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LA protects drivers' feelings at pedestrians' expense, and it's killing us. A crosswalk in my hood makes people wait up to 60 seconds so cars don't get annoyed. Pedestrians give up and just cross. Why have a signal at all? A 🧵 about the city’s codependent relationship with drivers.

In 2016, my neighbors and I won a grant for street upgrades on Pico Blvd. After talking to 1500+ people, the #1 ask was a signalized crosswalk at Pico/Masselin. It got installed in 2020, during the COVID lockdown, when signal coordination was turned off across LA to deter speeding on empty streets.

The Masselin crosswalk was glorious. Press the button and it turned red almost instantly. Everyone loved it. But when the lockdown ended and the city turned signal coordination back on, we suddenly had to wait up to 120 seconds (later cut to 60), even when no cars were in sight.

The predictable result: impatient pedestrians started crossing before the signal turned red, which meant cars would show up later to a red light with no pedestrians to be seen. Everyone - peds and drivers - thought the signal was broken.

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.

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.