Letter to Support the Healthy Streets LA Ballot Initiative
/Today, we sent this letter to our local City Council members, LADOT, Streets LA and the Mayor. We call for support for the Healthy Streets LA Initiative. Please read, share, and send your own or just sign the Healthy Streets LA Ballot Initiative petition. We can help you be heard!
March 14, 2022: Paramedics give aid to cyclist struck in crosswalk by vehicle at Stadium Way/Riverside Drive.
Mayor Eric Garcetti
Los Angeles City Council
Seleta Reynolds, General Manager, LADOT
Keith Mozee, General Manager, StreetsLA
April 11, 2022
Los Angeles River Communities for Environmental Equity supports the Healthy Streets LA ballot initiative. We ask that the Los Angeles City Council create an ordinance that automatically implements the Mobility Plan 2035 when repaving streets, using the exact language as written in the initiative. The Mobility Plan 2035 was exhaustively researched, went through community process, and was approved by the City Council in 2015 – it is time to act.
Every day we live with an epidemic of preventable deaths due to automobile crashes involving cyclists and pedestrians. While this is citywide – each year, more than 200 people lose their lives while traveling on Los Angeles streets – we in Elysian Valley, Cypress Park and communities surrounding the Los Angeles River, know all too well how dangerous it is to navigate the fastmoving streets one must use to access the safety of the LA River Greenway Shared Path. Fletcher Drive (promised improvements aborted by Councilmember O’Farrell), San Fernando Road, Riverside Drive and all the side streets that feed into one of the many freeways entangled in our neighborhoods make getting to-and-from school, walking, biking or getting to the bus incredibly risky. From the “Drive Like Your Son Died Here” sign marking the fatal car crash that killed our neighbor Christian Vega in a crosswalk on Riverside Drive, to the ghost bike on North San Fernando Road and Humboldt Street, decorated for every holiday by loved ones whose grief cannot be eased, to the recent killing of a cyclist who was hit from behind while biking on San Fernando Road in Cypress Park, we see daily reminders of preventable tragedies.
Implementing the Mobility Plan simply makes sense to ease traffic, relieve pollution, better public health, and protect ALL travelers of this city, from the very young to the very old. Right now, implementing the plan is too much in the hands of individual Council members, swayed by their donors or the loudest constituents to forestall these lifesaving improvements. We have only to compare the complete streets improvements on Riverside Drive in CD4 with Riverside Drive in CD13 where a cyclist was recently struck by a car while using the crosswalk at Stadium Way to see this in action. Councilmember Nithya Raman made sure the repaving included protected bike lanes and crosswalk amenities; we need that from Mitch O’Farrell and CD13 and our entire city council.
We urge you to support the Healthy Streets LA ballot initiative which would mandate that the City implement its own mobility plan 2035. Failure to implement this plan is a failure to protect the most vulnerable residents – the millions of riders who use public transit, those who cannot choose to or afford to drive, those who are working to solve the climate crisis by walking, biking, and taking transit. It would take so little to make our streets safer and quieter, our air cleaner and our city more habitable.
Ghost bike at North San Fernando Road and Humboldt Street. We cannot even find reports on this tragedy.