Heated Silver Lake Traffic Safety Meeting Monday

The traffic at the north end of Silver Lake is tangled, with public and private construction projects making any global solution difficult.

That, of course, isn't stopping citizens and officials from trying, especially after a car recently killed a young woman crossing Rowena.

Council member Tom LaBonge led efforts at an over two-hour meeting at Ivanhoe Elementary School in Silver Lake on Monday.

Titled "Silver Lake Traffic Safety Community Meeting," it featured speakers from the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the city Planning Department and the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council.

The community too turned out in good numbers, and many spoke their minds.

Congestion along Rowena Drive caused by the DWP's on-going reservoir Pipeline project was one concern.

So was safety, for children crossing Rowena to school and customers visiting businesses along the obstructed stretch.

Local business owners worried that the increased difficulty of parking and walking along Rowena would deter customers.

Neighbors near the digging along Rowena complained that official detours (along Riverside) were being ignored and that their streets had become thoroughfares.

At the heart of many's short-term frustrations was whether a long-term solution was being considered, beyond the DWP project timeline.

Tom LaBonge has long spoken out for a "road diet" type of traffic calming, by eliminating a lane of traffic in each direction.

Some Monday felt that diet should co-exist with the DWP's partial closure of Rowena that, as some noted, is a de facto "diet" in itself.

But LaBonge and others felt it made more sense to formally address traffic calming after DWP engineers and workers had finished their task.

Possible short-term remediations discussed at the meeting included stationing a flag "person" at the corner of Glendale Boulevard and Rowena during work hours, to encourage drivers to take the current detour along Riverside Drive.

The intersection at Rowena and Glendale is expected to stay blocked for several months as construction continued.

LaBonge also pledged to finds funds for signs along near Ivanhoe School to protect students walking there.

Finally, Steven Cole of the LADWP helped LaBonge update with the latest about the sidewalk along the Silver Lake Reservoir and Tesla Avenue, between West Silver Lake Drive and Armstrong Avenue.

A six-foot-wide sidewalk will be built on the south side of the street, using some of the existing DWP property in the dam and near the pre-school.

Construction will begin on June 4 and continue through mid-October, Tesla will be closed to pedestrians during that time. A single lane of traffic will run west from Armstrong Avenue to West Silver Lake Drie.

Some noted Monday that the closure will add an extra three-tenths of a mile to the route around the lake.

Runners will have to detour up West Silver Lake Drive to Armstrong Avenue, making one lap now equal 2.5 miles.

Some worried that free-spirited locals will take the auto route anyway. LADWP officials hope signage will prevent that.

We shall see.