L.A. Is Creating Traffic Jams to Push Commuters to Ride Bikes and Rail
20th November 2017
In July of 2017, Los Angeles imposed a “road diet” in the quiet beach community of Playa del Rey, replacing car lanes with bike lanes and parking spaces. The roads were suddenly jammed with traffic. The community was livid.
“Most of Playa Del Rey didn’t know this was happening,” says John Russo, a local resident and co-founder of Keep L.A. Moving, a community group formed to fight back against the city’s unilateral decision to reconfigure the streets. “It really created havoc for us because we have no other roads to take.”
Road diets are part of a strategy known as Vision Zero, in which Los Angeles aims to eliminate all traffic-related fatalities by 2025. It’s an idea borrowed from Sweden, which in the ’90s started experimenting with reconfiguring the roads to encourage more commuters to bike or take mass transit to work.