TRAFFIC SIGNALS CHANGED FOR THE SABBATH.

Byline: Jesse Hiestand Daily News Staff Writer

Even pushing a crosswalk button violates the religious customs of Orthodox Jews on the Sabbath, so city officials are trying to find a way to avoid the danger of their having to hurry across busy intersections.

On Friday, engineers with the city Department of Transportation reprogrammed five intersections along bustling Ventura and Burbank boulevards so traffic lights will automatically allot extra time for pedestrians even if they did not activate the crossing button.

This timing pattern will remain in effect every week from 4:45 p.m. Friday to 8:30 p.m. Saturday, officials said. Sabbath ends at sundown Saturday.

``It's very considerate of them to do that,'' said Joseph Tehrani, 48, an Orthodox Jew and civil engineer for Caltrans.

Orthodox Jews strictly observe the Sabbath as a day of rest and reflection and accordingly do not use any electricity, including cars and telephones.

For Tehrani and others, there is another pressing concern about these intersections.

``Some of the older people can't walk as fast,'' Tehrani said Friday after crossing Ventura Boulevard at Newcastle Avenue, one of the reprogrammed intersections.

It was in that intersection on Oct. 20 that Soltan Netan E-Li, the 76-year-old wife of a rabbi, was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver while she was walking to temple for prayers.

Witnesses to the crash said Netan E-Li appeared to get stranded in the intersection when the light changed before she could reach the other side.

In the wake of her death, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick said she began looking into the issue.

At the urging of Chick, chairwoman of the City Council's Public Safety Committee, and fellow Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, engineers changed the timing patterns for the Sabbath.

``We want our families and elders, all residents in Los Angeles, to be able to cross streets safely, and, in particular, we want to be respectful of people's religious beliefs and traditions,'' Chick said Friday. ``This was an easy thing for the city to do.''

All it took was a few clicks of a computer keyboard in the city's Automated Traffic Surveillance Control Center in downtown, said transportation engineer associate Dan Mitchell. The effort was no extra cost to the city.

``It's a minimal effort on our part, and for the most part it has a minimal effect on traffic since most of it takes place on Saturday, which is an off-peak day,'' Mitchell said.

The time between a green and red light can vary from 5 seconds to 40 seconds, he said. The cycle is shorter when no one pushes the crosswalk button because the intersection assumes that only vehicles want to cross.

With the changes made Friday, people will now have about 30 seconds to cross the affected intersections, with or without pushing the button, Mitchell said.

The affected intersections are along Ventura Boulevard at both Newcastle and Zelzah avenues and Burbank Boulevard at Reseda Boulevard and both Etiwanda and Lindley avenues.

These are among about 40 intersections citywide where traffic signals have been modified on account of the Sabbath, Mitchell said. Some of these intersections, called ``Sabbatical pedestrian recall locations,'' were changed more than five years ago.

The ones changed Friday were the first in the western end of the San Fernando Valley, Chick said.

The eight other such intersections in the valley are in North Hollywood.

While the Encino intersections are now set to change automatically every Friday, traffic engineers will have to reprogram them from downtown on religious holidays, Mitchell said.

But even that will be automated in about a year because the department has rewritten the software it uses to control signal timing at the computers housed in the gray boxes at intersections.

``It will know each day what time, to the second, the sun rises and sets and has all the special holidays programmed in,'' Mitchell said. ``That will eliminate the need for us to manually implement this (every holiday).''