The city is in a codependent relationship with drivers, sacrificing its own needs (protecting pedestrians’ lives) to avoid upsetting the other party. The codependency is literally killing us - Vision Zero launched in 2015 with a goal of zero traffic deaths by 2025. They doubled instead.

Why is a crosswalk signal timed to coordinate with other lights? When we asked, an LADOT engineer said interrupting the free flow of traffic would cause drivers to run the crosswalk light and hit pedestrians. Translation: we have to design our crosswalk to avoid causing road rage.

Excited to have been chosen for the Roots of Progress Institute’s Blog-Building Intensive Fellowship! I’m part of a group of 43 amazing bloggers from around the world who write about progressive policy in all kinds of different fields. rootsofprogress.org/fellows/#ore...

A lot going on here, but it basically shows building permits issued in CA cities with IZ requirements. The vertical dotted lines show years when IZ was banned. Permits increased after the ban and plummeted after IZ was reinstated.

LA has a bias toward the private over the public. Our biggest foundation funds a private museum on a hill. Only 4 of 450 parks have been "adopted". School choice sends kids across the city instead of to their local school. There's no July 4th fireworks display that unites the city (pic: San Diego).

LA has many strengths. Civic culture is not one of them. New York united after 9/11. Boston rallied around "Boston Strong" after the marathon bombing. After the LA fires, folks in Altadena and the Palisades supported each other beautifully, but who gave us the big moments that united the whole city?

New eldercare facility in LA (plus ground-floor snyagogue!), seven stories. maps.app.goo.gl/wXfkNvghYCg1... www.whereyoulivematters.org/find-a-commu...

I think my second grader illustrated this document.

One simple trick to make your city family-friendly: housing affordability. Median Houston home price - $360k LA - $1M

There are plenty more creative ways to speed up the E Line! What if Exposition Blvd. in front of USC was pedestrianized? What if Flower St. was only for buses and trains? What if we built a ton of curb extensions? And remember, freight trains in the 80's got higher priority than the E Line today!

City Hall has tried several times to get LADOT and Metro to fix transit. It hasn't worked. But we moved the needle - after months of research, 450+ public comments, and meetings with electeds, we got City Council to direct LADOT and Metro to cut red light delays on light rail and BRT by 50% by 2028.

Red light delays also make the train unpredictable. This chart shows how long various trains actually took. The trip averages 47 minutes but can take up to 57. Giving the train more green lights would tighten this curve and give riders more certainty.

A report we got from Metro shows the stark east/west divide. East of Western, trains stop longer at red lights (red bars) than at stations (orange bars). West of Western, almost all intersections have railroad gates, and trains sail through.

It may look in the previous chart like submissions dropped because of the "building standards tightened" line, which was another set of revisions issued by the Mayor. But AHIP, which is ED 1's successor in CHIP, undid most of this tightening, and applications have not surged again. AHIP in orange:

Also, let's put this one to bed: Mayor Bass didn't kill ED 1. It never applied to 99% of single-family neighborhoods, and applications kept increasing after the Mayor officially excluded single-family from ED 1.

ED 1 construction is just getting started because plan check takes sooooo looooong - an average of 21 months - and ED 1 is only 3 1/2 years old. Groundbreakings have been ramping up as buildings finish plan check, and many more should be breaking ground in the next couple years.

Yeah, I'm still annoyed that they include density bonus projects. Here's the most accurate chart.

SCAG's draft map of where SB 79 applies is out, and it leaves out the stations on two train lines - Sepulveda Line and K Line northern extension. Lots of stops on the Westside and WeHo. SCAG contends those lines haven't finished CEQA so they don't count. SCAG is wrong.

Karen Bass didn't kill ED 1 by banning it from single-family areas - it barely applied there to begin with. She killed it with her second revision in July 2024, which added design standards and other restrictions driven by NIMBY pressure and LA's unrelenting desire to control how buildings look.

And the most controlling: in the yellow areas on the map (55% of Low Rise), only 10 apartments are allowed, which is going to really limit the number of feasible projects since these areas have high land costs. Red areas allow 16 - much more feasible. hellomynameisoren.github.io/SB-79-in-upz...

Requiring parking to be behind the building or underground really kneecaps LA's proposed Low Rise program. Digging is $$$. Including just four surface spaces on a typical lot reduces the size of the building by 42%! Most residential streets don't have alleys, so you need a driveway from the front.

TIL that LA owns 12 golf courses? That's a lot of land.

Is this a poison pill for LA's proposed Low Rise program (5-16 unit, 3-4 story buildings)? Parking has to be either underground or behind the building. Most of the lots where Low Rise applies are small, 5-6k sq ft. Feels like only zero-parking projects would work using this program - not great!

In graph form:

Staggering how much LA has let its infrastructure languish. This year departments got *half a billion dollars* less than they requested for infra projects. The number of projects requested keeps going up, and the number of projects funded is going down. h/t @jawshv.bsky.social

South LA. The bit of red on the left is a small chunk of Westchester. The rest is exempt for now because it's mostly low-income.

Downtown and Northeast LA. Downtown is exempt because it already has good zoning, and almost all of NELA is in either a historic or fire zone.

The Valley. Tons of single-family neighborhoods here.

Hollywood, Mid-City, Koreatown. There would be a lot more red here if historic districts weren't exempted for now. The other exempt areas either are low-income or already have good zoning.

Now to the map: The Westside. Rancho Park is the clear winner. Also shoutout to Cheviot Hills and Westwood.