Fountain Avenue becomes battleground for rival political factions

Fountain Avenue has become the prime battleground in local politics as rival factions vying for seats in next month’s City Council races hope to woo voters who are either excited or worried about the streetscape project that intends to replace two lanes of traffic on the avenue with protected bike lanes.

The streetscape project has divided residents, many of whom were caught off-guard by plans to remove significant amounts of street parking. 

Adding fuel to the fire has been a string of serious car collisions on Fountain, the most recent of which occurred at 11:30 a.m. today. Proponents of the bike lanes say these crashes prove the need for the streetscape project, even though its focus is on improving safety for pedestrians and cyclists. 

A protest of the project has been planned for 3:30 p.m. Friday at the corner of Crescent Heights and Fountain.

While neighborhood activists Kathy Blaivas and Stephanie Harker say they laid the groundwork for the protest, it’s now sponsored by WeHo For The People, a political advocacy organization launched by the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 2022, along with several neighborhood watch associations.

WeHo for The People is chaired by Alan Strasburg, who is also candidate George Nickle’s treasurer. 

The Chamber’s political action committee, WEHO PAC, is funding and operating a campaign to assist Nickle and fellow candidate Zekiah Wright, both of whom have spoken out against the bike lanes, in getting elected to City Council.

Supportive of the project are Mayor John M. Erickson and Danny Hang, an unofficial slate backed by labor union UNITE HERE Local 11 and special interests group like Streets for All, which holds a financial interest in seeing the project come to fruition. 

The debate widened over the past week after a two-car collision on Fountain and Spaulding led to the death of one of the drivers. A second crash occurred at Fairfax and Fountain a few days later, followed by today’s crash at the Hayvenhurst insection. Supporters of the bike lanes have said thicker traffic and slower speed limits would prevent speeding and reckless driving on the road — some in more forceful terms.

In an Instagram post, former Councilmember John D’Amico appeared to implicate Nickle and Councilmember John Heilman, also an opponent of the project, in the tragedy.

“Hey John and George, someone died in a traffic accident on Fountain last night,” he wrote. “Whatever you do make sure Fountain stays unsafe.”

The post was brought up during Monday night’s meeting of the Public Safety Commission, of which Nickle is a member, with several public commenters denouncing the attack. 

“It’s hate speech,” Nickle said. “It’s vile, and it is using the death of a person.”

However, Kevin Burton of the WeHo Bicycle Coalition, another beneficiary of the streetscape project, also tried to frame the tragedy as one that could be prevented by bike lanes.

“I just want to say that this sort of high-speed switching of lanes that goes on along Fountain Avenue does not occur on 95% of the length of that avenue going east of La Cienega,” Burton said. “One of the goals of reducing to one lane in each direction is to improve the safety of drivers because that kind of high-speed back-and-forth will go away. Even now, most of the day, it’s one lane in each direction because of all the parked cars, so it won’t be that much of a difference.”

Earlier in the meeting, Nickle and Chair Adam Eramian probed Fire Battalion Chief Chad Sourbeer and Community Safety Director Danny Rivas for further details about the project’s impact on emergency response times.

“Has the city reached out to you, to the fire department, to form a plan for how emergency vehicles will get down Fountain Avenue if there was an accident or incident that needs a response?” Eramian asked.

“No, I don’t think the fire department can even speak on something like that until we see something,” Sourbeer said. “We have nothing to talk about.”

Rivas said that once a formal plan is developed, it will be routed through the appropriate city departments for input from outside agencies, including the fire department. However, he claimed no plan has been submitted at this stage.

Nickle pressed him further. 

“The grant that was approved actually does say the city will reduce auto capacity by reducing the number of travel lanes and removing on-street parking for protected bike lanes and widened sidewalks along East-West Fountain Avenue,” Nickle said. “So, I know there may not be detailed blueprints or anything, but I would certainly think that even at this stage, because I know that it was a concern in the city of Los Angeles—there weren’t plans, it was just simply put out there—the people and the union for the firefighters came forward, and they said this will reduce 911 response times. So, if the plan is to do this on Fountain Avenue, and we’re getting $8.2 million, the state’s not going to give us $8.2 million without anything. This is what was approved. Then, surely we should be reaching out already to our first responders to just say, ‘You use Fountain. You’re going to have fewer lanes. There aren’t going to be places for cars to pull over if you come up behind them. What will this do to response times?'”

“We value everybody’s comments, but for the sake of our meeting here, again, this is an item that’s not agendized, and so we’re limited in what we can discuss as it relates to that project specifically,” Rivas replied.

“Sure, but I mean, we’re discussing fire issues, and this would impact their response times, at least according to other firefighter unions,” Nickle said. “So, I thought it was something that we could certainly discuss. I know that Athens has been reached out to—it was brought up at a previous commission meeting—but their response wasn’t relayed to the public. I reached out to Athens, and their response was, ‘If you do this, it will back up traffic out of the city.’ Athens was actually taken and shown the city’s plans—what they were going to do and where—and this was their response. So anyway, we should continue the conversation.”