Glendale Blvd. Traffic Fix Back in Slow Lane

For the third time in a century, Los Angeles and state planners are trying to reshape Glendale Boulevard in Echo Park to meet Southern California’s evolving transportation needs.

And they are not finding it easy going.

Before World War II, Glendale was a main thoroughfare for Red Car trolleys serving downtown, entering or leaving a tunnel at Beverly Boulevard. By 1963, the Red Cars were gone and the boulevard became a mini-freeway into the city’s core when the Glendale Freeway’s southern terminus was opened and began to dump traffic directly onto the street.

State officials toyed with extending the freeway all the way west to Beverly Hills. That idea ran out out of gas because of opposition from residents, even after the state had acquired much property in the Echo Park area.

Now planners are recommending a series of seemingly contradictory steps to speed the rush-hour traffic that routinely clogs Glendale Boulevard--an estimated 30,000 cars a day near the freeway--and yet make the street more pedestrian friendly. The ambitious plan would, for example, reconfigure the freeway’s curved southbound end and put a traffic signal there.

Other portions of the $14-million plan, such as closing off at least one side street as a way to reduce “cut-through” traffic, are the subject of much neighborhood debate.

Without the remedies, planners say, the traffic jams and air pollution will only get worse.

“We have to do something,” said Frahad Zaltash, project manager for the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. “If we don’t, there will be more traffic, more wear and tear on cars. It’ll be a whole lot worse than it is now.”

The project would have regional ramifications.

Because Alvarado Street feeds into Glendale Boulevard at an odd angle just south of the Glendale Freeway, traffic backups also affect neighborhoods below Sunset Boulevard. And drivers heading to such northerly suburbs as La Canada Flintridge and Sunland often seek shortcuts to the freeway,creating bottlenecks on the normally quiet side streets in Echo Park.

What’s more, the Glendale Boulevard corridor is a popular route to Dodger Stadium, even though officials have closed off the ballpark’s Scott Avenue entrance to relieve game-day traffic on local streets.

The plan to fix the corridor’s problems has been detoured, at least temporarily. When it came up for a crucial vote recently, the Los Angeles City Council, at the urging of newly elected City Councilmen Ed Reyes and Eric Garcetti, agreed to a delay.

Critics had complained that part of the project would eat up valuable park space at the corner of Glendale Boulevard and Temple Street. Those critics said a new right-hand turn on westbound Temple onto northbound Glendale would eliminate a portion of the popular public tennis courts at that corner. That’s too much to ask in an already park-starved part of town, they said.

The delay has led some to wonder whether the changes are in Echo Park’s best interests. Although Glendale Boulevard north of Echo Park Lake is dominated by aging storefronts and fast-food restaurants, residents see it as vital to Echo Park. They support more pedestrian crosswalks as proposed in the plan, but they wonder if a new boulevard traffic corridor will create a barrier separating one portion of hilly Echo Park from the other.

Some are confused about the project’s goals.

“That’s a good question,” said resident Peter Lassen, who has studied the problem. “We don’t want Glendale Boulevard to be a freeway.”

Judy Raskin, an Echo Park resident who has served on a citizens panel that studied the problem, added, “We do want to move the traffic, but we want to slow it down.”

For years, freeway traffic speeding onto Glendale Boulevard has resulted in frequent fender-benders, sometimes backing up traffic as much as a mile above the freeway’s southern end. In the afternoons, northbound traffic on Glendale is routinely stop-and-go for two miles. Some area residents complain that a left-hand turn onto Glendale from local streets near the freeway is virtually impossible.

Since 1991, a group of local residents has examined the traffic flow. In short order, they shot down one idea proposed by state officials: high-occupancy lanes that would run down the grassy median of the boulevard where the Red Car tracks once were. That idea was abandoned as impractical.

Other remedies slowly emerged, with funding promised by the federal government, the state, the city and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for separate parts of the work. About three years ago, a plan to reshape the freeway’s terminus was assured when Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), who represents the area, was able to set aside $12 million in federal funds for the work.

That work might involve eliminating or changing the current elevated offramp, but there is not much room for massive construction because of the close-in hills.

Another proposal would close Berkeley Avenue to east-west through traffic where Glendale and Alvarado merge. The citizens panel agreed to support the closure, but only if it is temporary while bigger improvements are planned.

For now, officials at Caltrans say the closure should be permanent. The state won’t pay for a temporary closure, they say.

Other measures, such as modifying street striping to add more lanes and putting a new traffic signal at Glendale and Scott Avenue, stirred little debate.

That changed three weeks ago when the MTA-funded portion of the project came up for a City Council vote that would have eliminated the need for an environmental impact report on street-widening work near the tennis courts. Raskin, Lassen and others loudly objected. Former Councilman Mike Hernandez, unaware that the Glendale-Temple work would be controversial, had moved for quick action on the proposal, since MTA’s commitment of $4 million would have expired at the end of June without council action.

Reyes, Hernandez’s successor as the 1st District’s representative, was joined by Garcetti, who succeeded former Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, in seeking the delay. They have sided with critics who say work at that corner should be dropped, but they say they expect other parts of the project to eventually proceed with MTA’s funding.

Meanwhile, drivers who use Glendale Boulevard seem to favor anything that would speed traffic along.

“Anything would be better than sitting bumper-to-bumper in traffic,” said Doris Miller of Burbank as she waited for the light to change at Glendale and Berkeley. “I’m sorry if the residents are unhappy about some things, but I need to get to work quickly, and this is the best way for me to get downtown.”

With that, Miller sped off down Glendale.

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Glendale Boulevard Changes

A series of measures to improve traffic flow on Glendale Boulevard are being considered. Here are some of the main changes:

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Glendale Blvd. and Glendale Freeway terminus: Reconfigure freeway’s end and add traffic signal and pedestrian crosswalk.

Glendale Blvd. and Berkeley Ave.: Close off Berkeley to through traffic.

Glendale Blvd. and Scott Ave.: Install new traffic signal.

Glendale Blvd. and Temple St.: Widen the intersection. This would threaten to eliminate some tennis courts in Echo Park.