Understanding Traffic and Gridlock

In Sherman Oaks, Sepulveda and Ventura is a classic example of traffic gridlock. The cause of traffic there, and at countless other intersections in Los Angeles, is not only from more vehicles on the road or the lack of an efficient citywide public transit system. Traffic in Los Angeles has two other key elements: appointed and elected officials do not consistently follow community and/or area-specific planning laws, and there are inadequate environmental review procedures that are not satisfactorily mitigating traffic impacts from new construction.

In the late '80s, two new buildings caused a revolution in East Valley area planning: Encino’s “Fugita” Building, which spans a long city block, and one of the area’s tallest buildings situated at the southeast corner of Sepulveda and Ventura boulevards. Alarmed over the potential of a similar redevelopment trend occurring along the entire Boulevard, SOHA joined with other homeowner associations to lobby City Hall to create a new area-specific set of planning laws. The effort paid off, giving rise to the commonly known “Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan” in 1992. The Specific Plan regulates the scale and scope of development, and resulting traffic impacts, along the six main Ventura Boulevard-based communities, from Cahuenga Pass to Woodland Hills, and numerous adjacent major side streets.

Contained also in the Plan is allowance for developers to seek relief from Specific Plan requirements such as building height, density, and more. The “Exception” provisions were not something local homeowner groups wanted. However, the old adage “something is better than nothing” best describes the compromise reached between the homeowners and the developers, real estate lobbyists and land use consultants who also had a hand in writing the Plan.  Yet, something ominous has occurred since the Plan’s inception  – area City Council Members routinely grant Exceptions to the Plan, thus encouraging more developers to build bigger, more traffic generating projects than the Specific Plan calls for. Therefore, groups like SOHA are left no choice but to request that additional community and/or neighborhood safeguards be implemented. (See companion article “Does SOHA take money from Developers?).

As I indicated above, inadequate environmental review policies are another cause for traffic.  Depending on the scale and scope of a proposed project, the city determines whether a developer has to complete and submit one of two environmental reports – a Mitigated Negative Declaration or a “full-scale” Environmental Impact Report.  In each instance, these documents make provisions for what many believe are unacceptable allowances for allowing more traffic.  Further, developers are required to retain their own traffic consultants to compute the necessary data and prepare the reports the city relies upon to handle traffic impacts. This, of course, speaks to a conflict of interest. However, that procedure isn’t about to change since the city budgetary cutbacks have severely limited the city’s Department of Transportation ability to do what is currently required of them, let alone start studying traffic, project by project.

Therefore, given the political and bureaucratic realities the communities under the Plan face, it remains up to local homeowner groups, impacted neighborhoods/residents, neighborhood councils, and the business community, to ensure any new large scale development project is also in the best interests of the community.