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Protest Grows: Freeway Billboards Delayed |
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The City
By Sara Epstein with contributions from Barbara Broide & Dennis Hathaway
In the face of a swelling protest from neighborhood councils, and numerous other community activists, the city council on Wednesday postponed consideration of the south L.A. park project that included a measure allowing new giant billboards alongside the 10 Freeway downtown.
 The agenda item was an Environmental Impact Report for the South Los
Angeles Wetlands Park Project, but sponsor Jan Perry asked that it be
continued until February 12. The supplemental use district, which would
allow Clear Channel to erect the billboards on the MTA property, will
be considered by the City Planning Commission on January 10.
The City Council was being asked to approve an Environmental Impact Report for a project that includes a Supplemental Use District to allow the Clear Channel billboard company to erect four full-sized, seven-story high billboards on MTA property directly abutting the 10 freeway in downtown Los Angeles.
According to the proposal, two of the 14x48 ft. billboards will be digital, with advertising images changing as rapidly as every four seconds. Located less than 100 ft. from the freeway, the billboards will be angled toward the traffic and will display messages 24 hours a day. The height and proximity to the freeway far exceed what is currently allowed by City sign codes, and allowing them is a giant step backward for beautification and reducing visual clutter in the city’s landscape.
There have also been serious questions raised, both locally and nationally, about the potential effect of such digital billboards on traffic safety, and there hasn’t been anything like an adequate study of that issue in this case, where the stretch of freeway for which the signs are proposed is one of the most heavily trafficked in the entire City.
This supplemental use district was slipped into a proposal for a city public works project called the South Los Angeles Wetlands Parks Project. It has nothing to do with that project, but was included to settle a lawsuit by Clear Channel against the MTA when the company had to remove its billboards from the old railroad right-of-way running down the middle of Santa Monica Blvd. between Hollywood and Beverly Hills.
Barbara Broide reminds activists: “If you are concerned about visual blight and traffic safety, or if you believe the public is ill-served when important matters of public policy are decided behind closed doors as part of lawsuit settlements, please call or send an e-mail to your councilmember urging him or her to vote against accepting this EIR. In addition, you can send comments to the planning commission asking members to reject the supplemental use district that will allow these billboards. “
Comments can be sent to
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and should reference the application number, CPC-2006-9769-GAP- ZCCU-ZV-SN.
CurbedLA.com offers a simulated driver’s perspective on these billboards. Click here.
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