The People of Los Angeles Just Said "Yes" to Safer Streets
Angelenos advocating for safer streets in Los Angeles. (Source: Yes on HLA.)
In what’s anticipated to be a landslide, the people of Los Angeles just voted in favor of walking, biking, and transit.
The citizen-sponsored ballot initiative, best known as HLA, mandates that for every 660 feet of road that the city repaves or improves, it must implement its Mobility Plan 2035. That plan was adopted nearly a decade ago alongside a Vision Zero policy to eliminate traffic deaths by 2035, but has so far yielded few of its ambitions. As for traffic deaths: Streetsblog reported that those have risen since the adoption of Vision Zero, a trend observed in most cities that have made the pledge.
Under HLA, not only is the city obligated to install elements of its Mobility Plan, which can include bike lanes, bollards, daylighting, and wider sidewalks, but it must also track progress for the public online. It if fails to do so, residents can sue.
Proponents of HLA, which as of March 11 includes 64.44% of the public and 6 councilmembers, are looking forward to the city actually complying with its own plan, one that took a lot of time and talent to draft. Most of all, they’re looking forward to making streets safer for people walking, biking, and driving.
Listen to our conversation with Michael Schneider, the campaign manager for Healthy Streets Los Angeles.
The measure, however, did have its detractors. Matthew Szabo, the city’s administrative officer, claimed that the initiative will cost the city $2.5 billion over 10 years. Many felt Szabo neglected to consider the incalculable economic benefits that safer, more productive streets would guarantee, and his figure called into question why Los Angeles and California in general are willing to readily invest similar amounts into highway expansion.
One particular viral moment on Twitter/X was the response to a since-removed video by the city’s firefighters union claiming that dedicated bike and bus lanes will increase response times. Users debunked that notion, both by citing evidence to the contrary in their replies and by adding a “community note,” a popular method of both indicting and contextualizing unsupported or false claims.
Yikes! The @UFLAC argument against Measure HLA is so full of falsehoods that Twitter added a community note to their ad.
— Yes on Measure HLA (@healthystreetla) March 5, 2024
Here's the truth: Measure HLA will fix our dangerous streets, speed up emergency response, and save countless lives. https://t.co/OGB2uDCgSA pic.twitter.com/mb6yvdo7mt
Response time is a primary concern for emergency responders like fire fighters, but for Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn, the fixation is misplaced. “We have an emphasis on response time,” he said, “while the rest of the world has an emphasis on prevention.”
Ironically, he notes, we suffer more deaths from fire despite having enshrined so many restrictions on how we build to ensure the quickest response time. Mandating wide roads, wide curb radii, and even multiple stairwells in five-story buildings are just a few examples. “And if we keep our streets wide, what we’re actually doing is facilitating an environment that will have more emergencies for firefighters to respond to.”
In fact, nationwide, most firefighters and emergency services aren’t actually responding to fires. Only 5% of calls that fire departments respond to involve fires, and 65% are medical calls, which include anything from collisions to a “bad fall,” according to the National Fire Protection Association. For example, in 2016 the National Fire Incident Reporting System calculated that each day in South Carolina, fire departments answered 1,020 calls. Only 64 were for fires, 105 were false alarms, and the overwhelming majority—in this case 591—were for non-fire-related medical emergencies like collisions and rescues.
Proponents of HLA also pointed out that first responders can use dedicated lanes when necessary, rather than be subject to the type of bumper-to-bumper traffic that actually delays life-saving services. There’s also the perspective of adaptability: fire trucks have evolved in the last 100 years through technological advancement and to better fit the environment we’ve constructed for them. That doesn’t preclude further change. Marohn pondered this exact issue nearly thirteen years ago:
Can we use our knowledge, experience and design capabilities to continue to evolve to be more effective at fighting fires in an era of austerity? Can our approach to firefighting adapt to the changing financial and physical realities of our places?
Or, are we stuck with a bloated and outdated approach, unwilling and unable to change? Are we held hostage to a rote set of standards simply because we lack the capacity to see beyond them?
Asia (pronounced “ah-sha”) Mieleszko serves as a Staff Writer for Strong Towns. A dilettante urbanist since adolescence, she's excited to convert a lifetime of ad-hoc volunteerism into a career. Her unconventional background includes directing a Ukrainian folk choir, pioneering synaesthetic performances, photographing festivals, designing websites, teaching, and ghostwriting. She can be found wherever Wi-Fi is reliable, typically along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.