Cuts to LADOT could hurt Olympics and safety goals, department warns
Significant cuts to Los Angeles' transportation agency could threaten major transit plans for the Olympics and citywide safety goals, the agency's top leader warned.
The mayor's budget proposed the reduction of more than $7 million in expenses and the elimination of nearly 24% of the Department of Transportation's workforce — making it one of the heaviest-hit departments. The cuts would affect parking enforcement, traffic signal updates, goals to improve traffic safety and support for major rail and bus lane projects ahead of the 2028 Olympics.
'Many of LADOT's core services are driven by safety — a singular goal to make our streets safer and provide Angelenos with safer options for travelling," General Manager Laura Rubio-Cornejo wrote in a memo Tuesday to Katy Yaroslavsky, the city's budget and finance committee chair. "The budget cuts and proposed layoffs threaten this fundamental goal."
Other departments that focus on transportation are also facing big cuts. The Bureau of Engineering is poised to lose 131 positions in its department, which focuses on street and bridge improvements and major infrastructure updates. StreetsLA, formerly the Bureau of Street Services, could face a reduction of more than 260 jobs. The cuts would affect the timing for pothole repairs, street sweeping, tree trimming and emergency response, and would prevent the bureau from investigating Americans With Disabilities Act violations, according to StreetsLA Executive Director and General Manager Keith Mozee, who wrote a letter to the committee.
The proposed cuts to departments come as residents press city officials to implement a decade-old mobility plan and improve traffic safety. The reductions could affect that voter mandate.
Mayor Karen Bass' proposed budget, released Monday, would eliminate a nearly $1-billion financial gap by cutting more than 2,700 city jobs.
The proposed transportation agency reduction of 271 filled positions and 152 vacant ones would limit the city's ability to monitor parking enforcement and traffic control at protests and special events and would create lags in investigating complaints of abandoned vehicles, Rubio-Cornejo wrote. The cuts would affect response times by the department to answer requests from the Fire and Police departments, and would result in roughly 700 unanswered daily calls from residents to the Transportation Department's communications center. They would slow down repairs to traffic signals and maintenance of signage and lane striping.
'Identifying system malfunctions and repairs to the signal system will be slow and may have direct impacts in emergency response,' Rubio-Cornejo wrote.
The cuts would affect the agency's ability to support some of Metro's "major rail and bus-only lane projects" ahead of the Olympic Games, according to the memo. A Metro spokesperson declined to comment.
Metro's plans ahead of the Olympics include an expansion of its transit network that would depend heavily on bus use, more bus priority lanes and faster speeds. Construction is underway to update Metro's G Line bus route in the San Fernando Valley — a project that relies on the city transportation agency to update traffic signals to favor Metro's electric buses for faster service.
The city is on the hook for $183 million to improve streets at stations for three Metro projects under Measure M. That money could go to the transportation agency or directly to Metro, but Rubio-Cornjeo warned that the loss of transportation agency staff would pose challenges to the projects.
The memo comes after a report was shared with the mayor detailing recommendations from the transit agency about how to improve the city's Vision Zero initiative to eliminate traffic deaths. The joint report from the chief administrative officer and the Department of Transportation focuses largely on the need for traffic enforcement — which has dropped over time amid staff cuts and priority shifts at LAPD — after findings of failures in the program.
The proposed transportation cuts would affect the department's ability to carry out its recommendations, Rubio-Cornejo wrote, which includes reevaluating data collection and developing public awareness campaigns around traffic safety. And it would lead to a drop in revenue from parking citations and in overall traffic compliance.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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