There is new evidence that the testimony given by a Los Angeles Police Department captain against a road diet on North Figueroa Street was, similar to Metro and LAFD testimony: not based on any actual LAPD evidence.
LAPD Captain Jeff Bert appeared in uniform at the May 8th public meeting hosted by Los Angeles City Councilmember Gil Cedillo. Captain Bert stated that the planned North Figueroa road diet bike lanes would impair police emergency response times. Recently the L.A. Times reported that Cedillo had stated that "local fire and police officials told him it [N. Figueroa bike lanes] could pose a safety problem for emergency response vehicles."
Los Angeles City Bicycle Advisory Committee Chair Jeff Jacobberger submitted a public records request letter [pdf] asking the LAPD for any documentation Captain Bert had referred to and, indeed, "[a]ll documents referring or relating to any analysis or evaluation by LAPD of whether bike lanes impair emergency response times."
It will come as no surprise that LAPD's response [pdf, and embedded after the jump below], similar to LAFD's, cites no documents that make any connections between emergency response times and bike facilities.
While the LAFD response was a one-page letter basically saying "no records found," the LAPD response was five pages. LAPD included past data backing up Captain Bert's statement that LAPD's Northeast Division already has longer emergency response times when compared to other divisions throughout Los Angeles. For April-May 2014, Northeast Division averaged 8.2 minutes, slightly higher than West Los Angeles Division's average of 8.1 minutes, and just over a minute worse than the citywide average of 6.9 minutes.
LAPD's letter further stated that "no other information was located" pertinent to Jacobberger's records request.
Now that Gil Cedillo has made his full North Figueroa flip-flop official, the latest emergency response time revelations are perhaps not so timely. Maybe by showing agency representatives' anti-bike-lane testimonies as unfounded, uninformed, and misleading, these representatives might show some reluctance to get in the way of public safety projects in the future. Time will tell.
