Last year, more people died in traffic accidents in Los Angeles than from homicides. A proposal on this year’s ballot, Measure HLA, aims to tackle that problem by requiring the city to add new bike or bus lanes when repairing roads.
But the measure has an unexpected opponent: United Firefighters of Los Angeles City. The firefighters’ union plans to spend “six figures” campaigning against the proposal, claiming it would actually make the city less safe.
Richard Ramirez, an 18-year firefighter and paramedic who serves on the union’s board of directors, told KNX News’ Rob Archer and Karen Adams that bollards and bike lanes slow down vehicle traffic, increasing emergency response times.
“With these roadblocks and these road diets that are already implemented in the city, they’re causing more and more traffic, taking us longer to get to emergency incidents, and putting the citizens’ lives at danger,” he said.
But Michael Schneider of Streets for All, one of the lead campaigners for Measure HLA, said that argument is “simply not true.”
“If you look at the environmental impact report from 2015, when the city first passed its mobility plan … it specifically said that a no-build option, meaning we don't do any of the mobility plan, emergency response time is going to get worse as L.A. gets more congested,” he said. “But with a full, complete build-out of the mobility plan, response time would actually get better.”
Schneider said the mobility plan includes over 300 miles of bus-only lanes that fire engines could use in an emergency to cut through traffic. Not to mention, improving our roads could reduce the number of emergencies firefighters have to respond to in the first place.
“Cars are the single biggest cause of death for kids in Los Angeles. The status quo is very broken and very dangerous for everybody, including drivers,” he said. “More than 50% of the injuries and deaths that occurred on streets in L.A. over the last eight years occurred on streets that didn't have its mobility plan treatment – so it was on the plan, but it wasn't actually on the ground. We could save a lot of lives, and I think that's what we really need to focus on.”
According to the Yes on HLA website, 337 people were killed in crashes in L.A. last year – the most ever recorded in L.A. history, and more than any other city in the U.S.
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