{"id":131511,"date":"2025-08-09T10:44:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T10:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/131511\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T10:44:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T10:44:08","slug":"contributor-its-no-wonder-angelenos-are-painting-crosswalks-themselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/131511\/","title":{"rendered":"Contributor: It’s no wonder Angelenos are painting crosswalks themselves"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On July 22, a feel-good story made headlines in Los Angeles: A cadre of civic-minded volunteers had spent a month of Saturdays coming together to paint crosswalks near Stoner Park in the Sawtelle neighborhood<\/a>. A concerned resident (and friend of mine), Jonathan Hale, modeled the effort on other DIY crosswalks<\/a> after he witnessed a series of close calls between pedestrians and cars. Yet, within three days of the reports about the civic effort, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation sent a crew to remove the crosswalks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why did LADOT act so quickly? It wasn\u2019t because the crosswalks were sloppy. Hale had studied the code<\/a>, and even the local City Council member\u2019s representative said it \u201clooks beautiful<\/a>.\u201d In California, every stop-sign intersection also legally includes a crosswalk regardless of paint, so the volunteers were only making that visible.<\/p>\n

One stated concern is lawsuits filed under the Americans With Disabilities Act: L.A. officially requires all crosswalk installations to include curb ramp<\/a> installations to minimize risk. This legal interpretation is neither universal<\/a> nor strictly followed in practice<\/a>. But as former official Diego de la Garza commented, LADOT believes in robust processes, always studying the potential for \u201clighting, signals and speed limits<\/a>\u201d alongside crosswalks. He suggests that merely painting a crosswalk without a holistic approach creates an \u201cillusion of safety<\/a>.\u201d In other words, LADOT removed the crosswalks because the city cannot simply make one improvement; its mandate is to study a set of possible improvements whenever considering one.<\/p>\n

No one who pays attention to Los Angeles will be surprised by this. Scholars talk of measuring a local government by its \u201cstate capacity<\/a>\u201d: how well it manages finances, maintains order and delivers public goods. By these measures, Los Angeles has a legacy marred by ambitious goals gone unexecuted because of a flawed and bloated process. Consider three of former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti\u2019s ambitious goals: Build 28 public transit projects<\/a> by the 2028 Olympics, eliminate all traffic fatalities by 2025<\/a> and end street homelessness by 2028<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today, only four of the 28 original transit projects<\/a> are completed. Traffic deaths have gone up from 186 in 2015<\/a> to 337 in 2023<\/a>. And of the $1.2 billion raised in 2016 to build 10,000 units of homeless housing, the city has completed 5,597 units<\/a>. Since 2018, the number of unsheltered people in the city has increased by 17.8% to 26,972<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These failures clearly demonstrate that our local government simply will not get things done quickly and effectively.<\/p>\n

Consider Vermont Transit Corridor<\/a>, a bus rapid transit proposal that Metro\u2019s former leadership states could have been implemented by 2028<\/a> but is now unlikely to be. The delay came when the Metro board stopped the project as conceived to instead study building a rail line (without any funding source). This second-guessing was inspired by vague concerns about racial equity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Or consider sidewalks. A simple monthlong sidewalk repair is routinely delayed by a design and contracting process that takes almost two years<\/a>, leading to wait times of up to 10 years<\/a>. One can begin to understand why a couple of years ago in Brentwood, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger resorted to filling potholes himself<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s homeless housing projects funded by Proposition HHH took an average of three to six years<\/a> to build, with one taking 18 years <\/a>because of layers of approvals and a California Environmental Quality Act lawsuit.<\/p>\n

This is precisely why our vigilante crosswalk painters opted for DIY work: They wanted to see a crosswalk painted, not bogged down by red tape. Thankfully, just seven days after LADOT undid Hale\u2019s work, the city repainted the crosswalks<\/a>. Facing public pressure, the city decided that absolute ADA liability avoidance need not be the priority. And it likely never should have been: Since 2020, L.A. has paid nearly $300 million<\/a> in liability claims from broken infrastructure<\/a> and only $1.4 million in ADA lawsuits<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But without deeper reforms, we are unlikely to see the city painting more anytime soon: Only days after the crosswalks were removed, emails show that LADOT is refusing to consider street improvements. Why? Because of recent city budget cuts<\/a>, the department \u201cno longer has adequate staffing<\/a>\u201d to consider conducting \u201cstudies\u201d for implementing \u201ctraffic control devices<\/a>\u201d (i.e., a crosswalk). Rather than simplifying the process, L.A. is throwing up its hands and saying to residents, \u201cNo more crosswalks!\u201d<\/p>\n

In contrast, consider how Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro famously fixed a broken freeway in 12 days<\/a>. Then-Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels got average Bureau of Motor Vehicles visit times down to nine minutes<\/a>. Back in 1994, after the Northridge earthquake, local authorities had the Santa Monica Freeway back in service<\/a> in less than three months. And recently, when public pressure was applied, even LADOT found the time to remove and repaint crosswalks in 10 days.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles should be working to streamline every process it can, increasing state capacity and making it easier to do good. But seeing this happen will require a fundamental political reorientation. Moderates must stop pretending the status quo works, and progressives should stop promising ambitious moonshots without first making existing services functional.<\/p>\n

But most importantly, it requires more citizens like my friends at Stoner Park, who are invested enough in their city to seek reform, ideally with their hands and their votes.<\/p>\n

Thomas Irwin is an economic development professional for a nonprofit in Los Angeles and a housing organizer with the Faith and Housing Coalition<\/a> and Eastside Housing for All<\/a>. He writes \u201cThe Pontification\u201d on Substack<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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