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Irate Citizens to Mayor: Stop Ignoring Us |
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LA Traffic
By Ken Draper
Steamed Angelenos stormed Council Chambers Monday and provided Chair Wendy Greuel and her Transportation Committee with more than an hour of mostly angry and heated public comments on the Mayor’s recently announced plan for redirecting traffic along the Pico and Olympic Blvd corridors.
 A phalanx of neighborhood councils, residential associations, activists
and business owners paraded to the public comment podium and admonished
Mayor Villaraigosa and Councilman Jack Weiss for proposing the
Pico/Olympic traffic plan without first engaging the citizenry in some
dialogue. As one speaker said: “These are not your neighborhoods …
these are our neighborhoods and we’re tired of being left out.”
As CityWatch reported a week ago, Villaraigosa and Weiss pulled the curtain on “Olympic-West Pico-East” ... a plan to speed up traffic flow that the Mayor called the “new way … the smart way to reduce traffic congestion.” Problem is, apparently, he forgot to ask any of LA’s drivers or neighborhoods how smart they thought it was … before he broke the news.
“The first time I heard about this plan,” Miracle Mile Residential Association President Jim O’Sullivan told the committee, “was when I saw the Mayor’s picture in the Times announcing the plan.”
A representative from Herb Wesson’s office was there to oppose the plan. Jack Weiss’ representative was there to support his bosses’ solution to Westside gridlock. Dozens of business from the newly revitalized stretch along Pico, between La Cienega and LaBrea, told the Transportation folks that eliminating parking …even for drive times … would essentially wipe them out.
Greuel promised the nearly full chamber that this hearing would be only the first of many opportunities for them to provide input. Councilman Rosendahl has a public meeting on the Mayor’s plan set for January 9. Councilman Tom LaBonge said he would help arrange meetings with neighborhood councils and the Department of Transportation.
Two things seemed certain: 1) Even though the community didn’t all share the same point of view on the proposed Olympic-West Pico-East plan, they were unified in their anger at being ignored in the process … and, 2) the fireworks would not end with the adjournment of Monday’s Transportation meeting.
In case you missed it, here’s a reprise of last weeks CityWatch report on the Pico/Olympic traffic plan.
LA Traffic
Mayor Pulls the Curtain on Pico/Olympic Plan
By Sara Epstein
With Councilmembers Weiss and Rosendahl and the Beverly Hills Mayor in tow, LA Mayor Villaraigosa unveiled a new traffic plan … “Olympic-West Pico-East” … on Monday and promised dramatic improvement of traffic and traffic times along two of the city’s most congested corridors.
The plan falls short of County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky’s proposal to turn the two thoroughfares into one-way streets. Some observers see the plan as a compromise designed to placate many of the businesses and some of the neighborhood councils who opposed the one-way concept.
“This is a new way, a smart way and a safe way to reduce traffic congestion,” Mayor Villaraigosa said. “We are going to prove that it works here at LA’s gridlock epicenter, and then we are going to take this model citywide.”
Developed by Mayor Villaraigosa and the LA Department of Transportation (LADOT), “Olympic-West Pico-East” is a three-phase project that will speed up the flow of traffic and reduce congestion on Olympic and Pico Boulevards along the seven-mile stretch between La Brea Boulevard and Centinela Avenue.
Phase 1 ensures consistent rush hour parking restrictions along both Olympic and Pico, and boosts enforcement efforts of parking rules by LADOT officers. Phase 2 creates preferential flow signal timing to allow commuters to move more quickly along Olympic heading west and Pico heading east.
After evaluating the results of these initial steps, the City plans to re-stripe Olympic and Pico in Phase 3 of the project, adding more westbound lanes on Olympic and more eastbound lanes on Pico. The plan also seeks to protect Westside neighborhoods by limiting left turns onto residential streets and reducing cut-through traffic on local roads.
More than 100,000 cars travel along Olympic and Pico Boulevards every day, with approximately 60,000 of these vehicles on Olympic and 40,000 on Pico. This high number of drivers creates heavy congestion and extends commute times throughout the City’s Westside and Beverly Hills. _
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