How can we fix streets and sidewalks of Los Angeles?

Street for All believe that charter reform is a critical opportunity to reform how street infrastructure is delivered in Los Angeles. The existing system that improves and maintains streets and sidewalks is broken.

City Hall is failing to deliver core maintenance and investment in the largest public road network in the nation. We are spending less than peer cities on streets, and we are managing those dollars in an a uniquely archaic and inefficient manner.

Streets for All has summarized our key findings here, and arrived at four necessary Charter changes which can be explored in detail.

  1. Make LADOT a chartered department that has responsibility to construct, excavate and maintain streets property line to property line - functionally moving the duties of the Bureau of Street Services inside LADOT.
  2. Shore up street operational funding with a regular percent of city assessed property values, similar to the Library and Parks.
  3. Change the City budget to a 2 year cycle and formalize a 5 year Capital Improvement Plan to support long term planning.
  4. Replace the board of public works with a director position similar to other City departments.

Photo by Gabriel Gaurano

The status quo

Streets For All is a LA-based nonprofit organization dedicated to building a safe, dignified, and functional city for all modes of transportation. We've worked for years pushing for policies, projects, and budgets that allow to improve the right of way for Angelenos.

Our findings and suggestions below represent our advocacy, conversations with experts and city staff, deep research, and even a citizen-led initiative of our own (Measure HLA) to amend the City Charter

Over 55,000 acres of arterials, streets, alleys, and sidewalks constitute the largest piece of public realm in the City of Los Angeles. Is your sidewalk broken? Are you stuck in traffic? Did you just hit a pothole? Are your children able to walk to school safely? The answers to these questions determine for many Angelenos if their city government is working or not. In LA, the unequivocal answer for many is no.

Our streetscape is in crisis. We have someone being killed or severely injured by car crashes every 5 hours. We are repairing less than 10% of annual sidewalk requests. 25,000 street lights are out of service. Almost half of City streets are in a state of disrepair.

The Charter reform effort is an opportunity to fix structural issues that plague management of Los Angeles Streets. Over $1 billion flows annually through the Department of Public Works and the Department of Transportation but services are not just treading water but actively drowning under project backlogs and understaffing. How is that possible? Why can’t Los Angeles deliver core city services to residents? Unfortunately, LA underfunds street infrastructure, poorly executes the funding available, and doesn’t have its departments organized in an efficient way.

Photo by Gabriel Gaurano

Key Findings

We are allocating less funding than other peer cities on our streets

Streets for All normalized streetscape budgets and maintenance expenses across other major US cities and compared them on a per capita basis. Los Angeles allocates $267 per resident on street infrastructure according to the most recent budget. This is similar to spending in cities like Houston ($254), Columbus ($275), and San Jose ($275). However, it is almost half of what NYC ($431) and San Diego ($465) spend, and a third of what is spent in Chicago ($788), Seattle ($756), and San Francisco ($838). There is correlation between outcomes and spending. Seattle, NYC, and San Francisco see half the traffic deaths per capita as Los Angeles and invests between twice and three times what LA does per capita on streets. Boston ($532), the national leader in safe streets, spends twice what we do and sees a quarter of LA’s roadway fatalities per capita.

LADOT and BSS are historically understaffed and underresourced

The capacity of LADOT and BSS are lower than they were a decade ago despite being asked to do more than ever amid an ever degrading urban environment. LADOT’s staffing growth over the last decade has largely been in parking enforcement and traffic officers, not project delivery. Budget challenges mean fewer resources to manage our streets and increasing reliance on expensive outside contractors.

Transportation investments get much more expensive when delayed

Any delay means an inflation of material and labor costs when it comes to infrastructure investments. Many current grants awarded to the City are not able to be executed because after delays the dollars won no longer cover construction and additional funds need to be found. A city’s network of streets also gets more expensive as regular maintenance slows, streets in ‘good’ condition can be cheaply resealed, but more damaged streets require full reconstruction that can cost millions per mile. Regular maintenance prevents exponentially higher costs in the future. Currently only 56% of streets in LA are in a state of good repair.

Broken streets and sidewalks are a growing liability

Since 2019 LA has paid out $276,516,020 in settlements for accidents caused by dangerous conditions on our streets and sidewalks. Another $166,509,060 has been paid out over the same time as a result of traffic collisions involving City employees - a byproduct of our dangerous roads. Combined, unsafe streets represent more than half of all settlement spending over the last 5 years, and are a significant contributor to the City's skyrocketing settlement costs.

Much of the money we are allocating is not getting spent

The value of transportation projects (a key budget metric) has grown consistently over the last decade, doubling from $157m in 2015 to $381m in 2025. This positive at first glance is actually a measure of a City that is unable to deliver projects on time. A recent presentation to the Street and Transportation Projects Oversight Committee by the CAO earlier this year showed that out of 85 active projects 59 of them had deadlines overdue. Similarly, the City’s vision zero audit found that much of the Vision Zero money allocated by the Mayor and Council has not yet been spent, primarily due to the majority of funding being allocated toward engineering activities, which take multiple years to build and require coordination across departments. Poor department coordination is a common theme for LA’s failure to deliver projects on time.

LA is unique structuring transportation and street improvements into separate departments

When taking a look at other peer cities, nearly all have street hardscape (BSS) and transportation planning (LADOT) under the same department. This is true for Chicago, NYC, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, Seattle and San Jose. In fact, the only major Cities we could find besides Los Angeles with bisected transportation departments were San Francisco and Boston - both cities that manage vastly fewer miles of streets than Los Angeles. This separation is the root of many difficulties in executing projects in Los Angeles. BSS and LADOT have different goals and different City structures to report to. Many DOT projects are hamstrung and delayed by increasing reliance on BSS to fix sidewalks, curb ramps, and streetscapes before other safety projects can be installed. For example, because of department cross dependency a recent report from LADOT estimated installing a single traffic light takes 36-48 months.

LA Public Works governance is antiquated and unique among cities

The bureaus inside of Public Works are siloed, functioning more like separate departments than arms of the same structure. Additionally, with bureaus being accountable to the Board of Public Works, the Director of Public Works, the Mayor, and also City Councilmembers, responsibility over bureaus is diffused and confused. No other major city operated this way, instead in most other Cities there is clear sole administration between a director to either a City Manager or Mayor.

Photo by Gabriel Gaurano

Charter Reforms Needed

1. Make LADOT a chartered department that has responsibility to construct, excavate and maintain streets property line to property line - functionally moving the Bureau of Street Services duties inside LADOT.

Since being formed in 1979 under City administrative code, LADOT has become increasingly responsible for planning all manner of transportation in Los Angeles without the ability to construct streets - an authority currently given to Public Works in the City Charter. Giving LADOT this authority would align LA with most large cities in the nation; where the department that manages streets safety and traffic flow also has the ability to effectively build and maintain streets and sidewalks.

This merging has been suggested in multiple reports from city staff, outside consultants, citizen commissions, and twice by the City Council (c.f. 18-0458), but seemingly cannot be executed without Charter reform.

2. Shore up street funding with a regular percent of city assessed property values.

LADOT and BSS have lost a significant number of staff in recent budgets and do not have capacity to effectively deliver expected services. Currently in the City Charter, Parks and Rec and the Library departments are unique in receiving a dedicated percent of all taxable property values which ensures reliable funding for some of LA’s most vital public services. We believe streets, the City’s largest public space, should also be granted this privilege.

Preventing turbulence in operational capacity will allow effective delivery of long term projects, grants, and better use of special funds. We suggest 0.05% of assessed value of all property as assessed for City taxes, in 2025 would result in a combined budget of $428,500,000, (a return to 2022 funding levels) for a combined LADOT and BSS department. This would further assure that the new combined department would receive an increase in funding commensurate with property values and responsibilities.

3. Change the City budget to a 2 year cycle and formalize a 5 year Capital Improvement Plan.

The benefits of both of these suggestions have been well researched and proposed by other groups, including the Mayors office (ED9) and Investing in Place. While not every City formalizes a CIP in the City Charter, other large peer cities such as NYC, Houston, and San Jose do. A 2 year city budget and better CIP process would allow departments to improve management of projects, staff capacity, and delivery timelines.

4. Replace the board of public works with a director position similar to other City departments.

The Board of Public Works is over 100 years old and has a unique management structure compared to other departments inside the City of LA by reporting to both a board and a director. It is also unique amongst other Cities as a vehicle for structuring Public Works. The department should be run by a single director with a clear line of authority between the Mayor’s office, the department, and the Bureaus inside.