MEASURE HLA PASSED — NOW WHAT?
What if we told you that a New York hedge fund billionaire and mega developers spent $3 million and paid professional activists based in Oakland to fool voters into supporting their fraudulent voter initiative here in L.A.? Well, that’s what just happened! Special interests, flush with cash, have formed an unholy alliance to destroy safety and mobility in L.A. KeepLAMoving is leading the fight to restore sanity and safety to our streets. Read on….
MEASURE HLA WILL LEAD TO:
KeepLAMoving is the true grassroots — volunteers and neighborhood leaders who care about the future of Los Angeles. Here on our website you can learn about the lies and distortions behind HLA, and also hear from our allies like the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City (UFLAC).
LAFD urged Angelenos to Vote NO on HLA!
OUR FIREFIGHTERS ARE DRAWING POLITICAL SUPPORT!
CD 11 Councilwoman Traci Park and StreetsLA (which would be responsible for implementing Measure HLA) are joining KeepLAMoving in calling out Measure HLA. We are incredibly grateful for their contributions to the dialogue. Councilwoman Park in particular deserves enormous credit for standing up for street safety, and for our first responders. As the Westside Current reports:
“Park, an avid biker on the Westside, echoed [City Administrative Officer] Szabo's concerns, stating, ‘This $3.1 billion is going to have to come from other things.’ She noted that when the City already faces a projected $500 million budget shortfall, spending on Measure HLA requirements would come at the expense of public safety, homelessness, sanitation, and other priorities. According to Park, Measure HLA would cost as much as is being spent annually under Mayor Karen Bass’s Inside Safe homeless housing initiative.”
SO WHO’S BEHIND MEASURE HLA? (HINT: iT ISN’T THE GRASSROOTS)
LAist REPORTS BILLIONAIRES AND DEVELOPERS ARE FUNDING MEASURE HLA
Don’t take our word for it: LAist has compiled the donors who are funding HLA. Big Money from hedge fund billionaires and mega developers is financing Measure HLA. Now, notice no money has been spent to fight HLA.
KeepLAMoving is truly grassroots. We aren’t funded by anyone (can you tell from our website?) We are a 100% volunteer organization working to get the truth out about Measure HLA, and to keep L.A. safe and moving!
L.A. HAS TRied “COMPLETE STREETS” FOR A DECADE — IT’S BEEN A DEADLY DISASTER
Los Angeles Traffic Deaths Pre- and Post-Complete Streets
Initiative HLA would require L.A. to install bike or bus lanes, road diets, and/or other “traffic calming measures” (here’s a definition, from the California Fire Code) whenever it resurfaces or rehabilitates more than one block of road on the 2,500 mile “high accident network.”
No consultation with first responders. No determination as to whether any particular block or neighborhood wants or needs it.
We’ve done a deep dive here. Data from the California Highway Patrol’s Statewide Integrated Traffic Reporting System (“SWITRS”) prove that traffic calming and road diets, when installed without consultation with public safety officials, often INCREASE injury and fatal accidents.
Ask yourself: Why are the advocates so adamant when the data is indisputable that these initiatives literally are killing people? What’s going on?
This video is downright scary - a fire engine and ambulance trapped on the Venice Boulevard “road diet.”
HLA would cause scenes like this EVERYWHERE.
Fact: road diets make major thoroughfares more dangerous, increase traffic and emissions, and hurt local businesses
KeepLAMoving is spearheading the fight against lane removals on major thoroughfares as well as other misguided transportation policies. L.A. Metro officials are approving disastrous arterial road diets whereby car lanes on highly-used corridors are repurposed into bike lanes, bus lanes, even features like miniature parks. The results are more accidents, closed businesses, lost jobs, and gridlock.
The interests pushing these projects use inflammatory rhetoric and made up facts to convince decision-makers that there’s an “epidemic” of pedestrian and cyclist deaths due to speeding cars (yes, they use that word even in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis) and that arterial road diets are the only way to make streets safer for all users. Neither assertion is true. Safer bikeways often can be installed on adjacent, lower volume streets, making cycling more accessible for riders of all abilities without the negative effects on communities. Read on for the real story, real facts, and real data (after all, our co-founder is an engineer)….
A study by the Michigan DOT concluded that pollution increased following the implementation of a road diet. It’s not rocket science. Creating traffic and slowing cars down is going to increase emissions and pollution, not reduce it.
Road Diet proponents have a track record of misapplying data and making up facts to support the "cars are bad" narrative:
1. The Los Angeles department of transportation (LADOT) lied about traffic volumes on pershing avenue in west l.a.’s playa del rey neighborhood. they misrepresented expected outcomes of a road diet by ANALYZING fewer THAN 1/3 OF THE TOtAL ROADS ‘DIETED’ (instead of looking at the overall impact of lane removals).
2. LADOT included accidents on side streets and police “counter reports” to inflate pre-diet numbers on venice boulevard in Mar Vista.
3. ladot claims that Road Diets reduce collisions, but that’s only the case - sometimes - on roads with fewer than 16,000 cars per day. In cities across the country we’ve seen the annual collision rate more than double on major boulevards that are ‘dieted’.
4. HLA's supporters claim that cars are the #1 killer of kids under 14. In fact, motor vehicle deaths among kids 0-14 are very low (fewer than 5 per 100,000). Teenage car occupants (15-19) skew the data dramatically, rising to 26 per 100,000. Among accidental deaths for kids under 1, suffocation is by far the largest group at 66%. For children 1-4, drowning is the highest at 27%.
5. LADOT and City of Los Angeles attempted to circumvent environmental regulations in playa del re by claiming a public safety emergency. the city made changes that had no positive impact, created massive traffic, and ignored the LADOT’s own previous safety recommendations.
Ultimately, a lawsuit FILED BY KEEPLAMOVING to challenge the CEQA exemption was successful and the paya del rey road dIet was reversed.
There’s more: data shows road diets fail to make ARTERIALS safer, and often are more dangerous
To reiterate: Road diets don't belong on major commuter corridors. That’s according to the Federal Highway Safety Administration, the Complete Streets Design Guide, as well as every major study on such lane removals. Yet officials continue to push for them, falsely claiming they make streets safer. In Los Angeles, accident data from the California Highway Patrol’s Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS) demonstrates just how dangerous Mike Bonin's experiments have been for LA neighborhoods. Not only did accidents and injuries increase on Venice Blvd. in Mar Vista and the streets “Dieted” in Playa del Rey in 2017, but surrounding streets became more hazardous too with “cut-through” traffic.
Meanwhile, L.A. Metro plans to replace traffic lanes with bus only lanes
Highlights on this map show routes where L.A. Metro will remove vehicle lanes to make way for bus only lanes. Your neigbhorhood may not be impacted yet - it will be soon.
Map is from the “Los Angeles County Bus Rapid Transit and Street Design Improvement Study” final report, December 2013.
https://media.metro.net/projects_studies/brt/report_lacbrt_1-15-2014.pdf
NOW SOME NEXT LEVEL INSANITY:
Caltrans wants to road diet … a freeway?!
We used to joke that road diets on our freeways were the next step….well CalTrans is studying safety enhancements to the iconic Arroyo Seco Parkway that connects downtown Los Angeles with Northeast L.A., Highland Park, and Pasadena. The country’s first freeway is notorious for its narrow, sharp curves and short on- and off-ramps. Opened in 1940 it remains virtually unchanged and improvements are overdue and welcome. Problem is, CalTrans may solve one set of challenges by creating a whole new mess: Three of the four alternatives involve the partial or permanent removal of traffic lanes.
Using data KeepLAMoving has demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that road diets on main thoroughfares cause more accidents, make traffic worse, and hurt local economies. Yet CalTrans wants to double down and road diet a freeway. Scroll for more info, and to learn what you can do to fight for what we call safer, saner transportation solutions.
A historic image of the iconic Arroyo Seco Parkway (courtesy National Park Service)
Los angeles needs safer, saner solutions instead of road diets on major corridors.
