This Signal Took Years to Get a Green Light

So, how many people does it take to install a traffic signal in the city of Los Angeles?

Too many.

Plus a whole lot of phone calls to make sure all those people are keeping their promises.

Plus stacks of paperwork and a slew of community meetings.

Plus time: In this case, four years.

Those were the discoveries of a group of Echo Park residents who last week were finally able to celebrate as Mayor Richard Riordan approved a city-state agreement to install a traffic light at Alvarado and Reservoir streets.

Residents describe the intersection as notoriously dangerous. Almost everyone seems to have a horror story about someone killed, injured or nearly hit there.

The celebration was tempered by the residual frustration of so many years, phone calls and letters.

“It’s unbelievable what it takes to get a signal,” said Barbara Limon, a grandmother and community activist.

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Earlier in the week, the City Council OKd a deal in which Caltrans will use $94,000 in state gas tax funds and the city will kick in $7,000 more to put signals and safety lighting at the intersection.

For all their frustration, the Echo Park residents turned out to be among the lucky few.

The city usually installs only 15 to 20 traffic signals a year, officials say, with each project costing between $75,000 and $100,000. Currently, 56 projects are waiting for funding. Some were approved more than three years ago.

Limon and Dorothy Lopez, who are neighbors and also grandmothers to the same 7-month-old girl, knew none of this in 1992 when they founded the Sunset Alvarado/Hills Improvement Association.

One of their prime objectives was getting a traffic signal at the intersection. At the dozens of meetings they held, complaints about accidents and near misses flooded in.

“I think there’s an accident [at the intersection] almost every week,” Lopez said. “You hear the screech, you hear the bang, everybody runs out. . . . Not that you ever get used to it.”

Lopez and Limon collected more than 200 signatures for a petition they presented to Michael Woo, then their City Council representative, requesting a light.

About a month later, they got a call back from a city official asking them to explain the problem. That marked the first step of a long, winding path.

Once the process began, Limon and Lopez, who had no familiarity with municipal government, found they had to keep in close contact with agencies such as the Department of Street Lighting, the Department of Engineering and the Department of Transportation to make sure paperwork for the signal was not just sitting on someone’s desk.

“We had to make calls to all of the departments,” Limon said.

Adding to the complexity was the fact that Alvarado Street is a state highway, which required the women to keep tabs on Caltrans as well.

“It wasn’t that we had any difficulty with any department,” Limon said. “It was just having to deal with so many departments, calling them to make sure we weren’t forgotten.”

In fact, they almost were.

When Lopez made one of her routine calls to Caltrans a couple of weeks ago, she was told that if the city did not approve the agreement with the state by May 24, the project would be put off for at least another year.

Lopez immediately contacted her current City Council representative, Jackie Goldberg, who helped make sure the signal project was put on the council’s agenda last week. Riordan signed it two days later--on the 24th.

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Limon believes that had she and Lopez not bird-dogged the agencies, the project would have been lost.

“We could never depend on just one person,” Limon said. “A lot of people could be discouraged by that.”

Throughout the four years, Limon said, she wished there could have been one City Hall liaison that community groups could keep in touch with to check on the status of such projects. “We learned you can’t do this by just one letter, that you have to follow up,” Lopez said.

“It’s unreasonable,” said Rev. David Farley, pastor of the Echo Park United Methodist Church, which is located at the intersection. “This is an example of why people feel the government is unresponsive,” said Farley, who witnessed a fatal traffic accident on the corner two years ago. “It discourages community activism. It’s important for people to know it’s their right and it’s not trivial.”