It’s been a good decade for the anti-mobility zealots in Los Angeles. Ever since then-Mayor Eric Garcetti launched the so-called “Complete Streets” policy in the summer of 2015, anti-car obstacles have proliferated across the city like Rommel’s asparagus on the Western Front during WWII. Road diets, bike lanes, bus lanes, bollards, concrete medians, bulb-outs, “enhanced crosswalks,” and other road obstacles now crowd virtually every major thoroughfare, creating havoc for motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians alike.

The results, predictably, have been historically bad traffic congestion, impeded emergency response, and a near doubling of severe and fatal injury accidents. Angelenos quite literally are dying on the altar of ideology.

Complete Streets projects routinely flout the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), federal standards that establish standardized systems of street and road design. Complete Streets amounts to Silicon Valley’s mantra of “move fast and break things” applied to traffic engineering. The approach may sometimes work when you’re designing, say, a step-counting app for smartphones. When you’re designing the streets and roads upon which millions depend, the result is sheer anarchy. That’s what Angelenos have experienced for the last nine years.

Complete Streets and similar policies such as Vision Zero promise to reduce, and even eliminate traffic fatalities. As noted, Los Angeles has experienced the opposite. Confusing new road designs and obstacles also impede emergency responders and impede evacuations during mass emergencies, which is why L.A. firefighters have come out strongly against Measure HLA. 

With their decade of messaging dominance at an end, the anti-mobility zealots are panicking. They aren’t used to being challenged, and they don’t like it. Yet rather than embrace the chance to prove their points to the public and to the professionals who risk their lives to save ours, the zealots have resorted to bald-face falsehoods.

Yesterday during an interview on Airtalk with Larry Mantel on LAist, Yes on HLA’s Michael Schneider claimed, “firefighters … were consulted and signed off on the original Mobility Plan document. The Mobility Plan states that firefighters and police will be consulted.”

This is, in a word, a lie. You can review the plan for yourself here. You will search in vain for the words “firefighter(s),” “first responder(s),” “evacuation(s),” and “emergency response.” LAFD and LAPD are referenced a handful of times, none related to consultation, much less review and approval of proposed mobility projects. 

Likewise, you will search the document in vain for any reference to State, County, and City fire codes – all of which legally require the LAFD fire marshall to approve all proposed “traffic calming” measures. Yet the zealots continuously claim they “consult” with fire and police. Again, this is a lie. Public records requests under the California Public Records Act (CPRA) and conversations with senior officials at LAFD confirm they have been completely iced out of the process.

Mr. Scheider the other sponsors of HLA seem to have a disconcertingly tenuous relationship with truth in general. This is a prime example of what happens when rank ideology runs headlong into facts and reality. Incredibly, they claim that Complete Streets actually speed up emergency response. Ask yourself, who do you believe: Well-paid professional activists, or the men and women who risk their lives to save ours?

To be clear: There is nothing safe or “healthy” about Measure HLA. If it should pass it will unleash chaos on L.A.’s streets, causing more injuries and death, more impenetrable traffic congestion, and more emergency responders bogged down in gridlock. Here are the three worst of the myriad bad ideas in this one-size-fits all, top down mandate:

• HLA would mandate the City install bike lanes, bus lanes, “traffic calming,” and/or other road obstacles whenever Street Services repaves more than one block of a city street, whether or not the features are necessary, and regardless of safety and traffic impacts.
• Should the City fail to abide by HLA’s mandates, any individual would be able to sue to force it, recovering attorneys’ fees in the process. This would create a new cottage industry of litigation for unscrupulous lawyers who know an easy, taxpayer funded buck when they see it.
• It would require the City to pay to develop, maintain, and continuously update an “Open Data” portal that tracks all projects subject to HLA, another sinkhole of taxpayer money at a time when L.A. faces a $500 million budget shortfall.

In short, it’s a terrible idea, riding a wave of lies, misinformation, and slick marketing. It’s bad enough when activists and politicians lie about taxes, budgets, and other workaday issues that affect people’s lives. To lie about public safety costs lives. Unfortunately, the zealots have proven they are beyond shame. They lie as easily as the rest of us breathe.

Again, it boils down to a question of who you trust. On that same LAist interview Mr. Scheider asserted that the firefighters oppose HLA not because of its dire impacts on public safety but because of politics. That’s quite a claim. Of course, he could not point to any actual evidence, beyond his own vague allegations that the firefighters care more about their budget than public safety.

To be clear: Measure HLA is backed by deep-pocketed special interests, promoted by professional hucksters, and embraced by a fringe of radical anti-mobility zealots. It is opposed by professional first responders and public safety professionals.

Again, who do you believe?

Vote NO on HLA.