West Hollywood to Shut Down Fountain Avenue Traffic Signals for Upgrades Starting March 25

Fountain Ave. is getting a traffic signal upgrade beginning next week. First up, the light at Poinsettia Place Wednesday, March 25th.  

The City’s upgrading the hardware at seven Fountain Avenue intersections starting March 25 and swapping in new signal controller cabinets. Each time they work on a signal it will go dark while crews work, but we’re promised they will come back up before the afternoon commute begins. That’s the plan, anyway.

Not a glamorous makeover. But on a street that’s seen residents killed, upgrades on any equipment seem like a good thing.

You’ve seen this drill before. When a signal’s out, stop signs will be posted at the crosswalks and drivers will need to treat it as an all-way stop. No homes or businesses lose power. Just the lights.

When and Where

Fountain and Poinsettia Place goes first, March 25th. Fuller Avenue the next day, Vista Street the 28th. Then a break before Spaulding Avenue on April 1, Laurel on April 2, Sweetzer on April 3. Olive Drive closes it out with two days, April 8 and April 10.

That last stretch of Fountain has seen a lot. A Jeep and Toyota collided at Fountain and Olive during morning rush this past December. Three people were hospitalized after a DUI crash at Fountain and Spaulding in October 2024 — one of them died. Blake Ackerman, 27, was killed in a hit-and-run at Gardner Street last July. The City isn’t officially connecting the controller upgrades to any of that.
But it’s Fountain.

What’s Actually Being Replaced

Think of the controller cabinet as the brain of the intersection. It’s the metal box bolted to the pole that tells the light when to turn green, how long to stay there, and how to stay in sync with the signals at the next block over. They don’t last forever. When they go, the timing drifts, coordination between intersections breaks down, and getting a county crew out to fix it isn’t exactly a quick process. Newer equipment handles all of that better. Fewer failures, faster fixes.

And for anyone tracking the bigger Fountain Avenue fight — the protected bike lanes, the lane reduction, the whole La Brea to La Cienega redesign the City Council green-lit last October — this isn’t that. These are cabinet swaps. Maintenance. Completely separate from the streetscape project, which is still working its way through construction prep.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

For questions, contact Richard Garland, the City’s Principal Traffic Engineer, at rgarland@weho.org or (323) 848-6457.