Los Angeles has $1.5 billion worth of screwed up, buckled, cracked, dangerous sidewalks, and that's not including the several million dollars the city has to pay out every year in lawsuits brought by people injured by walking on those sidewalks. Guys, walking can't be this dangerous; the other cities are going to make fun of us. LA Times columnist Steve Lopez got ahold of the city's list of trip and fall injury claims; it runs 98 pages long and includes "a litany of head gashes, dislocations and broken noses, pelvises, arms and legs, with payouts ranging from a few thousand dollars to several hundred thousand." The most dangerous block appears to be the 500 south block of Vermont Avenue, which has generated seven lawsuits since 2007.
The director of the LA County Department of Mental Health, which sits on that block, says the county wants to fix the sidewalks but hasn't managed to hash things out with city lawyers yet. Meanwhile, the city has included $10 million in the budget for sidewalk reconstruction, which should solve 1/150th of the problem. As for the street trees that are generally responsible for making the sidewalks so treacherous, they're trimmed about once every fifty years.
· In L.A., anything but a crack response to tree-buckled sidewalks [LAT]
· LA Cataloging Its Sidewalks, Considering New Tax For Repairs [Curbed LA]
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