ALPERN AT LARGE-The evening meetings and the Times (and other press) are going full-bore with respect to Planning, Transportation Taxes, and creating a new and better City of LA for the 21st century. The missing element--a general population that is either exhausted, disillusioned or defeated into thinking it can make a difference in our society.
To begin with, an explanation and a clarification. First, the explanation: the recent CityWatch article by my fellow contributor and colleague, Jack Humphreville, was an April Fool's Day joke.
The Mayor has NOT come out against the proposed road tax initiative (yet?) scheduled for this November's ballot, the Governor has NOT abandoned High Speed rail, and there will be NO block grant from Sacramento fix our roads.
...but it does kind of make a lot of us wonder what sort of reality we'd be in if we did see this sort of government in action.
Next, the clarification: if anyone thought that I wrote that Councilmember Paul Koretz favored an at-grade rail crossing at Overland Ave. during the "Expo Line Wars", then let me tell you that was NEVER the case.
I'll retract any suggestion that any of my articles implied that--as Paul Koretz recently told my fellow Westside Villagers, who are concerned about Expo Line traffic impacts, he was prevented from representing his own Council District.
Do I believe that Councilmember Koretz and the Westside was caught between activists who wanted an at-grade crossing, and activists who ONLY wanted a trench under Overland Ave. and Westwood Blvds.?
Yes, although I wish that Westside leadership at some level should have told all sides to stand down and work with the LADOT to get the same rail bridge at Overland Ave. that we'll now have at Sepulveda and Venice Blvds.
Because a fight for an overly-expensive and frightfully-complicated rail tunnel in the Westside was always a naive and sad fight that could only result in at-grade crossing at Overland Ave.
Those "community leaders" who shut down those of us who advocated for the bridge option at Overland Ave.--the only way to prevent traffic problems--must now explain to the now-frustrated greater Westside why they didn't sufficiently push for that (or perhaps they'll try to rewrite history to suggest they pushed for the bridge with the same vigor that they pushed for the tunnel).
And for Mayoral wannabe Bernard Parks, who has recently been disempowered and redistricted, and who now claims his backstabbers have become more brazen? Well, what comes around goes around--Councilmember Parks had no right to deny Paul Koretz the right to vote on the grade crossings in Koretz's district.
At this time, Paul Koretz is spot-on with his recommendation to wait and see how traffic will or will not be affected by the grade crossing at Overland Ave.
Overland Ave. does remain a contentious and relevant issue, because with overdevelopment and a City of Los Angeles all too eager to treat the 70-90,000 riders/day Expo Line like a 1-300,000 riders/day subway, the issue of Overland being at-grade might not go away.
(A side note to my neighbors--the rough, bumpy crossings over the rail tracks at Westwood and Overland will be worked and smoothed out in the months to come, and the smart-and-necessary delay of paving over Pico Blvd. between Sawtelle and Sepulveda Blvds. will come to an end once utility work on the 405 freeway and Expo Line is concluded.)
We SHOULD wait and see what the Expo Line does and doesn't do for the Westside, and perhaps take a gander at what the Expo Line is already doing for Downtown and the Mid-City--some densification is good, but without some restraint, bus/van and bicycle/pedestrian amenities and parking (YES, I said PARKING) the Westside will suffer decreased, not increased mobility from the Expo Line (and you can kiss Measure R-2 goodbye).
We SHOULD wait for a series of new Community Plans to come out in order to properly zone our City into appropriate residential, commercial and industrial districts, and before we have a repeat of the mess that is now occurring with Hollywood.
We SHOULD confront the decreased affordable housing and decreased mobility that exploitation of SB 1818 has caused for the City of Los Angeles, and follow Councilmember Mike Bonin's lead that the City enact policies that ensure affordable housing without overdevelopment--even if it means lowering the floor of what is allowed for residential zoning if SB 1818 requires the ceiling be arbitrarily raised for that same zoning.
We SHOULD tax ourselves at this time ONLY for a 6-12 month process of legally-required and decades-overdue Community Plan updates, before we ever talk about big taxes for roads, sidewalks and any other vital City services that the City's neglected for decades.
We SHOULD confront obstructionists in Beverly Hills to the Wilshire Subway, who were recently dealt a legal setback in their efforts to deny the best access of the Subway to Century City.
We SHOULD make nice with our neighbors in the San Gabriel Valley to promote jobs and the Foothill Gold Line, as Mayor Garcetti has done.
And we SHOULD drop this stinker of a November half-cent sales tax, which is purportedly to fix our roads and sidewalks but has more holes and problems to it than the roads themselves...while instead focusing on a Measure R-2 that is clean and encourages funding of BOTH operations and new extensions of our transit system, and which creates a fiscally-sustainable transit/road infrastructure process for LA County.
But we also SHOULD be ready, as citizens, to jump on board any rapid Community Plan update process and actually show up, spend time, and comment on our Planning, Transportation, Funding and related issues.
It's our right to demand a greater say in our City and County's future...but it's also our responsibility to come through when we're asked to weigh in and come up with the innovations so vital to our future, and the future of our children.
(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected]. He also does regular commentary on the Mark Isler Radio Show on AM 870, co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us . The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 28
Pub: Apr 4, 2014
