Who ARE WE
We are Playa Del Rey, Westchester, and Playa Vista Residents who want to spend time with our families and friends instead of sitting in traffic. We are for safe streets and safe beach access for everybody. We are concerned with the rerouting of traffic off of major traffic arteries onto our residential streets and with the unsafe beach access conditions resulting from the Play Del Rey lane closures. The Playa Del Rey lane closures took us by surprise and we want in on the conversation. We would like see a solution that fits the entire community at large. Please join us to be heard!
The road diets have created traffic and gridlock at all hours of the day throughout our little beach town. This traffic not only steals time away from our families on the weekdays but has also impaired our ability to leave Playa Del Rey on the weekends. Commuter traffic, now trying to avoid the gridlock on the major boulevards, is escaping to our residential streets. This has created an unsafe situation where families live and children play.
We are very proud of our little beach community, the last beach town in LA. We want to safely share our unique town with all of Los Angeles. The roads are very busy on the weekends. The new configuration on Vista Del Mar mixes pedestrians — including small children — with cars speeding along the parking access lane; encourages illegal u-turns and jaywalking; and puts beachgoers in harm’s way with parking that does not offer a sidewalk or safe and handicapped-accessible pathways down the adjacent, perilous cliff. People are confused about where the parking ends, and wind up parking in traffic lanes, unaware that they are in a no parking zone. This creates a hazardous and abrupt bottleneck for drivers traveling South. And because the street is so poorly lit, the danger ratchets up exponentially after the sun goes down. What’s more, litter has become a massive problem, that’s difficult for the City to clean due to the placement of the parking berms. It’s unsanitary and unsightly, and bad for the coastal environment.
Ironically, the lawsuit Bonin used to justify these changes alleged that the city created an Attractive Nuisance by having parking, no crosswalks and poor lighting. Those very same conditions not only still exist, they've been intensified by the re-striping. How can Bonin claim he’s made the street safer when so clearly it threatens the lives of Angelinos far more than ever before?
We are fighting for our neighborhoods and any others faced with such a poorly planned and executed design. We believe Bonin’s Road Diet cannot end soon enough. Lives are at stake.