The number of people killed in traffic collisions on LA streets has climbed steadily in recent years, with more than 330 fatalities in 2023. In response, transportation safety advocates have placed Measure HLA on Los Angeles’ March ballot. Voting ends Tuesday, March 5.
The initiative has attracted both passionate support and strong opposition amid a reckoning over the future of transportation in Los Angeles. Should the city continue to focus its transportation planning around the needs of the automobile? Or is it time for LA to try an approach that puts people’s lives before drivers’ need for speed?
If passed, Measure HLA would require the city as it repaves roads to make safety improvements, such as creating crosswalks with more visible lighting and signage; increasing the number of bus-only lanes on major boulevards and avenues; and installing a lot more protected bike paths.
In some cases, such improvements might mean narrowing or eliminating existing lanes for vehicle traffic, so-called “road diets.” That could translate into drivers being forced to drive more slowly and giving pedestrians and cyclists more of a sense of belonging on LA’s streets.
But HLA supporters say they’re not trying to declare war on the car.
“This is not an anti-driver plan or an anti-car plan,” says Michael Schneider, the founder of the group Streets for All, who’s running the Yes on HLA campaign. “It's a pro-mobility plan, and most importantly, a road safety plan to make it safe to move around. Because right now, even in a car, it's not that safe in Los Angeles to get from Point A to Point B.”
Schneider says that without passing HLA, it would be nearly impossible for LA to get even close to completing street safety goals the city officially approved back in 2015.
But HLA’s opposition includes people synonymous with public safety – firefighters.
“If we pass HLA, we’re going to see chaos all over this city,” Freddy Escobar, president of the United Firefighters of LA, told a recent anti-HLA rally in Downtown Los Angeles.
Escobar said his group, which represents more than 3,500 City of LA firefighters, opposes HLA because it believes some traffic safety measures, like elminating vehicle lanes and creating protected bike paths with high curbs, could make it harder for first responders to get to emergencies.
“Every single second counts when we are dispatched to an incident,” said Escobar. “I want the residents to know that if this passes, you dial 9-1-1, this will affect an outcome when we respond to you.”
HLA critics also say they’re concerned about the measure’s possible price tag. A recent analysis by LA’s chief administrative officer reported that it could cost the city over $3 billion over the next 10 years.
“Voters need to know we are going to pay for this by cutting other things,” says LA City Councilmember Traci Park.
Those cuts, Park says, could jeopardize the city’s efforts to get more homeless people housed and to increase the size of the LAPD.
But HLA supporters say the city’s cost analysis of the measure is wildly exaggerated, and that both dollars and lives would be saved if there are fewer traffic-related deaths and injuries for police and firefighters to respond to.
“Every year, more Angelenos die as pedestrians, cyclists, and as drivers,” says Michael Schneider of the HLA campaign.
“If we don't pass this, the trend will just continue.”
