SOUTHLAND STREETS RISKIER FOR WALKERS; PEDESTRIANS FINDING FEWER CROSSWALKS.

Byline: Todd S. Purdum N.Y. Times News Service

No one would ever mistake this car-crazy city for a pedestrian paradise. Even its grandest art deco emporium, the now-defunct Bullock's Wilshire, had its main entrance on a ``motor court'' in the back, and shoppers at more ordinary stores today sometimes find street-front doors locked with chains, with signs advising, ``Enter at Parking Lot in Rear.''

But for years, walkers in California have enjoyed one slender haven: When they step into the humble, white-striped crosswalk, even the brawniest BMW must stop.

And unlike most places in the United States, California has a reputation for strict enforcement. In one two-hour operation in Glendale last month, police officers wrote 37 tickets, each carrying a $103 fine, to motorists who had failed to stop.

So it comes as a bit of a shock to learn that some Southern California crosswalks are disappearing these days - at intersections without stoplights or stop signs - because traffic engineers believe that they can do more harm than good by lulling pedestrians into a false sense of security.

As streets are repaved, longstanding lines are simply being buried and rolled over, leaving some pedestrians yelping in protest.

``If we don't address this issue now, we're really moving into `Blade Runner' territory,'' said Norman Merrill, an actor who found the crosswalk that had stretched across his oceanfront intersection in Santa Monica for 20 years suddenly obliterated after a routine repaving last month.

``I think it's obviously a much bigger issue than actual crosswalks,'' said Merrill, who has pestered Santa Monica city officials for a year and a half about pedestrian problems. ``We're becoming Darwinized. It affects everybody. We're not like some subspecies. Everybody in a car eventually becomes a pedestrian.''

``The automobile reigns supreme in Los Angeles, and pedestrians are at the very bottom of the food chain,'' said Gloria Ohland, Los Angeles project manager for the Surface Transportation Policy Project, a nationwide nonprofit advocacy and research organization. ``Yes, there may be a crosswalk two streets up, but the streets are hostile to pedestrians, and the blocks are long.''

The twist is that Santa Monica is one of the few places in greater Los Angeles where it is actually possible to live without a car. It has a large pedestrian mall within easy distance of its many apartment buildings, and city planners are looking at ways to widen sidewalks and to get more sidewalk cafes, bus shelters and the like.

But the move away from crosswalks has been growing since 1970, when a study by traffic engineers in San Diego found that placing the lanes at ``uncontrolled'' intersections could cause pedestrians to drop their guard and step into the path of speeding vehicles.

Since then, the trend throughout California has been to remove such crosswalks as streets are repaved, said Brian Gallagher, a traffic engineer in charge of signal timing and research for the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. A 1994 study by the California Department of Transportation reached similar conclusions.