Woo Urges Ban on Building to End Traffic Siege

Los Angeles City Councilman Michael Woo on Wednesday promised to impose a ban on building and to institute daily patrols of city inspectors to break up a construction-spawned traffic siege along the narrow streets in a hilly Studio City neighborhood.

“We’re not talking merely about a little inconvenience here, we’re talking life and death,” Woo said after introducing a motion to deal with the traffic crisis on Avenida del Sol and Alta Mesa, two winding streets east of Coldwater Canyon Boulevard.

Woo’s motion is his latest attempt to grapple with what residents have characterized as disruptive conditions on the two streets, where 30 building permits have been registered with the city’s Building and Safety Department, 17 of which involve major construction work.

Woo asked the city to investigate the traffic situation several weeks ago after a cement truck toppled over on one of the streets when the roadway collapsed beneath it. “The cement truck focused everybody’s attention,” said Diana Brueggemann, a field deputy for Woo.

“It’s unconscionable to allow such hazardous conditions to continue,” Woo said. “The situation is absolutely out of control up there.”

Residents complain that rapid development has clogged the narrow streets with construction-related traffic. This has been complicated by a Department of Water and Power project to replace a water line in the area.

“It’s like a war zone,” said Judi Walker, an insurance agent who moved to the area five years ago. “It used to be secluded here until the developers found us and arrived en masse to build oversized, million-dollar homes on very small, very steep lots.

“We’ve had days when the mail couldn’t get through,” Walker said. She said some residents wait for up to an hour to get home from Coldwater Canyon.

About 150 houses line the 15-foot-wide, serpentine streets.

To deal with the situation, Woo is moving on several fronts.

The lawmaker Wednesday proposed to bar new building permits in the area until the DWP has finished its pipeline project. He also said “at least one” traffic control officer should be assigned to the area every day to keep traffic moving and to cite illegally parked cars. Finally, he urged that an inspector for the Street Maintenance Bureau be deployed to cite construction vehicles that illegally block the roadways.

Despite it all, Walker said, Woo has not moved decisively enough in the past. “We’ve been after him for two years about all this,” she said. “This is the first time Woo has begun listening to us.”