GUEST COMMENTARY--Mobility 2035, Los Angeles's wide-ranging, 20-year plan to make the city more friendly to non-car transportation, had enemies long before it was approved by city leaders in August.
But now that the driving force behind the opposition, anti-development group Fix the City, is suing over the plan, a handful of councilmembers want to take back the whole thing, make some small changes, and "approve a slightly different version of the same document," says the LA Times.
Councilmembers are expected to vote Tuesday, November 10 to "rescind the mobility plan," which looks to add bus-only and bike lanes to streets, along with other un-car-oriented changes, "and replace it with an older version," one that doesn't have three amendments that critics of the plan say were added in violation to the City Charter, since they weren't vetted by the City Planning Commission.
(Opponents says this is also in violation of the charter, and that any revocation of the plan is supposed to be sent back to the CPC for review. "They don't have the patience or the time to do it right," said a Fix the City rep. "So they're doing it wrong again.")
(The changes, by the way, are things like evaluating public safety before making changes to public streets.)
All the councilmembers who voted to approve the plan the first time around are still expected to support it as it's tweaked and reissued.
If Fix the City's name sounds familiar, it's because they're busy suing to hold up or stop projects all over town; they're one of the groups that sued to stop the Hollywood Community Plan, which would've created more transit-centric zoning guidelines for Hollywood, and they also threatened to sue the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on the Miracle Mile, although ultimately they worked out a deal that allows the museum to proceed legally unscathed, but with delays and new traffic-mitigating obligations.
(Bianca Barragan is associate editor at CurbedLA.com, where this perspective was first posted.)
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 91
Pub: Nov 10, 2015
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