NORTH HOLLYWOOD : Wachs Tries to Keep Crossing Guard

Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs introduced a motion Friday aimed at overturning a plan to drop the city’s crossing-guard program at Coldwater Canyon Elementary School in North Hollywood.

As of Friday, Wachs’ motion, referred to the council’s Transportation Committee for study, had already secured at least a week’s reprieve from the decision to stop the crossing-guard program.

Last month, city Department of Transportation officials decided that traffic conditions at Coldwater Canyon Avenue and Bassett Street, the intersection near the school where a crossing guard has been assigned for years, did not meet the city’s criteria for providing guards.

City rules state that guards are provided only when more than 20 children cross the affected intersection and more than 300 cars turn through it.

About 175 to 240 children cross the Coldwater intersection, but fewer than 170 cars turn through it during the one-hour period before and after school, said Kaye Beechum, the Department of Transportation official who heads the city crossing-guard program.

But Wachs aide Mark Freed disputed the ruling, saying that the intersection is “inherently dangerous.”

One crossing guard was nearly fatally injured there two years ago and pedestrian-involved accidents near the intersection during the first nine months of 1992 are up 117% over the same time last year, Freed said.

Friday was to have been the last day for the guard program.

Beechum said that until Wachs’ motion was introduced, the plan was to assign the guard at Coldwater to another school.