Saturday’s Wall Street Journal article mentioned how the road diet in the Sunland-Tujunga area impaired evacuation during the September 2017 La Tuna Canyon fire, which (at 7,194 acres) was the largest fire since 1961 within the city of Los Angeles.
After the fire, the community asked that the road diet be eliminated:
North Valley Reporter
Sunland-Tujunga Takes Vision Zero “Road Diet” Position
After over an hour of comments and discussion with the community and Daniel Mitchell, Assistant General Manager, Los Angeles Department of Transportation, the board of the Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council (STNC) voted the following letter to be sent to the City. Letter written by Pat Kramer, STNC Region 1 Representative. The letter has since been supported by the Shadow Hills Property Owners Association (SHPOA).
“On behalf of the stakeholders in Region 1, the community of Sunland-Tujunga and in reaction to over 1000 petition signers throughout our local Foothill communities;
The Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council requests that the Department of Transportation and all agencies related to traffic control in the City of Los Angeles, be notified to immediately remove the bollards and barriers starting at Foothill Boulevard by Sunland Park going west to Wentworth Street, with complete restoration of two lanes of traffic in either direction.
These recommendations come after experiencing the recent La Tuna Canyon firestorm which closed down the 210 Foothill Freeway at Sunland Boulevard for days and forced tens of thousands of motorists onto a single lane in either direction East & West on Foothill Boulevard while thousands of residents were fleeing their homes due to mandatory evacuations.
Based on the extreme difficulties caused by the reduction of lanes on our only main thoroughfare from the installation of seldom-utilized bike lanes; and taking into account the hours of delays and gridlock traffic caused by the lane reductions during this emergency disaster; and based on how these very concerns were expressed to our City officials and Department of Transportation reps when the lane reductions took place earlier this year – specifically, our concerns about how the single lanes would cause gridlock to motorists and impact our emergency services in a disaster; and based on the occurrences of at least three traffic accidents in this same area of Foothill Boulevard during the fire as motorists were trying to get out quickly we are requesting immediate action.”
It will now be forwarded to all of the entities to try to get this problem corrected. if you were not at the meeting, you can forward your comments to CD7 Councilperson Monica Rodriguez: eve.sinclair@lacity.org or to DOT Asst. General Manager Daniel Mitchell at: dan.mitchell@lacity.org.
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