City of Manhattan Beach, activists prepare legal fight against Vista Del Mar lane closures

by Mark McDermott

The City of Manhattan Beach is exploring its legal options to force the reopening of lanes shut down by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation on Vista Del Mar, a key commuter route north for many South Bay residents that was put on a “road diet” nearly a month ago as part of LA Councilman Mike Bonin’s “Safe Streets Playa del Rey” initiative.

A grassroots activists coalition, meanwhile, has filed an appeal with the L.A. City Council, arguing that the lane closures violate the California Environmental Quality Act.

Both moves are precursors to potential lawsuits.

The Manhattan Beach City Council Tuesday night voted unanimously, in closed session, to direct City Attorney Quinn Barrow to examine how the city can proceed legally.

Mayor David Lesser reported the outcome of the closed session decision prior to the open session of Tuesday night’s City Council meeting. Two of the five actions the council approved were to direct Barrow to “explore legal action against LADOT,” including the possibility of joining the efforts of residents opposing the street reconfiguration, as well as to provide legal support for those residents’ legal efforts.

“Nearby cities received no advance notice of the re-configurations that are now impacting tens of thousands in the region,” Lesser said. “There are few north-south alternatives for South Bay drivers and those that do exist — the 405 and PCH/Sepulveda/CA Route 1 — are already overburdened.”

“There was a goal to calm traffic [on Vista Del Mar], but other alternatives could have been considered,” Lesser said in a subsequent interview.

City Manager Mark Danaj was directed to prepare a letter opposing the lane closures and requesting an environmental review that includes public input, as well as to continue city staff’s efforts to disseminate information on the issue, contact affected businesses, and coordinate with other cities and the South Bay Coalition of Governments. The council also formed a subcommittee — Lesser and Councilman Richard Montgomery — to focus on the issue.

A newly formed coalition called Open Streets LA on June 22 filed an appeal with the LA City Council, challenging an emergency ordinance that extended the Safe Streets Playa del Rey initiative — which originally focused on Pershing Drive and Culver and Jefferson boulevards — to include Vista Del Mar. The lanes were shut down with little advance notice in late May; all parking was removed from the east side of the street and the four-lane arterial was reduced to one lane each direction. Traffic congestion has resulted, and an activist movement originally called Keep Vista Del Mar Open emerged that included residents from Manhattan Beach, Playa Del Rey, Venice, Mar Vista, Westchester, and Playa Vista; that group has since become an umbrella organization called Open Streets LA with smaller subgroups focusing on issues within each impacted city. A GoFundMe online campaign has raised $15,000 thus far to fight the lane closures and a Change.org petition has collected more than 5,000 signatures demanding the lanes be reopened.

Karla Mendelson, a Manhattan Beach resident who helped found the activist coalition, said the group has made a request of LADOT to provide all documentation regarding the reasons behind the street reconfiguration and its abrupt rollout. She said several legal avenues are being explored to undo the lane closures.

“There are several irregularities in the way this was rolled out and there may be other grounds for a lawsuit beyond the CEQA avenue,” she said.

City officials, along with representatives from Hermosa Beach, El Segundo, Hawthorne and deputies from the offices of State Senator Ben Allen, State Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, and L.A. Supervisor Janice Hahn, met with LADOT officials Tuesday afternoon.

Councilman Richard Montgomery said that LADOT offered the officials an apology for lack of notification in the rollout of the Vista Del Mar project.

“My residents don’t care much about apologies, and all of us at that meeting didn’t care much about apologies,” Montgomery said. “What we care about is: how do we fix the problem?”

Towards that end, Montgomery said he and fellow officials left the LADOT meeting discouraged. He said LADOT provided no metrics by which the street reconfiguration — which was announced as a pilot project — would be evaluated.

“We walked out of that meeting knowing this wasn’t a trial,” Montgomery said. “There really isn’t a plan for stopping this from becoming permanent. You can call it a trial but it’s really not — and I didn’t see LADOT giving any credence to revising the plan much, if at all.”

Among alternatives local officials believe should be explored are a “reversible lane” configuration that would keep open two lanes going north in the morning and one south, then two lanes in the evening coming south and one north.

“We are really looking for a regional solution,” Lesser said. “We are keeping available all means.”

According to LADOT, average traffic at the intersection of Vista Del Mar and Imperial Highway was 24,265 vehicles per day last year, including 2,200 per hour at peak times. By the departments count, two drivers died in collisions on Vista Del Mar from 2003 to 2016; in the same period, six pedestrian deaths also occurred. There were also 210 collisions involving serious injuries on Vista Del Mar from 2003 to 2016, including 156 vehicle/vehicle, 20 were pedestrian/vehicle, 9 bicycle/vehicle, and 25 fixed object/vehicle.

Both Lesser and Montgomery stressed that the city takes the street’s safety issues seriously. But Montgomery argued that the current configuration has actually made the street more dangerous, both because the increasing number of people taking U-turns and the fact that ambulances and other public safety vehicles can no longer effectively use the route. He noted that the City of El Segundo — and MBFD on mutual assist calls — uses Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital in Marina Del Rey for its ambulance rescues.

“They are stuck in traffic,” Montgomery said. “So know you have impacted public safety.”

Montgomery also noted that the Los Angeles International Airport was not notified of the changes, nor was the LA Air Force Base and the nearby aerospace industry, which includes many employees who’d used Vista Del Mar as a commute route.

“So you affect LAX airport without even telling them,” he said. “You think you’d reach out to neighboring jurisdictions, just to let them know you are making changes that may impact traffic. And the defense industry is affected, so now you’ve impacted homeland security as well as the local economy.”

LA Department of Transportation officials believe the congestion will lessen with time.

“It is expected that congestion will decrease over time, as people find alternative routes, but most importantly, when DOT reconfigures the existing signal timing to accommodate the new configuration,” said Oliver Hou, an LADOT traffic engineer.

Bonin has not returned phone calls from the press or local councilmen.

According to Mendelson, the Councilman told activists at a meeting in Westchester June 4 that other parts of the pilot program could be revised but changes to Vista Del Mar were unlikely because of the safety issues the configuration addressed.

But Mendelson said activists hold out hope that the outcry will have an impact, or, save that, a lawsuit will force change.

“I think there is hope,” Mendelson said. “We have to hope. Because it’s unlivable the way it is. We believe there are solutions that will help keep traffic moving and give Playa Del Rey residents safer streets.”