can see how many streets this would exclude using StreetsLA’s own map here.
When defining “standard elements” it was interesting that the City Attorney didn’t simply say “the improvements in the Mobility Plan” but said that it’s the improvements that the Board of Public Works, Director of City Planning and General Manager designate for inclusion in a Project.” In other words, if any of those entities don’t “designate” an improvement to be included in a Project, then it’s excluded, and a bike or bus lane is ignored. This is the first “out” the City has given itself, and it’s a big one.
The next section basically states that the City needs to implement the Mobility Plan during repaving. This part is clean and to the point.
This next section is a doozy. It basically says that the General Manager of LADOT and Director of City Planning — in “consultation” with LAPD, LAFD, and the City Attorney (three entities often hostile to bike and bus lanes in the first place) — can “revise” Mobility Corridors. In other words, they’re usurping City Council’s authority over the Mobility Plan and taking it for themselves. It’s a dangerous precedent to set that City departments can change the City’s General Plan without Council, and especially dangerous to put it in the hands of LAPD, LAFD, and this City Attorney (who has implied the City shouldn’t be at fault for pedestrian deaths even if the City has failed to implement its own Vision Zero or Mobility Plan 2035 plans).
Here, the ordinance states that the General Manager of LADOT, the Director of City Planning, and the Board of Public Works (which, historically, has had nothing to do with Mobility Plan implementation), in consultation with the City Attorney (why does the City Attorney get a say in which elements should be included in a Project?), shall establish which “Standard Elements” (which can already be modified easily) should be included in a Project.
Translated: multiple city departments, and the City Attorney, can determine what to include (or not include). Given the City’s abysmal history in Mobility Plan implementation (3% in seven years = 200 years to implement the plan fully), this makes it more obvious that this ordinance is not a serious attempt to actually implement the Mobility Plan during repaving, but a squishy, grey area ordinance that gives the City many outs to not do so.
We support doing community outreach, but we’ll also note that “outreach” has sometimes been used to kill many good bike, bus, and pedestrian projects across the city for decades. Outreach has often favored well-off Angelenos over those who ride buses, bike, and walk. Sometimes outreach processes have allowed a few loud opponents to outweigh broad community support.
We don't trust that involving three city departments — LADOT, City Planning, and the Board of Public Works — and a bike and bus lane hostile City Attorney in setting outreach requirements that truly support the Council's approved Mobility Plan's equity, safety, environment, and non-motorized mobility goals. In a worse case scenario, these entities could create a bureaucratic and NIMBY prescription to set the outreach bar so high that projects never meaningfully advance. Even without this multi bureaucratic system — today, life saving projects are often delayed. For example, the bike and pedestrian safety improvements on Adams Blvd planned since 2017 took four years to get approved by the council office, in the name of more “outreach.” The formula set out here will make this worse.
The next provision creates a dashboard to help the general public track progress, something Healthy Streets LA also has. However, it then states that the City won’t start following its Mobility Plan during repaving until the dashboard is live. To show good faith, the City could have started implementing its Mobility Plan during repaving after the August 2022, like Council claimed it wanted to do. It didn’t, and it’s been business as usual, with the City ignoring most of the Mobility Plan during repaving. Now the City is giving itself another year (or more) to continue ignoring its own plan during repaving (assuming it meets its own timeline in creating the dashboard; we’re not optimistic given it’s missed every other deadline it’s set for itself during this process).
THAT is the City’s appeal process if they ignore their own Mobility Plan during repaving. This appeals process is complicated, convoluted, and results in a delay of at least six months before you can sue the City for noncompliance. This is yet another roadblock in holding the City accountable, and a process that the average Angeleno will be unlikely to perform — it requires someone to spend an enormous amount of time and energy. The process should be dramatically simplified and modernized.
In our version, if the City ignores its Mobility Plan during repaving, any Angeleno can sue the City and a judge can order the City to redo the street correctly. The person that sued can get their attorney fees paid for by the City if they win.
In the City’s version, you can also sue the City — after you go through their exhausting and long appeals process — but you aren’t entitled to your attorney fees. In other words, in the City’s version, only wealthy people will be in a position to hold the City accountable. In our version, anyone can do it and not have to pay to hold the City accountable.
So what is our overall take on the City’s version? It’s full of holes, exceptions, and bureaucracy, and is not an attempt to actually implement the Mobility Plan during repaving; it’s an attempt to look like it’s doing something, while actually continuing to mostly ignore the Mobility Plan. It also does not address any of the equity additions Nury had promised, nor does it establish a centralized office of coordination, or provide for a multi year funding plan.
In other words, it’s not nearly good enough. We have raised more than $2,000,000 to get our ballot measure across the finish line this spring. Our polling shows an overwhelming number of Angelenos are sick of the status quo — and will support Healthy Streets LA at the ballot box. If you’re ready for change, join us! You can stay up-to-date, volunteer, donate, and get involved on our website.
See you at the ballot box.