When I wrote about one of my favorite mountain ranges last week – L.A.’s Sidewalks – I immediately started asking questions.
People wanted to know about the scoring system that gave only 15 marks out of 45 John Conda and his wife, Barbara, Who uses a wheelchair due to ALS. A Mar Vista couple had applied to the city’s Safe Sidewalks program to repair some cracked sidewalks in front of their home.
With numerous sidewalk hazards on both sides of her block, Barbara cannot safely walk down her street. So how is it possible that under LA’s “Sidewalk Repair Program Prioritization and Scoring System”, their mere 15 points means they may have been waiting “over 10 years” for help?
I have the answers.
Kondas got 15 points due to being in a residential area. But they did not meet the requirements to receive two additional awards of 15 points. They do not live within 500 feet of a bus or transit stop. And they were not in the sidewalk repair backlog queue for more than 120 days.
However, it is not clear that reaching a score of 30 will result from the city’s task force in less than 10 years. Knowing what I know, I wouldn’t bet on it.
The scoring system exists because in a lawsuit settlement 10 years ago, the city agreed to spend $1.4 billion over 30 years to repair damaged sidewalks and other infrastructure failures that hinder the mobility of people with disabilities.
But there is a backlog. A huge backlog numbering in the thousands. At my request, the city revealed Friday that it is receiving nearly twice as many new disability-accessibility repair requests each year. In addition, the backlog of disability access requests and residents applying for the sidewalk repair waiver program is approximately 30,000, with approximately 600 repairs made each year.
As I said in a previous column, LA may actually be fully prepared by the ’28 Olympics, but that will be 3028, not 2028.
The apparently cracked sidewalks are a symptom of decades of deep wear and tear at City Hall. Basic services have been sacrificed to pay for workers’ compensation and pension costs that the city cannot afford, with homeless services exacerbating the budget crisis.
By the way, in response to my suggestion last week I heard from a reader that if you can’t wait 10 years or more for the city to fix a broken sidewalk, you can apply for a rebate program that will cover a portion of the repairs. Don’t worry, said Lori Lerner Gray, who owns a home in Silver Lake and applied two years ago but ultimately gave up.
“There’s a huge waiting list and it’s a very complicated process to try to get on it, let alone talk to someone for help,” Gray said. “Once you finally get into the program, it is impossible to move forward because of permits, engineering reports and ultimately you have to bring the entire area into ADA compliance at your own expense.”
She said she was told she would have to pay to have the utility pole moved.
And sidewalks aren’t the only infrastructure problem, as other readers have noted. The city is far behind in filling potholes, repaving roads, installing ramps, improving parks and replacing broken lights. I recently wrote about all the plight surrounding City Hall, including the graffiti-marked monument and fountain that has been dormant for the past 60 years.
Oren Haider, a mid-city resident who writes about housing and transportation the future is la website, As reported in a Times op-ed last year The city’s roads were falling apart because the city had begun doing what was called “large asphalt repair” rather than repaving entire roads.
Hadar said that with this change, the city avoided federal requirements to upgrade ramps on repaved roads. He told me that when he travels to other cities near or far, “I’m always jealous of everything. The sidewalks are in better condition or there are better bike lanes. … You can even go to Santa Monica or Culver City. You don’t have to go far to see better infrastructure.”
Other major cities have had formal infrastructure plans for years, while LA has shelved plans. After all, earlier this month, Mayor Karen Bass introduced The city’s long awaited C.I.P. (Capital Infrastructure Programme), and offered a brutal assessment of what went wrong.
“For too long,” he said in the executive summary, “information has been scattered across departments, buried in lengthy reports and budgets, and difficult to fully understand. These challenges have had real consequences, contributing to decades of underinvestment in our built environment.”
The summary reads like an indictment of City Hall leadership and the way public spaces have deteriorated. With Bass running for re-election, voters will have to decide whether his role in those failures is grounds for dismissal, or whether his campaign-season pitch for a new day will help him secure a second term.
The report, with the support of City Council members, cited “fragmented systems and data silos,” “no shared vision across city departments,” “increasing maintenance deferments,” “slow, inefficient capital planning,” no “project intake standards,” “highly decentralized and uncoordinated grants,” “resource planning and staffing misalignment,” and an “opaque capital planning process.”
Way to go, team.
You can take many of the same criticisms and apply them to the disorganized way in which city and county leaders have addressed homelessness.
However, the city’s infrastructure plan provides a framework for using charter reform to assess damage and prioritize projects and create a public works director position with more authority. None of this will happen quickly, and given budget constraints, you may be wondering how any of this will be paid for.
The report’s suggestions include bonds, parcel taxes, grants, fees on tickets to concerts and sporting events, fees on taxi and rideshare trips and more. None of this will be popular, especially if the public doesn’t agree that city leaders can be trusted with more money.
Urban planner Deborah Murphy, chair of the city’s Pedestrian Advisory Committee, said L.A. has in the past received grants or state funding for specific projects and then, due to staffing shortages or other obstacles, failed to close the deal.
“It ruins our reputation for getting money in the future,” Murphy said.
Jessica Meaney, Executive Director of Investing in Place And longtime supporters of the infrastructure plan are thrilled the city has finally taken this step.
“But the main question is: Who is actually in charge of making this possible?” he asked.
Meaney suggested it is important for city leaders to push for charter reform, which places infrastructure authority under a newly empowered public works director. If the city gets this right, he said, implementation of the infrastructure plan “could finally show Angelenos the true scale of deferred maintenance, make trade-offs visible, and create a road map for better sidewalks, streets, parks, and access.”
Meaney said, if the current fragmented authority remains in place, the title would be:
“No one is in charge of your sidewalks and City Hall is committed to keeping it that way.”
steve.lopez@latimes.com
