Crazy quilt approach won’t solve city’s traffic problems, says MMRA president Jim O’Sullivan

| August 1, 2013 | 0 Comments
miracle mile 1954-

Wilshire Boulevard, 1954.

Much of the wisdom that comes with age is a result of learning the profundity of clichés. I grew up with the well-worn truism: the more things change; the more they stay the same. The durability of that adage took me by surprise recently as I read the introduction to a 1915 Los Angeles traffic study. Here’s what it said:

“One of the outcomes of modern civilization has been the collection of populations into large centers at situations of geographical importance as regarded from a commercial, or as in the case of Los Angeles, a climatic point of view. The massing of such populations has necessarily given rise to civic problems, not the least of which are the providing of adequate urban and inter-urban transportation and the relief of congestion in crowded streets.”

No clear vision

What I have learned from a 1915 study of traffic conditions in the City of Los Angeles, and from reading this and countless other traffic studies of a more recent vintage is that we have never had a clear and comprehensive vision of how to handle transportation and congestion in the sprawling metropolis that is Los Angeles.

And it is glaringly apparent that our modern politicians and experts still haven’t grasped the above-stated concept that “consideration should be given them as a whole.”

This lack of consideration is why with one hand we are spending exorbitant sums on new light rail lines and subway extensions, while the other hand slashes budgets for bus and local DASH service. It is why the city is obsessed with the creation of bike lanes while it continues to ignore crumbling streets and buckling sidewalks.

Ignores studies

It is why the city is strong-arming “Transit-Oriented-Density” projects that our failing infrastructure can’t support. And it is why the city routinely issues new traffic studies and then routinely ignores them.

There is little-to-no political will to consider the needs of this city as a whole. That was the case in 1915, and it is the case today. The more things change, the more they stay the same…

But the MMRA intends to confront this chronic tunnel vision, this crazy-quilt approach to city planning. We are going to take a “global” approach to every new project that comes to the Miracle Mile —large or small. And we are going to do everything within our power to demand that the City does the same. Our eyes are wide open. Because we have learned the hard way that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.

By James O’Sullivan, president of the Miracle Mile Residential Association

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