You couldn’t dream up a more fitting way to mark L.A.’s decade-long failure to make life less dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists. Weeks before the deadline set by then-Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2015 to eliminate traffic deaths by the end of 2025, a Los Angeles police officer on Sunday arrested a guy trying to make streets safer.
Yes, what safe streets activist Jonathan Hale is accused of doing — painting a crosswalk on a street in Westwood without official permission — is technically vandalism, a cite-and-release misdemeanor that the arresting officers judged worthy of handcuffs. But consider the optics: L.A. will wrap up its disastrous 10-year Vision Zero run not with ceremonies heralding measurably safer streets (a feat achieved by cities around the world), but with a Jan. 5 court date for Hale.
What’s next, jailing people who feed the hungry because they didn’t pull the right health permits?
I don’t know Hale, whose group, People’s Vision Zero, has painted crosswalks throughout the city since May. But as someone who has logged thousands of miles on foot and bike on L.A. streets, I know all too well the empty promises from City Hall and increasing body counts that spurred Hale and others to take matters into their own hands.
In 2015, when Garcetti first announced Vision Zero, 186 people were killed in L.A. traffic, according to LAPD data compiled by Crosstown LA. Though the next year saw a big jump to 261, annual deaths flattened in the 240s for a few years. That was as close to zero as L.A. would get: Fatalities spiked during the pandemic and reached a high of 345 in 2023.
Meanwhile, as city departments were under order by Garcetti to “collaborate and coordinate their actions to improve safety on our streets and sidewalks” (and to be fair, improved bike lanes and crosswalk upgrades have come to parts of L.A.), some leaders were busy undermining the most ambitious efforts to save lives.
Former Councilmembers Paul Koretz and Gil Cedillo were among the worst offenders, blocking efforts to add bike lanes and redesign streets in their districts. Mike Bonin, a former Council member who admirably stood up for projects that serve homeless residents, said in 2017 he was “truly sorry” for inconveniencing motorists before reversing the Vista del Mar safety upgrades in Playa del Rey.
Paul Thornton
Fed up by L.A. leaders’ inability to make good on their traffic safety promises, voters last year enacted Measure HLA, a law forcing the city to implement its own mobility plan for more bike and bus lanes and wider sidewalks. Unfortunately, the city appears to have found a bureaucratic end run around the law.
I can hear the objection now, because it’s one I’ve heard many times before: “L.A. is not Copenhagen” (or Amsterdam, or any big city where people don’t rely on cars). Yeah, I know. And that should embarrass the hell out of Angelenos.
Copenhagen, a 90-minute flight from the Arctic Circle, has close to zero traffic deaths annually, yet more than half of its daily commuters brave the frigid elements on bike because they have infrastructure that prioritizes cyclists’ safety. When you say “L.A. is not Copenhagen,” I hear, “L.A. is a city with car-brained cavemen as leaders, unlike Copenhagen.”
And L.A. proved itself thus by handcuffing Hale, right as he was in the act of moving Vision Zero along. What a way to mark 10 years of failure.
Paul Thornton
