The first day of school for kids in the Los Angeles Unified School District is coming up soon, so council members followed through on their plans to make the streets safer around campuses across the city.
They said on Friday that more than 450 slow zones and 250-speed bumps were put up around schools because of the deaths of pedestrians.
In a statement, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said, “The city moved quickly to put hundreds of safety features near schools before the new school year.” “In partnership with the City Council and Los Angeles Unified School District, we took action to make streets safer near schools and we will continue to do more to promote student safety.”
As students get ready to go back to school on Monday, different city offices finish a variety of installation projects. One of these was making the areas around schools safer.
“Quick build” street safety projects were done at more than 180 intersections near 40 schools, more than 250-speed bumps were put up near 92 schools where speeding is a common problem, and more than 450 streets were made “School Slow Zones” with 15-mile-per-hour speed limits.
For the 2024–25 school year, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation will also put more than 500 crossing guards to work. More than ten years have passed since the city had its “widest deployment” of crossing guards.
Heather Hutt, the Los Angeles City Councilwoman who leads the Transportation Committee, said that the safety steps are very important because school is about to start.
The record number of crossing guards hired by LADOT over the last year and the hundreds of safety features that were placed are the biggest investments the city has ever made to stop dangerous driving near schools, said Laura Rubio-Cornejo, General Manager of LADOT.
Superintendent of the LAUSD, Alberto Carvalho, also made a statement about the problem. In it, he talked about the families whose children have been hurt in “senseless” traffic accidents while walking to and from school in the past few years.
“As we welcome back our students, staff, and families to the 2024-25 school year, our Board of Education members and I are grateful for the steps Mayor Bass and the City Council have taken to address these safety issues with urgency,” said Carvalho’s statement. “Los Angeles Unified looks forward to continuing the work collaboratively with all our governmental partners to safeguard the wellbeing of our students and school community.”
The steps to take were first put in place last year after a woman was killed by a car while walking to Hancock Park Elementary School with her seriously hurt six-year-old daughter.