3 Neighbor Cities Unite to Study Traffic, Development Problems

In an extraordinary move to deal with worsening development and traffic problems on the Westside, officials from Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood have agreed to become better neighbors by coordinating their planning and transportation efforts.

During the past month, the city councils of the three cities have endorsed a memorandum drafted by their planners which formally commits the cities to greater cooperation on planning issues, particularly those regarding proposed developments. A separate agreement on transportation--which would lead to a tri-city traffic study for much of the Westside--is expected next month.

“The growth crisis affects us all,” said Mark Winogrond, director of community development in West Hollywood. “We have recognized that we do not really make independent decisions. Our decisions have an effect on our neighbors, and our neighbors’ decisions have an effect on us.”

Kenneth C. Topping, director of planning in Los Angeles, described the new effort as “a good-neighbor policy” intended to eliminate friction among officials in the three cities while giving greater protection to homeowners.

‘Miniature U.N.’

“It will give neighborhoods across city boundaries an opportunity to know in advance about projects and get suggestions in before the decisions are made,” Topping said. “It is kind of like a miniature United Nations. . . . We have a mutual agreement to keep each other informed so that there aren’t any surprises.”

If successful, Topping said, the three cities want to invite Santa Monica and Culver City to join the effort eventually so the entire Westside can better coordinate planning and traffic policies. The city of Los Angeles is particularly concerned about new developments planned near the Santa Monica airport, and it recently sued Culver City over approval of the proposed Marina Place shopping center near Marina del Rey.

City officials said the cooperative effort among Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood is particularly significant because the three cities have not always had the friendliest relations. West Hollywood, for example, sued the city of Los Angeles in 1985 to block construction of the Ma Maison Sofitel Hotel across the city line. The suit was eventually settled out of court, with the developer agreeing to some traffic improvements.

Beverly Hills has also dragged Los Angeles into court on several occasions, most notably to limit the size of Century City. Beverly Hills also tried to block expansion of the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, which prompted West Hollywood officials to require the developer to help pay for the proposed regional traffic study as well as some local traffic improvements.

The legal disputes are “a waste of resources,” said Audrey Arlington, senior planner in Beverly Hills. “We don’t want to do that anymore, and I don’t think anybody else does either.”

Meeting Informally

For the past year, planners from the three cities have been meeting informally to establish better relations and come up with the formal memorandum. Although the final document is primarily a broad policy statement, it does commit the cities to several specific reforms:

Planning staffs will notify other cities of proposed projects or new plans that could affect them. The cities now exchange information informally, but often material “slips through the cracks” or arrives late, one official said. “My experience is that planners look for comments and assistance, but the problem comes when the comments come after a deal is wrapped up,” Winogrond said.

The planning staffs, working in concert, will bring to their City Councils and planning commissions issues that affect two or three cities and that need formal legislative action. In the past, the cities have often dealt separately with problems that could have been better resolved jointly. For example, the city of Beverly Hills several years ago rejected a proposed Four Seasons Hotel only to have the developers look across the street and build the hotel in Los Angeles. “So in the end, Beverly Hills received the traffic implications, anyway,” said Fred Cunningham, a spokesman for the city of Beverly Hills.

The cities will reevaluate general and specific plans for compatibility along common boundaries. Zoning in the three cities varies dramatically along boundaries, with commercial properties adjacent to residential neighborhoods and low-density commercial areas abutting high density areas. As a result, projects that straddle city boundaries can fall under vastly different rules in each city. In at least one case, the problem has resulted in a building with a stepped roof because of different height limits in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles, Arlington said.

Earlier Cooperation

Although the three cities have not completed the memorandum on traffic issues, formal cooperation in that area actually predates the planning effort. Transportation officials from Los Angeles and West Hollywood began meeting about 1 1/2 years ago because of concerns in West Hollywood about traffic at the intersection of Beverly and San Vicente boulevards.

The intersection is within the city of West Hollywood, but most of the major projects in the area--the Beverly Center mall, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the Ma Maison Sofitel Hotel--are in Los Angeles.

From those discussions, it was agreed to install several left-turn arrows at the intersection to help move traffic. West Hollywood officials said the new signals should be in place next summer. But more important, the cities decided to keep meeting--and to begin inviting Beverly Hills--to work on other traffic signals.

With West Hollywood taking the lead, the cities applied for money under the state’s Fuel Efficient Traffic Signals Management program to begin synchronizing traffic signals on roads that pass through more than one of them so that motorists will have fewer stops and delays. This year, they received $27,000 to synchronize signals on Sunset Boulevard and Fountain Avenue, and in 1989, they will begin work on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Tom Sorrentino, a West Hollywood transportation engineer, said the changes will bring real improvement to traffic flows in all three cities.

“Traditionally, this has been a problem because cities haven’t communicated or coordinated with each other,” he said. “And that has caused a significant portion of our traffic problems.”

Tri-City Traffic Study

Phil Aker, supervising transportation planner in Los Angeles, said the greatest benefit will come from the proposed tri-city traffic study. The study is expected to include all of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood and the so-called Wilshire West planning area of Los Angeles, roughly the portion of the city east of Beverly Hills and south of West Hollywood.

“We are saying that traffic impacts have to be considered regardless of political boundaries,” Aker said. “This really is the wave of the future.”

Transportation and planning officials from all three cities, while optimistic about their new-found cooperation, also said they do not expect an end to all disagreement. Just to play it safe, for example, the Beverly Hills City Council amended the planning memorandum to make it clear that cities would not be held liable if for some reason they did not notify a neighboring city of a project as promised.

Transportation officials from the three cities, meanwhile, have been unable to agree whether intersections in Beverly Hills and West Hollywood should eventually be integrated into the city of Los Angeles’s ATSAC system, which is a high-tech computerized traffic control program that has been credited with alleviating congestion around the Coliseum. Sorrentino said there is some resistance to having traffic officials in Los Angeles someday control intersections in West Hollywood and Beverly Hills.

Winogrond, the West Hollywood community development director, said officials expect all three cities to continue looking out for their own best interest, but he said at least now the cities may look beyond their boundaries in determining what actually is best for them.

“We have created a format for at least attempting to influence our neighboring cities,” Winogrond said. “Anything beyond that would be more than we originally hoped for.”

KEY POINTS OF AGREEMENT For the past year, planners from West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and the city of Los Angeles have been meeting informally to establish better relations and come up with a formal memorandum that commits the cities to several specific reforms:

Planning staffs will notify other cities of proposed projects or new plans that could affect them.

Planning staffs, working in concert, will bring to their city councils and planning commissions issues that affect two or three cities and that need some sort of formal legislative action.

The cities will reevaluate general and specific plans for compatibility along common boundaries.