Re “Why I Am Committed to Changes in Traffic Safety”
The Saturday, Aug. 20, installment of the “Safe Routes to School – Quad-Campus/La Ballona Elementary School” project has further convinced me that I could never be a public servant.
The attendance — featuring notables such as City Councilmember Andrew Weissman, Public Works Director Charles Herbertson, CCUSD School Boardmember Kathy Paspalis, CCHS Principal Dylan Ferris and School Board candidate Laura Chardiet among the 50-ish participants in this community meeting — speaks of the growing public awareness of the traffic safety issues I have brought before the City Council for many years.
A majority of the meeting was spent having volunteer facilitator Gayle Haberman solicit individuals for their ideas of what, if anything, were the problems in the residential neighborhoods that border Culver City High School, Culver City Middle School, Farragut Elementary School, Center for Early Education and La Ballona Elementary School campuses.
Traffic Engineer Manager, Gabe Garcia, gave a short presentation about the problems identified in a May 23 “Safe Routes to Schools” workshop at School District headquarters. He then presented the proposed solutions that would have been presented in the “Safe Routes to School” grant proposal for $1 million of funding, stressing that those solutions were now a dead issue.
What I gathered from this “Groundhog Day” nightmare was that Culver City was back at Stage One, trying to determine if there was a problem and, if there so, what would the public sanction as a solution!
Having been identified as the “weird Asian guy” in the May 23 workshop, I sat quietly. An overwhelming majority last Saturday spoke of their issues with traffic safety in the CCUSD Quad-campus neighborhoods and La Ballona Elementary School issues. This was aside from the speeding in the alley paralleling Elenda and the high speeds in the improved section of the bike path intersected by the pedestrian bridge across Ballona Creek, already identified in the May 23 workshop.
A vocal minority spoke of things like wasting the city's time and money because change was not always better. They tried to hijack the discussion to talk about capital improvements without evidence there is a need.
For me, what came out of Saturday’s meeting is the scheduling of yet another meeting to continue the discussion! School will be starting again soon. Two school children have been injured on Farragut Drive, between Elenda and Overland, in the last two years. Another student was involved in pedestrian vs. vehicle accident on Elenda near Robert Frost Auditorium this year.
That is MY evidence.
To CCPD Chief Don Pedersen and members of the City Council:
Let me add Blair Hills and Segrell Way to the pot.
There is a traffic safety problem in Culver City, and while city staff and key stakeholders try to compromise about what streetscape changes will be tolerated to calm the traffic or different staggered starts at the schools and enforced dropoff/pickup areas, let our city fathers be leaders and act on suggestions like that from School Board-member Steven Gourley to have maximum enforcement days around our schools more regularly.
Finance it from the city's portion of traffic citations. Or chalk it up to the cost of protecting the public.
More signs won't solve the problem — no cop, no stop!
Mr. Heyl may be contacted at john_heyl@sbcglobal.net
