Sidewalks in Harbor City Face Neglect by City of LA

The sidewalks at six intersections in Harbor Gateway South have not seen a lot of services from the City of Los Angeles. All six run across Harvard Boulevard, including Del Amo, 204th, 206th, 207th, 208th and 209th Street. They do not have wheelchair accessible ramps on all curbs of their intersections. A few of the curbs are damaged, with chunks of cement missing.

In addition, these streets do not receive regular street cleaning. But 205th and Harvard has wheelchair accessible ramps, and regular street cleaning. 

“That’s just ludicrous, to think that one street gets it,” said Rick Thomas, an activist who lives in Harbor Gateway South. “But how can it be that other streets don’t get it?”

Thomas said that 205th Street isn’t busier than the other intersections nearby. He has lived near those streets for seven years, and says that when he moved to the area, it had unfinished ramps on the intersections — and they still haven’t been finished.

However, representatives for the Los Angeles City Department of Public Works said that the city’s sidewalk repair program has not started work on these locations. 

Thomas criticized former Council District 15 Councilman Joe Buscaino for not doing anything about it, but said that Councilman Tim McOsker told him he would fix it.

Sophie Gilchrist, communications director for McOsker, said her team looked into the issue of the incomplete ramps. Her team is working with the Public Works Bureaus of Engineering and Street Services. She said there is a great need for ramps that meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA.

“We’re also going to work with them to ensure that projects that have begun will be completed in a more timely manner,” Gilchrist wrote via email.

Gilchrist said that McOsker’s office is compiling a list of sidewalk and ramp repairs in CD 15.

“Typically we get more requests for sidewalk repairs and blue curbs but we do also receive requests about ADA compliance which is very important to us,” Gilchrist wrote.

Dept. of Public Works representatives said that the city has an access request program that allows people to make requests to repair pedestrian facilities, including sidewalks and curb ramps. In 2018, the city council approved a prioritization and scoring system that awards a certain amount of points to each requested area. If a requested area is in a residential area, it gets 15 points; if it’s within 500 feet of a bus or transit stop, it gets 15 points; and if it’s been in the queue for more than 120 days, it also receives 15 points. All three can stack, and the highest a requested area can have is 45 points.

Public works representatives said that Del Amo and Harbor Boulevard has 15 points, as does Harbor and 208th, and Harbor and 209th. The intersections of Harbor with 204th, 206th and 207th streets have 30 points each.

“Currently, the estimated wait time for completion of an Access Request with a score of 30 is in excess of 10 years,” public works representatives wrote via email. “This is subject to change.”

Public works representatives said that the sidewalk repair program receives requests daily, about 70 a month.

“We currently have over 3,500 eligible Access Requests,” the public works representatives wrote.

Even though the streets do not receive street cleaning on a regular basis, the city did clean the streets in the area in early February. Thomas says this is because he sent an email about a lack of street cleaning to McOsker and other city representatives. 

“Normally what happens … is that the trucks come around to ticket and tow, which they’re supposed to do that, and they never ticket and tow,” Thomas said.

Thomas said that instead, the tow trucks simply move on to another area, because there are too many cars parked on the street for the street sweepers.

“They always kind of give a pass to this area,” Thomas said. “And of course, that’s why we don’t get the services.”

Thomas sent the email to city officials because he saw signs stating there was going to be street sweeping on 206th Street — but Thomas was unsure if it was going to happen. But the day after he sent the email, the city cleaned the streets.

“I shouldn’t have to be that proactive,” Thomas said. “These are things that we deserve, these are things that we need, but the neighborhood has never been more neglected.”

Gilchrist gave a possible explanation for this.

“Throughout this city, unfortunately, not all council districts have equal distribution or access to street cleanings,” Gilchrist wrote. “In CD15 only a third of our streets are currently posted for cleanings. We’d like to explore a program to have street sweeping on a more regular and equitable basis.”

Public works representatives said that 205th Street has a posted route, and gets swept on a biweekly basis.

“The current posted route network has remained in place for many years; due to personnel constraints, StreetsLA has not been able to add any additional streets to the network,” the public works representatives wrote.

Public works representatives said that the previously mentioned streets are not part of the posted routes.

“Those streets are part of what we call “open routes,” which are swept when resources are available,” the public works representatives wrote. “If there is a particular block that is in need of cleaning, StreetsLA is able to send a sweeper to perform a one-time special sweeping. The Bureau is more than happy to work with local community partners on this type of effort.”

Thomas said there are a lot of families and elderly people in the area.

“I have like three or four veterans that live on our block,” Thomas said. “One of the guys, he doesn’t want to cross the street, because … he’s an older guy, it’s too hard.”

The city finalized an agreement with disability advocates in 2016 in a case called Willits v. the City of Los Angeles. As part of the agreement, the city agreed to pay $1.37 billion over the course of 30 years to fix broken sidewalks, curb ramps and other pedestrian issues.

In November 2021, the current city controller, Ron Galperin, released a report detailing the problems with the city’s strategy for fixing sidewalks. 

At the time of the report’s writing, the city had repaired sidewalks at 2,100 sites under the Willits settlement. This is only a fraction of the sites that need repairs. In addition, the city also started a “fix and release” policy in 2016, with the intent of fixing all the sidewalks in the city. After the Public Works Department’s Bureau of Engineering fixes a parcel of sidewalk, the bureau releases a certificate of compliance. According to the controller’s 2021 report, only 4,879 certificates had been released. The report estimated that Los Angeles has about 640,000 parcels of sidewalk.

The report argued that part of the problem was that the city was repairing entire parcels of sidewalk where only a portion of the parcel has a defect, even though the ADA and the Willits settlement do not require this.

“Just because people aren’t engaged, don’t vote, doesn’t mean they don’t deserve services in the streets, to have handicap ramps,” Thomas said. “That is unacceptable.”