You might think of Venice as a flat area of seaside resorts and walkable, shop-lined streets, but that doesn’t take into account the pavement mountain ranges that span the region.
Dennis HathawayThe 81-year-old, and his wife Laura Silagy, 78, were walking their dog Marlow recently when Silagy encountered a similar situation and slipped and fell on the uneven pavement.
Silagy told me at the scene where the incident occurred, on Novita Place near Lincoln Boulevard. “I fell to my knees.”
There are worse cracks on the same road, but they are clearer, and silagi – an artist and photographer – He said that sometimes even small dangers harm you.
“I turned around and thought, ‘Oh, no,'” said Hathaway, who saw his wife fall to the pavement on her chin, bleeding.
While we were talking about Silagy’s accident, neighbor Liz Laffin said her father fell on this same road about four years ago, when he was 75 years old.
“His forehead was split open,” she said. “He was bleeding a lot.”
Is there a neighborhood in LA where the sidewalks don’t have cracks, subsidence, and bulges? I don’t know of one, and it’s been that way for decades. If you have vision or balance problems, or are using a cane or wheelchair, or pushing a stroller, good luck.
A heavily damaged pavement slab on Novita Place in Venice.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Hathaway, who writes a blog, journal of an octogenarianemailed me suggesting I should reconsider this, given the growing population of older adults trying to stay fit by walking. The pathetic state of footpaths, which I first wrote about 10 years ago. good idea, especially since the LA mayor Karen Bass is pushing for a largely “car-free” Olympics in 2028This means that many people will walk to bus and railway stations.
So I made some inquiries and learned two things: Very little has changed in the past decade, and L.A.’s attitude toward the matter is as bad as the broken sidewalks themselves.
According to the report, the number of pending requests for sidewalk repairs stood at nearly 50,000 three years ago. Audit conducted by then-City Controller Ron GalperinBut there is no long-term plan for these improvements, and even if there was a plan, it would take years and cost billions of dollars.
if else Settlement of lawsuit The lawsuit against the city on behalf of people with disabilities who were unable to use sidewalks because sidewalks were difficult to walk on or lacked curb ramps made virtually no progress. But even these improvements are slow going, with several thousand jobs on hold, and a 2023 City Hall memo states that “wait times could exceed 10 years.”
The City of Los Angeles is spending a small amount of money to settle lawsuits involving sidewalk-related injuries.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Meanwhile, the city is spending a small fortune to settle lawsuits over sidewalk-related injuries. Galperin reports that more than 1,000 lawsuits are expected to cost more than $35 million between 2020 and 2023.
“It’s infuriating every time we spend money to pay an injury claim when we could have just fixed the sidewalk,” said Council Member Tracy Park, who represents Venice. She told me that broken sidewalks are in the top five on the list of complaints that come into her office.
Park said the enormous cost of time and resources needed to tackle the homeless problem has made it difficult to focus on more fundamental issues. That’s true to a certain extent, but the deplorable state of sidewalks predates the rise in homelessness.
After strolling the peaks and valleys of Venice, I took a cracked-sidewalk tour of Koreatown with John Yee, a candidate for the state Assembly and former director of a nonprofit advocacy group. Los Angeles Vox.
John Yee, 38, the former executive director of the nonprofit pedestrian advocacy group Los Angeles Walks, looks at the sidewalks damaged by tree roots along South Oxford Avenue in his Koreatown neighborhood.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
“We have the resources, and we know how to build good sidewalks. We don’t have political preferences,” Yee said as we walked past a homeless man laying on the sidewalk near 7th and Wilshire.
The sidewalks on Manhattan Place were broken and torn up and trash was scattered everywhere, as if we were in a mini-landfill. A discarded mattress was leaning against a tree with a nightstand tossed beside it. One resident called out to us from a second-floor apartment window and asked if we were there to do something about the trash.
We said, no, we were inspecting the broken sidewalks.
He replied, “The sidewalks are disgusting.”
For years, the city has opted for amateurish temporary solutions, using asphalt to fill in cracks and crevices the way you use frosting to hide cracks on a cake. At Western, we found an example of how this can go wrong. An asphalt slab that was used to hide damage to the sidewalk caused by the roots of a dislodged tree had sunk into the trunk and grown up at an acute angle.
“We have the resources and we know how to build good sidewalks. We just don’t have a political preference,” says John Yee.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
It was a unique L.A. sculpture — a real-time, evolving monument to municipal dysfunction. “We’ve become so accustomed to this kind of dilapidation that somehow it’s become the atmosphere of L.A.,” Yee said. “You become conditioned to say that this is normal.”
On nearby Oxford Avenue, the shallow roots of a ficus tree (lack of tree care is the city’s biggest cause of sidewalk deterioration) have destroyed a 12-foot section of sidewalk, leaving it a foot or more above street level at its peak. The thought occurred to me that in 2028, L.A. should abandon the skateboard parks and have Olympians face off on the city’s thousands of miles of sidewalk ramps and canyons.
As Yee and I were inspecting the damaged pavement in Oxford, two retired LAPD policemen, who were working security at a nearby film shoot, came over to report that, day and night, beaver-sized rats scurried in and out of caves created by protruding slabs of concrete.
Jessica Meaney of Investing in Place, a nonprofit focused on quality of life issues, summarized it beautifully:
“We have not made progress, and the city is dragging its feet on any meaningful program to improve its sidewalks,” Meaney said. “Los Angeles is the only major city that does not have a capital infrastructure plan. … I think L.A. and Mayor Bass really need to reconcile the lack of leadership and citywide vision for our sidewalks and our public spaces.”
In Venice, Hathaway and Silagy told me they haven’t bothered to report their worst stretches of sidewalk, one of which resembles a model of the Santa Monica Mountains. “I’ve never seen anybody repair the sidewalk in all this time,” said Hathaway, who has lived in the same house since 1986. He said he raised the problem when he served on the Neighborhood Council more than 20 years ago, “but nobody was interested.”
Park called the problem “totally unacceptable.” He said there have been discussions at City Hall about finding ways to speed up the process, and he hopes the added pressure of the upcoming Olympics will help.
It’s not like city officials should be holding a two-week athletic event every four years to take care of the basic needs of locals, and have tourists flocking there from around the world.
“You get used to saying this is normal,” said John Yee, looking at a series of broken sidewalks in his Koreatown neighborhood.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
If you want to keep the pressure on City Hall, send me stories and photos of Olympic-class demolitions in your neighborhood. I’ll find a three-tiered podium of elevated sidewalk for the awards ceremony.
Keep in mind that the competition will be fierce. I’ll see if I can convince Snoop Dogg to give me the gold, silver and bronze medals.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
