In 2015, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti created an initiative with the ambitious goal of reducing traffic deaths to zero by 2025.
Not only are we nowhere close to meeting that goal, but Los Angeles has actually gone in the opposite direction, with fatalities rising over the past 10 years.
What happened? According to Damian Kevitt, founder of the group Streets are for Everyone, the city simply gave up on “Vision Zero.”
“Not only did the city dismantle the program, but they went back on anything that they knew how to do that did save lives,” he told KNX News.
Vision Zero failed in part due to public resistance to initiatives like “road diets,” where lanes on busy streets were closed or turned into bike lanes. Kevitt said city leaders lost the will to implement the program soon after it launched.
“When you have a city that stops focusing on something, especially a major problem like traffic violence in a major city like Los Angeles, it's only going to get worse,” he said. “There is nothing it can do except to get worse.”
Want to get caught up on what's happening in SoCal every weekday afternoon? Click to follow The L.A. Local wherever you get podcasts.
Kevitt said the biggest factor in L.A.’s traffic deaths is speeding, and yet there’s “almost no traffic enforcement being done” by police. He also criticized the city for failing to implement a pilot program for speed cameras.
Follow KNX News 97.1 FM
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok