City-sanctioned traffic jam adding to global warming

On a conveniently hot August day last year, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa joined former President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and London Mayor Ken Livingstone to talk about global warming.

Their collective message: Before the polar ice caps melt, flooding coastal areas, altering ecosystems and changing the climate, maybe it’s time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Villaraigosa, to his credit, has pushed the city-owned Department of Water and Power to reduce its emissions and go the clean-energy route.

It’s beginning to happen, albeit slowly.

In the meantime, a sizable collection of L.A. residents have been asking the DWP what’s so green about allowing cars to sit and idle for hours while touring the department-run Griffith Park Light Festival during the winter holidays.

And the residents’ beef?

A government-sanctioned traffic jam spewing exhaust every night would be dumb even without global warming. See the photos.

“All we’re trying to do is get the DWP to ask people to park in the zoo’s lot” -- the zoo is at one end of the festival’s 1-mile pathway -- “and walk the festival of lights, which can be pleasant if you’re not competing with automobiles,” said Bernadette Soter, a board member of the Greater Griffith Park Neighborhood Council.

Soter, of course, forgets this is Los Angeles we’re talking about. Last year, about 151,000 vehicles drove the length of the festival, while 20,000 pedestrians navigated the route, according to the DWP.

“Think about it,” Soter said. “It’s a 1-mile walk. In a park.”

Two other neighborhood councils -- Hollywood United, Atwater Village, two residents’ groups and the Sierra Club -- also are asking for the festival to go the pedestrian-oriented route.

What really gets Soter flapping her arms, however, is the DWP’s insinuation that the residents’ stance is motivated only by NIMBYism.

So what’s the DWP say?

Joe Ramallo of the DWP -- was ready, as usual, to leap through the phone after we called. He had an answer, as always. In fact, he had umpteen answers.

“We understand that” traffic for the festival “is an inconvenience to neighbors in that area,” Ramallo said.

He said the DWP is thinking of expanding the number of nights that the festival is limited to bikes or those on foot. But he said the agency has concerns about making the event too pedestrian-friendly.

The zoo’s parking lot may not be big enough to hold all those cars pedestrians would arrive in. Thousands of people walking through a dimly lighted park could trip over things. Children may stray too close to the lights.

And, he said, a pedestrian-oriented route may inspire some people to complain about “unsupervised kids who linger and hang out,” Ramallo said. “You have to be able to move people through there.”

He also pointed out that a fuel cell powers the festival lights -- clean energy!

And what does Councilman Tom LaBonge say? The festival is in his district.

LaBonge, too, is open to boosting the number of weeknights limited to cyclists and walkers. But he thinks cars are part of the deal to allow as many people as possible -- including those who cannot walk the route -- to see the lights.

“I’m a giant proponent of the joy that the festival brings,” LaBonge said.

Turning to other crucial issues, how does one L.A. City Council staffer avoid getting phone calls from his boss while on vacation?

By concocting a delicious little plan.

First, he leaves his regular cellphone at home and instead brings a “secret” cellphone.

As for the secret cell, he gives the first three digits of the number to a fellow staffer and the last four digits to another. “That way,” he says, “they have to get together and discuss whether they really have to call me.”

To put it another way, to avoid having his boss call him, short of a true emergency, on vacation, this council staffer has taken the kind of precautions reserved for things such as nuclear missile launch codes. Sweet.

For obvious reasons, this staffer expressed a strong desire that his name not appear in this column.

Where is the best current vantage point in the Southland to watch the franchise-ization of America?

South Lake Street in Pasadena, which has become a haven for fast-food burrito shacks.

A Chipotle restaurant just opened on the street, joining a Baja Fresh, Wahoo’s and Rubio’s on the same block. One block over is a Sharkey’s.

The funny thing about South Lake is that it’s not an ugly commercial corridor. It’s one of those pedestrian-friendly business districts in which the parking lots are in back of the stores instead of lining the street.

“Certainly it wouldn’t be our ideal situation where you have every one of them be a fast-food, Mexican-themed restaurant” on South Lake, said Eric Duyshart, Pasadena’s economic development manager.

He said the city keeps anticipating that one or two of the restaurants will close. But it hasn’t happened.

If anything, Duyshart said, each new burrito shack seems to create demand for another.

About those endless possibilities for the Los Angeles City Council-proposed store in City Hall?

Attentive readers may recall the council wants a store in City Hall to sell city-themed thingamajigs. Think Villaraigosa cufflinks and a council President Eric Garcetti solar radio.

It’s hard to know where to start on this one.

First, this column believes a store is a good idea -- but only if it’s part of a city of Los Angeles museum. There’s been talk about such a museum for decades to explain and commemorate the history of the nation’s second-greatest city.

Naturally, such talk has gone nowhere in the City of Unspeakably Low Expectations. The Museum of the City of New York, by the way, opened its doors in 1923.

As for building an inventory for a store or museum, this column could think of no better place to start than the office of the aforementioned Councilman LaBonge, a.k.a. Mr. Los Angeles.

Among the items we found there:

* A miniature City Hall made of white chocolate.

* A piece of old curb that LaBonge said once sat in front of Walt Disney’s cousin’s house in Los Angeles and that he suspects Disney once stepped upon.

* A “City of Los Angeles Sanitary Sewer” bathroom mat shaped like a sewer lid.

* An old key to the city labeled “Made in Japan.”

* A plate from the old City Hall cafeteria.

LaBonge quipped that his wife often jokes she will open a “Museum of My Husband’s Crap.” “And when I open my museum,” LaBonge added, “I will give ‘crap’ a whole new meaning.”

The prospects?

Don’t brace yourself for a city store anytime soon. The idea has been kicking around since the 1970s, resurfaced in the 1990s and then again in last December’s council motion, which concluded:

“The City Council has not received a report on the progress of establishing a city store since August of 2000, during the Democratic Convention. We are due for an update.”

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Next week: The Ghosts of Little Ed and Little Antonio.

steve.hymon@latimes.com