LA's Crosswalk Problem
My LA Times pieces on How One Crosswalk illustrates The City's Broken State Capacity
In a rare feat of back-to-back publishing, in addition to my Friday piece at the Chronicle, this past Saturday, I had a piece published with the LA Times documenting the recent news around the crosswalk at Stoner Park in West LA:
For those who are not local or missed the new story: On July 22nd, a news story broke documenting how a crew of volunteers, led by
, had painted a crosswalk at Stoner Park. Just 3 days later, the city of LA sent a crew to dismantle that crosswalk, despite no complaints that the work was poorly done or not done to code. Why did the city remove the crosswalk?One stated concern is lawsuits filed under the Americans With Disabilities Act: L.A. officially requires all crosswalk installations to include curb ramp installations to minimize risk. This legal interpretation is neither universal nor strictly followed in practice. But as former official Diego de la Garza commented, LADOT believes in robust processes, always studying the potential for “lighting, signals and speed limits” alongside crosswalks. He suggests that merely painting a crosswalk without a holistic approach creates an “illusion of safety.” In other words, LADOT removed the crosswalks because the city cannot simply make one improvement; its mandate is to study a set of possible improvements whenever considering one.
Turns out this is about as perfect an illustration of the problems that LA has with getting things done:
No one who pays attention to Los Angeles will be surprised by this. Scholars talk of measuring a local government by its “state capacity”: how well it manages finances, maintains order and delivers public goods. By these measures, Los Angeles has a legacy marred by ambitious goals gone unexecuted because of a flawed and bloated process.
I illustrate this by citing some of the projects of Eric Garcetti
Consider three of former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s ambitious goals: Build 28 public transit projects by the 2028 Olympics, eliminate all traffic fatalities by 2025 and end street homelessness by 2028.
Today, only four of the 28 original transit projects are completed. Traffic deaths have gone up from 186 in 2015 to 337 in 2023. And of the $1.2 billion raised in 2016 to build 10,000 units of homeless housing, the city has completed 5,597 units. Since 2018, the number of unsheltered people in the city has increased by 17.8% to 26,972.
Please read the piece in full over at The Times! Those who read my book club this year, Recoding America by Jen Palkha, will recognize some of the key themes of “state capacity” and bad process bleed over:
Despite the renewed interest in these issues from numerous angles (the book Abundance, DOGE, etc), I still think most people still underrate how vital this area is to the quality of life most Americans can access. Yesterday, I had the chance to talk to someone who had just filed to run for office here in LA, and they asked me what my main hope would be for their office. Since the role was technical, and not policy-making, I cited my argument from this article. The most important thing is to identify the key things that local government needs to get done: approve housing, repair sidewalks, build transit, and make the processes as simple as legally possible. In the words of Palkha, “Channel your inner Marie Kondo.” And we can hope those in power listen!
I hope to write more on this topic in the coming months - so stay tuned!