Controversial Measure HLA in Los Angeles was headed to victory according to the first post-election day update, released shortly after 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday March 6.
As of Wednesday afternoon, 63.05% of voters supported the ballot measure while 36.95% opposed it, according to the results released by the county Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s Office.
The initiative asked voters to spend up to $3 billion to reshape the city’s roads, a plan backed by bicyclist groups and other organizations who said that by taking away car lanes — known as a road diet — and widening sidewalks and adding bicycle lanes, traffic would slow down and fewer bicyclists and pedestrians would be killed.
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Yet opponents of the measure, led by well-known firefighter organizations, said it would increase emergency response times in Los Angeles, affect evacuations during major emergencies and endanger the public by slowing down firefighter vehicles and their crews.
Jay Beeber, executive director for policy for the National Motorists Association and executive director for Safer Streets L.A., said the measure sounded good but would lead to “a whole host of problems for the city.”
Beeber said voters just created “a massive congestion problem in the city, and they are going to live with that decision for a long time. Most people who read the measure are expecting that it’s just simply roadway improvements and not that it’s going to be taking away car lanes, not that it’s going to be creating congestion, not that it’s going to push traffic into their neighborhoods, not that it’s going to increase (emergency) response times.”
But proponents argued the measure would save lives.
“We are so excited that the majority of Angelenos want a change and they want the city to implement its own (Mobility Plan),” the measure’s author Michael Schneider and founder of Streets for All, said on Wednesday. “For years, our city and particularly our City Council has acted as if voters didn’t want this plan. As if the plan they passed in 2015, was just a nice plan to pass but not really what Angelinos wanted… This is the first time voters actually have a say on the Mobility Plan.”
On Wednesday, Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan announced the semi-final results from Tuesday’s Presidential Primary Election. A total of 1,016,574 ballots were counted, with 16% of registered voters casting ballots. Many outstanding ballots remained to be counted, Logan said. Official results won’t be known until later in March.
The ballot measure, dubbed Healthy Streets LA, calls for significant changes to streets whenever the city makes routine street improvements such as paving, on a street that is at least 660 feet long.
Supporters say the initiative mandates the city not to merely pave the street, but to add features such as enhanced crosswalks, automatic pedestrian signals, bicycle lanes, sidewalk widening and public seating areas.
Critics warned that the initiative would strain the city’s budget just when its administration is dealing with pressing problems like a budget deficit, homelessness, affordable housing, and public safety — and at the same time, critics say HLA will needlessly make it harder for motorists to get where they are going.
Opponent Beeber said, “We should not be creating these types of complicated policies through the ballot box. And this is the kind of thing that should be negotiated in the open forum through the City Council and our elected officials where the public can weigh in individually and there’s analysis. … Legislating this in the ballot box is just bad policy.”
The measure would cost the city nearly $3.1 billion over the next decade, according to City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo. “This ordinance may increase litigation costs against the city and does not identify a new funding source. Therefore, diversion of existing funds from other city services may be required,” Szabo warned in a report.
The measure follows the footprint of the Mobility Plan 2035 approved by the Los Angeles City Council in 2015. Supporters say it is necessary because the city has failed to curtail the number of traffic fatalities or make the roads safe. Last year 336 people were killed in traffic, an 8% increase from 2022, mostly involving pedestrians and cyclists, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
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The measure was backed by city council members Eunisses Hernandez, Nithya Raman, Katy Yaroslavsky, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Heather Hutt, and Hugo Soto-Martínez, and about 40 neighborhood councils including Arts District Little Tokyo, Boyle Heights, Canoga Park, Central Hollywood, Reseda, Silver Lake and Van Nuys.
But firefighters argued that the measure would remove parking on some neighborhood streets and force the city to create a network of road diets that would slow traffic — which would delay their emergency response vehicles.
Outspoken critics included the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City, International Association of Fire Fighters, and California Professional Firefighters. Billboards appeared in Los Angeles sponsored by L.A. City firefighters that urged Angelenos: “Vote no on HLA. Don’t slow us down.”
Los Angeles City Council President Paul Krekorian and Councilmembers Traci Park and John Lee recently introduced a motion, calling to examine the total cost of the measure and its impact on the city’s street repair efforts.