Latest news with #StreetsLA
Fast Company
3 days ago
- Climate
- Fast Company
L.A. is rolling out 3,000 bus shelters to help protect riders from extreme heat
Temperatures in Los Angeles continue to rise—the number of annual extreme heat days has tripled over the past century, and average summer temperatures have increased more than one degree Fahrenheit in the past 20 years. To provide some relief from the sun, StreetsLA is deploying 3,000 bus shelters across some of the highest-ridership areas in L.A. Some of the city's most vulnerable communities live in these neighborhoods and yet green space with natural shade is scarce. Since the shelters started being rolled out, an average of 63,800 riders are seeing the benefits every weekday. 'It became a very human-centric effort of understanding who the transit riders are and understanding their needs,' says Carlos Madrid III, senior associate principal at SOM LA studio, the architecture firm that designed the project. Inspired by California modernism architecture, the shelters are simple and functional, with clean lines and a clear indoor-outdoor connection. The final deadline for Fast Company's Next Big Things in Tech Awards is Friday, June 20, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
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. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Yahoo
'Beyond comprehension'; Chainsawed trees in downtown L.A. hint at city core's decline
Downtown Los Angeles has seen more than its share of indignity over the last few years. The pandemic sent office vacancy rates rising as masses of in-person workers stayed home, and, in turn, many restaurants and businesses shuttered. Homelessness soared amid interconnected economic, mental health and drug crises. And though downtown has since seen some development, a looming sense of disarray and decline lingers. After the 6th Street Viaduct was triumphantly unveiled, its hype quickly gave way to unruly street takeovers and copper thieves wire-stripping its lighting. Even as the skyline expanded, Angelenos' attention fell on two skyscrapers that taggers had almost entirely covered in graffiti. Which is why this weekend's shocking act of vandalism that took out six of the city's mature trees felt all the more disheartening. 'This has struck a chord," said Cassy Horton, a 37-year-old downtown resident. "It just really like flies in the face of everything that we're trying to do [to revitalize] the community, and for somebody to go around ... and set back what little progress we already have ... was really, really upsetting and hurtful." Read more: Vandals chainsaw dozens of trees across downtown L.A. Along with safety, she said, green space has been one of the top concerns of the almost 100,000 people who live downtown, so the attack on some of the area's few trees particularly angered people. "It's kind of an 'Enough is enough,'" said Horton, who serves on the board of directors of the Downtown Los Angeles Residents Assn., which advocates for more than 2,300 residents and community stakeholders. "A lot of the issues that we face when we're talking about homelessness and mental health and open-air drug use and all of these things — they feel really thorny and complicated. ... But something like this, it's become a bit of a rallying cry for people downtown. We want to have a warm, welcoming, safe public realm." Many of the downed trees were discovered Saturday morning, when images of the sawed trunks and their massive, felled branches lit up online message boards and went viral on social media. On Wednesday, the LAPD announced the arrest of Samuel Patrick Groft, 45, on suspicion of felony vandalism. Investigators say they linked the suspect to 13 downed trees in five locations across the city, and tips about additional trees continue to come. Groft was reportedly captured on surveillance footage using an electric chainsaw to cut down the trees on several different days, at several different times for more than a week. The earliest confirmed date was April 13. StreetsLA, the city bureau responsible for maintaining streets and the urban forest, said its teams confirmed a total of six trees vandalized downtown this past weekend: three ficus, two sycamore and one Chinese elm, according to a statement from bureau director Dan Halden. These large shade trees, many along South Grand Avenue, were severed at the base or cut several feet above the pavement. He didn't immediately respond to questions about trees that were cut in other parts of L.A. The StreetsLA team "quickly responded and cleared the debris from all six locations," Halden said. He said they were still evaluating the total cost of the damage and of potential replacements. For many, this blatant act of disrespect represents the latest failure by city officials to keep downtown from further deterioration, and underscores a gnawing feeling that the heart of Los Angeles has fallen by the wayside. 'It's indicative of the lack of regard,' said John Sischo, a longtime developer downtown. 'It's because no one is really caring. ... This stuff happens when there's not enough people." Sischo said it's hard to get people and businesses to return to the area when there are real and perceived safety concerns that remain unaddressed. A turnaround requires addressing homelessness through an engaged and proactive government that works cooperatively with business and local leaders, he said. He hasn't seen that yet. Read more: In Altadena, a fight to save the trees that survived the fire In many ways, Paul Kaufman, a small business owner downtown, agrees. 'There are some areas of progress, but it seems very halting," Kaufman said, who loves the area and believes it deserves better. "Something seems really great and then it withers. .... The real thing to make downtown work and feel safer is to have more people there." Downtown offices remain about one-third vacant, according to real estate brokerage CBRE, with the pandemic's effects still looming large. Crime rates in the area appear to be relatively stable over the last few months, according to available data from LAPD's Central Division, which covers all of downtown. (However, it's hard to comprehensively evaluate how much crime has changed over the last few years, as the LAPD recently overhauled how it records such statistics.) But there have been areas of progress and resilience: Apartments downtown have remained relatively full. New restaurants are opening, Metro's regional connector is up and running, and several new high-end retail and hotel spaces have debuted. Plus, plans to revitalize the L.A. Convention Center and gear up for the the 2028 Olympics promise a wave of investment in downtown. And perhaps that's why this violent assault on the community's trees "really struck a nerve," said Nick Griffin, the executive vice president of the DTLA Alliance, formerly the Downtown Center Improvement District. "In the downtown L.A. community, we are working to bring downtown back and [are] particularly focused on improving the public realm — this just seemed like such a senseless attack on that," Griffin said. 'It just seems so absurdly senseless." But he and other area organizers are hopeful the concern about the trees — and what it means about the state of downtown living — could inspire renewed action, investment and hope. 'In some ways, one of the key things that we're focused on is building the community and coalitions that it takes to revitalize a place like downtown," Griffin said. "There's no one silver bullet and there's no one organization that can do it.' Ricardo Sebastián, an entrepreneur who lives and works downtown, has been trying to change the perception of the neighborhood through social media and marketing campaigns — but unfortunately, it feels like this incident could hurt those efforts. 'This actually perpetuates the stereotype that downtown is dirty, filthy, unsafe," Sebastián said. 'We can paint and we can prime and we can build out storefronts and bring in really interesting businesses. ... But if we have people coming into town wielding chainsaws or defacing [buildings] .... we have to work that much harder." For some, that's the plan. Horton and other board members from the residents group have called for immediate action from city officials, both to replace the trees and to hold the perpetrator to account — in an effort to help "shift the anti-social, chaotic trajectory of our neighborhood," the group wrote in a letter to city officials. The group said it looked forward to working with officials, notably Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents downtown, to ensure that "the loss of these trees signals the beginning of the end of the ongoing corrosion of DTLA's public realm." "We need champions; we need folks in L.A. to care about downtown and to see it as the heart of our city," Horton said. "It's where we convene, it's where we protest, it's where we go out. ... We're starting to see some of our elected leaders step up and support us, but our challenges are acute." Read more: Former L.A. Councilmember Kevin de León faces ethics fine for voting on issues in which he had a financial stake In a public statement, Jurado's office said her team was in "close communication" with the LAPD about its ongoing investigation, and that she had brought forward a motion that would increase penalties in the municipal code for tree injury violations, in hopes of deterring future incidents. The statement thanked the community for bringing the issue to officials' attention, saying "this is exactly what co-governance in action looks like. Stay tuned for updates." The office of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass issued a statement calling the act "beyond comprehension." "City public works crews are assessing the damage and we will be making plans to quickly replace these damaged trees," Bass' spokesperson Zach Seidl said in a statement. "Those responsible must be held accountable." But some didn't see this incident as a sign of larger issues downtown, though there's a clear environmental loss with losing any tree: They provide shade, stormwater and pollution management and habitats for birds and other small animals. Urban trees have also been found to slow the deterioration of streets and reduce crime. "It's a huge hit," said Lee Coffee, who lives and works in downtown L.A., mostly lamenting the loss of shade. But he called the whole ordeal "kind of random." "The cleanup was really fast," Coffee said. 'I haven't noticed any other events like this." Times staff writers Roger Vincent and Clara Harter contributed to this report. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
24-04-2025
- Los Angeles Times
‘Beyond comprehension'; Chainsawed trees in downtown L.A. hint at city core's decline
Downtown Los Angeles has seen more than its share of indignity over the last few years. The pandemic sent office vacancy rates rising as masses of in-person workers stayed home, and, in turn, many restaurants and businesses shuttered. Homelessness soared amid interconnected economic, mental health and drug crises. And though downtown has since seen some development, a looming sense of disarray and decline lingers. After the 6th Street Viaduct was triumphantly unveiled, its hype quickly gave way to unruly street takeovers and copper thieves wire-stripping its lighting. Even as the skyline expanded, Angelenos' attention fell on two skyscrapers that taggers had almost entirely covered in graffiti. Which is why this weekend's shocking act of vandalism that took out six of the city's mature trees felt all the more disheartening. 'This has struck a chord,' said Cassy Horton, a 37-year-old downtown resident. 'It just really like flies in the face of everything that we're trying to do [to revitalize] the community, and for somebody to go around ... and set back what little progress we already have ... was really, really upsetting and hurtful.' Along with safety, she said, green space has been one of the top concerns of the almost 100,000 people who live downtown, so the attack on some of the area's few trees particularly angered people. 'It's kind of an 'Enough is enough,'' said Horton, who serves on the board of directors of the Downtown Los Angeles Residents Assn., which advocates for more than 2,300 residents and community stakeholders. 'A lot of the issues that we face when we're talking about homelessness and mental health and open-air drug use and all of these things — they feel really thorny and complicated. ... But something like this, it's become a bit of a rallying cry for people downtown. We want to have a warm, welcoming, safe public realm.' Many of the downed trees were discovered Saturday morning, when images of the sawed trunks and their massive, felled branches lit up online message boards and went viral on social media. On Wednesday, the LAPD announced the arrest of Samuel Patrick Groft, 45, on suspicion of felony vandalism. Investigators say they linked the suspect to 13 downed trees in five locations across the city, and tips about additional trees continue to come. Groft was reportedly captured on surveillance footage using an electric chainsaw to cut down the trees on several different days, at several different times for more than a week. The earliest confirmed date was April 13. StreetsLA, the city bureau responsible for maintaining streets and the urban forest, said its teams confirmed a total of six trees vandalized downtown this past weekend: three ficus, two sycamore and one Chinese elm, according to a statement from bureau director Dan Halden. These large shade trees, many along South Grand Avenue, were severed at the base or cut several feet above the pavement. He didn't immediately respond to questions about trees that were cut in other parts of L.A. The StreetsLA team 'quickly responded and cleared the debris from all six locations,' Halden said. He said they were still evaluating the total cost of the damage and of potential replacements. For many, this blatant act of disrespect represents the latest failure by city officials to keep downtown from further deterioration, and underscores a gnawing feeling that the heart of Los Angeles has fallen by the wayside. 'It's indicative of the lack of regard,' said John Sischo, a longtime developer downtown. 'It's because no one is really caring. ... This stuff happens when there's not enough people.' Sischo said it's hard to get people and businesses to return to the area when there are real and perceived safety concerns that remain unaddressed. A turnaround requires addressing homelessness through an engaged and proactive government that works cooperatively with business and local leaders, he said. He hasn't seen that yet. In many ways, Paul Kaufman, a small business owner downtown, agrees. 'There are some areas of progress, but it seems very halting,' Kaufman said, who loves the area and believes it deserves better. 'Something seems really great and then it withers. .... The real thing to make downtown work and feel safer is to have more people there.' Downtown offices remain about one-third vacant, according to real estate brokerage CBRE, with the pandemic's effects still looming large. Crime rates in the area appear to be relatively stable over the last few months, according to available data from LAPD's Central Division, which covers all of downtown. (However, it's hard to comprehensively evaluate how much crime has changed over the last few years, as the LAPD recently overhauled how it records such statistics.) But there have been areas of progress and resilience: Apartments downtown have remained relatively full. New restaurants are opening, Metro's regional connector is up and running, and several new high-end retail and hotel spaces have debuted. Plus, plans to revitalize the L.A. Convention Center and gear up for the the 2028 Olympics promise a wave of investment in downtown. And perhaps that's why this violent assault on the community's trees 'really struck a nerve,' said Nick Griffin, the executive vice president of the DTLA Alliance, formerly the Downtown Center Improvement District. 'In the downtown L.A. community, we are working to bring downtown back and [are] particularly focused on improving the public realm — this just seemed like such a senseless attack on that,' Griffin said. 'It just seems so absurdly senseless.' But he and other area organizers are hopeful the concern about the trees — and what it means about the state of downtown living — could inspire renewed action, investment and hope. 'In some ways, one of the key things that we're focused on is building the community and coalitions that it takes to revitalize a place like downtown,' Griffin said. 'There's no one silver bullet and there's no one organization that can do it.' Ricardo Sebastián, an entrepreneur who lives and works downtown, has been trying to change the perception of the neighborhood through social media and marketing campaigns — but unfortunately, it feels like this incident could hurt those efforts. 'This actually perpetuates the stereotype that downtown is dirty, filthy, unsafe,' Sebastián said. 'We can paint and we can prime and we can build out storefronts and bring in really interesting businesses. ... But if we have people coming into town wielding chainsaws or defacing [buildings] .... we have to work that much harder.' For some, that's the plan. Horton and other board members from the residents group have called for immediate action from city officials, both to replace the trees and to hold the perpetrator to account — in an effort to help 'shift the anti-social, chaotic trajectory of our neighborhood,' the group wrote in a letter to city officials. The group said it looked forward to working with officials, notably Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents downtown, to ensure that 'the loss of these trees signals the beginning of the end of the ongoing corrosion of DTLA's public realm.' 'We need champions; we need folks in L.A. to care about downtown and to see it as the heart of our city,' Horton said. 'It's where we convene, it's where we protest, it's where we go out. ... We're starting to see some of our elected leaders step up and support us, but our challenges are acute.' In a public statement, Jurado's office said her team was in 'close communication' with the LAPD about its ongoing investigation, and that she had brought forward a motion that would increase penalties in the municipal code for tree injury violations, in hopes of deterring future incidents. The statement thanked the community for bringing the issue to officials' attention, saying 'this is exactly what co-governance in action looks like. Stay tuned for updates.' The office of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass issued a statement calling the act 'beyond comprehension.' 'City public works crews are assessing the damage and we will be making plans to quickly replace these damaged trees,' Bass' spokesperson Zach Seidl said in a statement. 'Those responsible must be held accountable.' But some didn't see this incident as a sign of larger issues downtown, though there's a clear environmental loss with losing any tree: They provide shade, stormwater and pollution management and habitats for birds and other small animals. Urban trees have also been found to slow the deterioration of streets and reduce crime. 'It's a huge hit,' said Lee Coffee, who lives and works in downtown L.A., mostly lamenting the loss of shade. But he called the whole ordeal 'kind of random.' 'The cleanup was really fast,' Coffee said. 'I haven't noticed any other events like this.' Times staff writers Roger Vincent and Clara Harter contributed to this report.
Los Angeles Times
24-04-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
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.
