5/5/2023 0 Comments Green hell map![]() ![]() In 2017, the city paid $7.5m to a man left quadriplegic after he crashed on a stretch of road where the pavement had buckled because of tree roots. Los Angeles has some of the worst public streets in the nation. The poor shape of streets in Los Angeles has forced the city to dole out millions of dollars in the last decade to cyclists severely injured by the shoddy road conditions. That number jumps to over 62% when accounting for only the roads in the Los Angeles, Long Beach and Anaheim metropolitan areas, data compiled by the automotive website Copilot found. Over 46% of urban roads in California are rated as being in poor condition, according to the Federal Highway Administration. ![]() Sometimes it’s the roads themselves.ĭespite numerous cities in Los Angeles county raising their sales taxes twice in the last 15 years in order to improve road conditions, and voters passing a gas tax in 2017 to do the same statewide, LA, and California as a whole, have some of the worst public streets in the nation. “The district attorney just refused to prosecute the cop killed Milt,” said Mayer, who knew Olin both professionally and personally for over 30 years.Ĭars aren’t the only things killing cyclists. Olin’s family was eventually awarded $11.75m in a civil settlement with the county. Despite the revelation that deputy Andrew Wood had been texting his wife at the time of the accident, the district attorney’s office declined to pursue criminal charges against him. Take the case of prominent entertainment attorney Milton Olin, who was killed in 2013 when a Los Angeles county sheriff’s deputy struck him with his car on Mulholland Drive. That attitude has been reflected in the courts as well. Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images The poor shape of LA streets has forced the city to dole out millions of dollars in the last decade to injured cyclists. “Doing away with the car culture here in Los Angeles is a lot like trying to do away with the electoral college, it’s not going to happen,” said Stefan Mayer, a cyclist in Los Angeles since 1980 and a coach at the Encino Velodrome in the San Fernando Valley. That strongly rooted car culture, paired with limited public transportation options, has only strengthened most Angelenos’ reliance on cars, and made advocating for alternative transportation modes an uphill battle. “We have to build a culture that will demand the changes the city needs and with more people getting on bikes now that is becoming a reality,” Kaufman said.Ī rguably more than any other city in the US, Los Angeles is a product of the automobile, its freeways and multilane boulevards – the 101, the 405, Sunset Blvd, Hollywood Blvd – embedded in the American psyche. “It just hasn’t been a priority given all of the other intractable issues that the city and county have to deal with.”īut the Covid-19 pandemic has added impetus for the region to improve its cycling infrastructure, as bike sales boom and more people hit the streets to escape being stuck at home and to get some exercise with gyms mostly shuttered. “In terms of infrastructure for cyclists, let’s just say that my organization isn’t going to be out of business anytime soon,” Eli Kaufman, the executive director of the Los Angeles county Bicycle Coalition (LACBC), said. ![]() In 2018, Bicycling Magazine gave LA the ignominious title of “worst bike city in America” because of the hazards posed to cyclists by distracted drivers, the terrible shape of most streets, and the seeming willingness of local officials to pay out millions of dollars in lawsuits rather than address the infrastructure needs that could make LA a safer place to bike. Photograph: Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images ![]() The Covid-19 pandemic has added impetus for the region to improve in its cycling infrastructure. ![]()
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