Drive in enough neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and you may notice a strange phenomenon: in front of newer buildings and commercial buildings, the street is slightly wider and the The sidewalk meanders around indentation. If several properties on a block have been recently redeveloped, the street begins to resemble a Puzzle puzzle piece, Expand and shrink several times.
Indeed, new developments are often necessary to devote part of their property to the city for the expansion of roads – even if the road is not congestioned.
In theory, these enlargements of the street of the spots are supposed to improve the flow of traffic. In practice, because development occurs sporadically, the parcel enlargements by plot end up eliminating mature trees, lane and sidewalk space while offering little or no relief of congestion.
Worse, the mandate unnecessarily leads to the cost of housing. In a Analysis of the dedication order of rue de Los Angeles Published in 2016, UCLA urban planning professor Michael Manville questioned several developers and estimated that the widening of the road cost them about $ 11,000 to $ 50,000 per unit.
“I have studied urban regulations for 20 years, and this is probably the stupidest regulations that I have ever encountered,” said Manville recently.
Legislators finally begin to see the expanding requirements Spot Street for what they are: zombie regulations that do not accomplish what was planned but which are really difficult to kill.
The state legislature began to try to kill the zombie this year. Governor Gavin Newsom signed an invoice By assembling Wendy Carrillo (D-Los Angeles) to limit the power of local governments to demand that the housing developers widen the roads before their projects. Agencies may still require street dedications if they can demonstrate their necessity.
An image of Google Street View of 1747 S. Barrington Ave. shows the widening of the road in front of a new building of apartments.
(Google Maps)
And this month, the Los Angeles Municipal Council has approved reforms designed to considerably reduce the number of Street Spot Enlargements. Proposed two years agoThe reforms will limit the circumstances where the widening of the roads is necessary. For example, the Bureau of Engineering will no longer automatically impose the widening of points in established neighborhoods.
The council also adopted a recommendation to modify the municipal code so that road and sidewalk changes are only necessary if they are necessary for good street design, environmental reasons or to improve the experience of pedestrians and cyclists as well as motorists.
It is important. For decades, Los Angeles prioritized drivers above all other road users – and vehicle speeds on safety and concerns of quality of life.
The city began to demand street dedications in 1961. Even then, the Ministry of Construction and Security warned that the expansion of spots would cause irregular street alignments, “hindering maintenance, drainage and flow of traffic,” wrote Manville in his analysis. The idea was that the properties would be continuously redeveloped and that the streets would eventually reach new coherent widths.
Sixty-three years later, this did not happen. But the manufacturers were ordered to cut trees, tear the lawn tracks, move the lampposts and the food posts, and even reduce the sidewalk space – and for what? Some additional feet of asphalt which may not even be wide enough for street parking.
In addition, it is increasingly recognized that the wider streets encourage motorists to speed up, which is not ideal for safe, accessible and pleasant streets.
Los Angeles needs more accommodation and safer streets. The city cannot afford to respect the zombie regulations which defeated these objectives in the books.
