TRAFFIC STUDIES HIT A WALL RESIDENTS WARY OF REPORTS ORDERED AND PAID FOR BY DEVELOPERS.

Byline: KERRY CAVANAUGH

Staff Writer

In neighborhoods where congestion is bad and development and density are dreaded words, nothing gets homeowners' groups more riled up than traffic studies.

The reports -- prepared by consultants for developers and fact-checked by city staff -- are supposed to analyze how much traffic the project will create.

But residents complain the studies often underestimate the real impact new apartment buildings, office towers or malls will have on local streets so developers don't have to spend as much money on traffic fixes. Despite assurances from city leaders that the studies are legitimate, residents are suspicious of reports ordered and paid for by developers trying to get their projects approved.

Now, hoping to defuse some of the acrimony and build confidence in the city's development approval process, Councilman Jack Weiss has proposed having the city Planning Department hire the environmental and traffic consultants -- not the developers.

"(Environmental impact reports) need to be done and they need to be done by professional firms with expertise. The question is who should pay for them. My modest proposal is that developers should not pay directly any more."

The Planning Department is reviewing Weiss' proposal, which would likely require the city to hire and manage consultants when an environmental impact study is required and get reimbursed by the developer.

That's how most California cities handle environmental and traffic studies.

"Very few cities any more have the developer prepare the reports," said Larry Wiener, with the law firm Richards, Watson & Gershon that represents smaller cities throughout the state.

"The greatest benefit is perhaps increasing public confidence in the objectivity of the study."

Broken system?

Yet planners and even Weiss himself are not convinced the city's system is broken.

Weiss, who is facing a recall campaign driven by Westside residents angry with his support of development, said he isn't suspicious of applicant-paid reports, but added: "My proposal is aimed at the issue of public confidence."

Chief Zoning Administrator Michael LoGrande said the city could add safeguards to ensure studies are not influenced by the developer -- consultants are supposed to file reports to the city, but they sometimes share the reports with developers and their attorneys first.

But LoGrande doesn't think the city needs to hire and manage consultants.

"There's a perception that the process could be abused, but the types of technical studies and analysis that go into (environmental impact reports) really don't lend themselves to abuse," LoGrande said.

Consultants may do the work, but they use models approved by city planners and transportation engineers.

"There's no benefit in a developer jeopardizing their project and approval by trying to circumvent analysis."

But many Westside homeowners groups aren't buying it. In perhaps the most congested area of the city, residents scrutinize the potential traffic impacts of major projects along the Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards' corridor.

So when a Century City developer's traffic consultant found that a new 12-story twin high-rise would generate less traffic than two largely vacant eight-story buildings it was replacing, well, that was the last straw.

"We realized the process they used was crazy," said Barbara Broide, president of the Westwood South of Santa Monica Boulevard Homeowners Association.

When builders redevelop a site, they only have to alleviate the traffic they create. They're allowed to subtract the car trips associated with the current use from projected car trips the new use will create.

Broide and her neighbors suspected the developer's traffic consultant relied on national traffic counts that overestimated the daily car trips to the site currently. They decided to do a reality check.

Clipboards in hand, they surveyed lunchtime diners at the building's food court and found almost all had walked over from nearby office buildings. The traffic study estimated 1,433 car trips a day to a health club in the building, but the club only validated parking for 50 patrons a day. The rest walked from nearby offices or homes.

Now the group is suing the developer and the city over the traffic study. And that's the problem, Broide said.

"The city can't allow developers to conduct the traffic study and EIR. We end up being the enemies in the process, with the city and the developer working together. It's not coming up with a good project in the end."

'Anti-development'

But some planners think having the city hire and manage consultants will be an administrative nightmare. Smaller cities may have one major project a year. L.A. has around 20 new projects each year that require full environmental impact reports that include traffic, air quality and noise studies. Dozens of smaller projects each year require traffic studies.

"Personally, I think it would be a bureaucratic challenge," said LoGrande. "We'd end up with a lot of administrative staff in charge of billing and managing the consultants."

Planning and zoning consultant Robert Lamishaw said the process would delay projects and still wouldn't satisfy groups opposed to development.

"It takes months and months to get anything done. The city of Los Angeles already throws up more roadblocks to development," Lamishaw said.

"These are people who are just anti-development. Anything that doesn't fit their preconceived prejudice is going to be suspect in their mind."

Resident watchdogs

But homeowners groups said that as long as the developer hires the consultant, the process is suspect and residents will have to be watchdogs.

In Sherman Oaks, the local homeowners group was following a proposed 89-condo and 16,000-square-foot mixed-use project on Ventura Boulevard. The developer agreed to update an old traffic study, and Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association board member Nancy Kaleel happened upon the consultant's traffic counter sitting at the corner of Tyrone Avenue and Moorpark Street one morning.

The intersection leads to Beverly Glen Boulevard, one of the few local streets that cross over the Santa Monica Mountains into the Westside and is an alternative to the congested 405 freeway.

As usual, cars were gridlocked at the Tyrone/Moorpark and Tyrone/Ventura Boulevard crossings, and only one or two cars could traverse the intersection in a light cycle. Kaleel snapped a few photos.

Yet when the traffic study came out a few months later the intersection was graded an A.

"It was beyond belief. It's completely gridlocked. How is this getting a passing grade?" Kaleel recalled. "It was my aha moment."

She ended up going out to the intersection with her video camera and filming the morning backup. SOHA submitted the evidence when the group challenged the project approval, and the developer agreed to make traffic improvements in the area.

But Kaleel said residents shouldn't have to be watchdogs over developers' studies.

"If you're taking failing intersections and doing nothing to fix them and then making them worse by adding more businesses and residences, it floods every street with traffic," Kaleel said.

"It doesn't make for a better quality of life."

kerry.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com

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