Traffic Plan Now Calls for Levy on Property Owners

Commercial property owners in congested areas of Los Angeles face the prospect of a novel assessment if City Council President Pat Russell succeeds in an attempt to strengthen her controversial plan to control traffic.

Up to now, Russell’s plan to pay for transportation improvements in congested neighborhoods would have put the burden exclusively on future development. But critics have said such a plan would not generate enough money and would fall too heavily on new development. Some of that criticism comes from her own district, where she is running for reelection in April.

Responding to that criticism, Russell on Thursday upped the ante, calling for assessments of existing commercial property to help ease the traffic crunch.

“I’m advocating that they pay as well,” Russell said of existing property owners. “That’s the next phase.”

Such an approach, calling for property owners to compensate for the traffic they generate by paying for transportation improvements, has not been tried anywhere before, according to experts in the field.

“It’s certainly a shift from what’s been done in the past,” said Robert Cervero, professor of urban planning at the University of California, Berkeley.

For the last two years, Russell has been drafting a proposed ordinance, known as the Transportation Reduction and Improvement Plan, that would allow city officials to identify heavily congested areas that are likely spots for new development and impose fees on any new commercial buildings that are put up after the ordinance is in effect. The fees, based on the size of a building and the amount of traffic it generates, would be used to widen streets, build new ones or augment bus or rail service. In addition, the property owners would be asked to institute ride-sharing programs.

In various forms, the plan already is being tried out in several parts of town, including Westchester in Russell’s council district, Westwood and along a section of Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley. Russell’s ordinance would establish uniform guidelines for identifying congested areas and setting fees. The proposed ordinance is expected to go before the City Council sometime during the next several weeks.

In order to levy fees on existing commercial property, Russell acknowledged, the city would have to create assessment districts and that would require the consent of the property owners who would be in the district.

Russell, flanked by two local planning officials, said she thinks there is a good chance that most property owners would agree to the assessments if they could be persuaded that their businesses would be better off with the transportation improvements.

“You have to show them it is to their advantage, and I think you can do that,” said Mark Pisano, executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Governments.

Kenneth Topping, director of the city’s planning department, said he did not think Russell’s proposed assessments would drive business out of the city.

“With the city about to pass Chicago as the nation’s second financial capital, people will want to be here,” Topping said.