The reconfiguration of Playa del Rey streets has a purpose: saving lives
By L.A. City Councilman Mike Bonin
Brigitte Burdine was killed by a speeding car on Culver Boulevard
Brigitte Burdine had a heart of gold. Her friends called her “a mother to everyone” and “our shoulder, our rock.” She came to L.A. to break into the entertainment industry and found her calling as a voice casting director. But it was Brigitte’s tremendous love and concern for others that set her apart.
She frequently hosted voiceover training workshops where she met and mentored young talent. When a close friend was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Brigitte brought the neighborhood together for a fundraiser to help with the medical bills. She was still planning that fundraiser when, shortly after Christmas Day in 2010, she was struck and killed by a speeding car on Culver Boulevard.
Too many lives have been lost like Brigitte’s on the streets of Playa del Rey. People you might have known: Marc Schacter. Michael Lockridge. Naomi Larsen. And Jack Tawardy, a beloved neighborhood cobbler. Dozens more have been seriously injured by speeding cars.
The devastating loss of a loved one to a traffic collision is not a rare occurrence in our city. In fact, it is the No. 1 cause of death for children under 14 in Los Angeles. These tragic stories are too often forgotten, and in some cases cruelly and intentionally dismissed.
Since the reconfiguration of major throughways in Playa del Rey, I have received many emails — mostly from the South Bay — describing collision victims as “ignorant” and “too stupid to use a crosswalk.” I’ve received social media comments from beach cities residents suggesting periodic deaths and severe injuries are an acceptable cost of their unfettered commutes through Playa del Rey. I categorically reject those statements.
I know we can do better. We don’t need to sacrifice another mother or child to make way for as many speeding cars as we can jam through our neighborhoods. Instead, we can solve this problem. And in Playa del Rey, neighbors have been working with my office for years to address the dangerous conditions on our neighborhood streets.
A few weeks ago, the city started working on two separate but related projects to improve safety in Playa del Rey. First, crews re-striped Vista Del Mar to move parking to the west side of the road and to remove travel lanes as a way of preventing crashes like the one that killed Naomi Larsen there in 2015. Then, crews re-striped and narrowed Culver Boulevard, Jefferson Boulevard and Pershing Drive to add bike lanes and make the street safer for all who use it — especially pedestrians.
The traffic slowed, in some cases more so than was anticipated, and the calls and emails to my office began. There are neighbors in Playa del Rey who appreciate the efforts to create safer streets. There are others who feel trapped in or locked out of their neighborhoods. Both groups have legitimate points, and I want you to know that I’m listening and that I’m working to fix it.
The re-surfacing and re-striping are now completed, so traffic should begin to improve now that crews are done working. Also, some of the traffic we are experiencing now will ease over time as commuters grow more accustomed to the new configuration. But I don’t want to wait for that to happen before considering additional ways to improve the situation. So, at my direction, city departments have begun developing options for relieving traffic while preserving safety on the street and, once ready, we’ll bring those to you for your feedback.
While exploring these improvements, we’ll continue to get more input so we can continue making our streets safe and efficient in a way that works for Playa del Rey. But I want to be clear about something: My responsibility is to my constituents. My responsibility is to keep Playa del Rey and those who live here safe. My obligation is to provide for the residents of Playa del Rey the safe, vibrant and inviting downtown area that they’ve yearned for, much like Manhattan Beach has with Highland Avenue, or Culver City has with Culver and Washington boulevards, or Venice has with Abbot Kinney Boulevard. We should never buy into the notion that convenience is worth endangering lives.
With respect to our friends in the South Bay — many of whom have made clear they would rather see a four-lane highway traverse Playa del Rey — I refuse to solve their 405 Freeway traffic problem on the backs of the people I represent. I will not risk the lives of those who live here or visit here in order to provide a convenient cut-through for their commute to Santa Monica or Marina del Rey. And I can’t, in good conscience, give in to people who are aggressively anti-Playa del Rey — including those now objecting to city efforts to repave Playa del Rey streets as some intolerable “final straw.”
But if anyone anywhere has constructive ideas about how to keep people safe on our streets while minimizing impacts to traffic, I have always and I will always welcome that discussion. Our region is home to some of the most brilliant people on Earth, and I believe strongly that by bringing smart, concerned minds together, we can solve almost any problem. We can have safe streets and minimal impacts to commuters. We just need to come together to improve on the progress we’ve made.
Not everyone will agree with every part of this, but as long as we are all working toward a common goal — safe and inviting neighborhood streets that minimize traffic— we can make Playa del Rey an even more vibrant community.
Visit 11thdistrict.com/safe_streets_for_playa_del_rey to upload your comments.
This is sadly more Mike Bonin politicalspeak trying to wrap itself up in the sympathy of tragedy in order to try to claim the moral high ground. That is cruel and sick.
These deaths are unimaginably tragic. Yet they could have been preventable in many ways, especially when you look at the fact that recommendations and changes were presented years ago. Yet Mike Bonin did nothing until a $9M settlement was forced on the city. Then he rushes through the process as an emergency with the input from a tiny fraction of the people affected. The result is a poor plan that would not have saved the lives of the people whom he brazenly mentions in this letter as if he knew them. Really?
Vista Del Mar may be an improvement, but Culver, Jefferson, and Pershing are not. They are now more dangerous:
– Traffic is completely blocked when someone stops to park on Culver, including bicycles, which then incites road rage.
– Road rage also means that angry drivers are now racing through the bicycle lanes every day now to get ahead, causing greater danger more often than there was before.
– People now sitting in slow traffic are now texting and emailing while not paying attention.
– Now thousands of cars idling for hours throughout the day create a huge increase in pollution.
For Mike Bonin to try to present himself as a concerned neighbor when he couldn’t be bothered to do anything about this situation for years, never knew the the victims, didn’t seek input from the general public, and now pretends that there are only a few random people who are against this ill-conceived and executed plan is a slap on the face to people who have to live with this.
Bicycles were quite safe on the Ballona Bike Path for years. Law-abiding pedestrians were perfectly safe on the sidewalks and crosswalks. It’s those driving illegally fast and/or intoxicated, and pedestrians who break the law by jaywalking and/or are intoxicated while rushing across the street that have caused these tragedies. Those issues are not fixed with this “plan.” Especially as so many of them are at night and on weekends. They are what needs addressing. This is further disrespected by Mike Bonin when you note that he has shut down the comment section of this district 11 website, and refuses to respond to any tweets other than the ones praising this change and him, without addressing the decrease in safety that this plan has created. Don’t forget his avoiding the most recent June Neighborhood Council meeting either. So much for always being there to seek input on improvements. Unbelievable.
Time to do your job Bonin and fully publicize a meeting where you can actually hear peoples opinions and answer to them, rather than hiding behind selective responses on Twitter and on the District 11 website. No more people should have to face injury or even death because you are not doing your job.
#NOTSAFE #PDRDisaster #RecallBonin
There is something clearly wrong with an elected official that would use a tragic death to move an ineffective and deplorable public policy decision that is not working and lacks the support of the majority of taxpayers and voters who reside in this council district.
This is a prime example of this Machiavellian approach to government and politics in that if you oppose his controversial and ineffective policies, you support tragedy and death.
Does it get anymore silly, trivial and sad?
Why isn’t anyone investigating the fact this entire episode was kept from the public until after he was safely reelected to a near six-year term of office that will yield him over $1 million dollars in salary, free health benefits and a six-figure pension for life?
For who in this council district actually supports this policy and how much has been wasted in tax dollars for something no one wants?
This is the end result of embedded incumbents who receive token opposition that is woefully underfunded in a process where the deck is so stacked democracy is trampled by the likes of political insiders like Mike Bonin.
Wow, just wow Mike Bonin, how dare you use the tragedy of someone else’s death to score cheap political capital. Honestly I feel slimey after reading this. I work in Mar Vista and in the last two weeks, I’ve seen four car crashes, one motorcycle crash and three cyclists getting T- boned in their cycling lane (all connected to the ridiculous construction on Venice Blvd). The newly re-modified cycling lane itself being the most darkly comedic flaw in the entire plan. Why? Because no one can see the cyclists anymore Mike. Now instead of a turning lane, there’s a line of parked cars blocking their view! Needless to say we haven’t even gotten started on the congestion, the idiotic parking, the road rage and massive delays to people’s commute time. You arrive at Inglewood or Beethoven and it’s “hey we couldn’t even be bothered to tell you you’re down to two lanes for the next seven blocks suckers”. Finally, there’s a rumor, that there’s effort afoot to recall you from office Mike. Well after reading todays opinion piece you have my word that if that comes to pass I’ll be voting to throw your phony freeloading ass back to whatever cesspool you crawled out from.
Thank you for asking, Mr. Bonin, I do have some “constructive ideas about how to keep people safe on our streets while minimizing impacts to traffic” Please read on.
If we are really concerned with pedestrian safety, where are the education campaigns directed creating alert and aware pedestrians? There is nothing that exists that brings to the attention of pedestrians just how much they are assuming when they step into the road. You know like “Share the road,” “Click it or Ticket,” “Buzzed driving is drunk driving.” How about “Before you step in that street, make sure the car you think is stopping for the red light isn’t deeply engrossed in a tweet” or “Your right of way isn’t equipped with an airbag.”
You might also like to include in this campaign the following frightening pedestrian practices.
• Hovering over the curbs at intersections. Cars racing to make a right turn before the light changes can easily jump the curb or clip them in a moment’s notice.
• Pedestrians who while waiting at a red light at an intersection place their baby strollers (with a baby) in the first foot of the crosswalk so they can bolt across intersection once the light turns green. (The absolute worst thing I see)
• The westside epidemic of pedestrians who walk straight into streets and parking lots without once looking to see if any cars are coming towards them. It is truly mind-boggling that they assume cars 1) see them and 2) will stop for them.
And finally, we need to start this education early. For children entering kindergarten, it should be drilled into their brains that every time they step into a street (whether they have the right away or not) they should behave as if they are jaywalking and invisible to all the drivers around them. I was hit by a car while walking in the intersection with the right of way. While I have always been very aware of making sure cars are stopping before I step into the street and checking that no one making a right on a red behind me, I was not paying any attention to whether or not the cars making left hand turns ahead of me appeared to see me and that is exactly how I got hit. Having the right of way does not protect your body from a full size sedan.
That’s all I have.
I live in the Mar Vista area and support the road diet. Far too often we have people racing through our narrow, residential streets on their commutes, failing to actually stop at stop signs, honking or flipping me off when I take more than a quarter of a second to park in my narrow driveway, yelling at pedestrians who have the temerity to walk with their kids across the street at stop signs, i.e., require that motorists actually stop and wait 5 seconds for the intersection to clear. These drivers uniformly fail to realize and/or appreciate that they are passing through neighborhoods where decent, law-abiding people are trying to raise their families in relative peace and safety. These people are not merely inconvenient obstacles preventing them from getting to work in 42 rather than 45 minutes. While the worst road offenders seem to drive Prius and Range Rovers, virtually all seem to be 50+ middle-to-upper class people in nicer cars (I mention this in hopes of avoiding the likely gut-level reaction that I must be talking about someone else). These same people are now exhibiting in the comments above the same self-centered indifference I see them exhibit as they drive through our neighborhood, ironically citing their own rage and impatience as a reason why the road diet isn’t working. It is working, it just needs a bit of time for people to adjust.
I knew Marc Schacter…shame on you using his name for your agenda! We are all your constituents, yet you choose to represent only a select few. We have come up with alternative ideas, yet you refuse to listen! Instead you present untruths, alternative facts, and skewed data! Shame on you!