A broken water pipe on La Cruz closed the street.
A 1953 water pipe ruptured on La Cruz on February 2. A portion of the street needed to be repaved after the repair was made. The street was already in bad shape with alligator cracking and ruts. (Alligator or fatigue cracking means the asphalt surface resembles the scales on a reptile’s back, meaning the street has deteriorated.)
Pacific Palisades Community Council President David Card sent an email to Councilman Mike Bonin’s field deputy Noah Fleishman to ask if the heavily traveled street, which is two blocks long, and is in front of the Post Office, could be repaved.
Fleishman sent an email that he had driven on La Cruz that afternoon and “the location of the damage looked to have a temporary repair.”
He told Card that “I’ve added La Cruz to my internal tracking sheet of damaged streets. If more funding for street repaving becomes available, our office will recommend that BSS consider additional repaving projects.” According to City records, La Cruz has a PCI of 0, is rated poor, and was last resurfaced in April 2007.
Fleishman explained that “The Bureau of Street Services (BSS) determines what streets most need to be repaved based on the Pavement Condition Index (PCI) score of the street. This system is designed to be equitable, economical, and efficient.”
According to the Bureau of Street Services, about 69,000 pavement segments were inventoried and entered into a computer database, by an automated van that took digital images of the street surface and lasers to capture roadway roughness. That information is fed into Micro PAVER, which calculates a PCI.
CTN asked Fleishman if there was a site that residents could go to see a street’s ranking. Go to: https://navigatela.lacity.org/navigatela/.
1. In the search box in the upper right hand, type: Temescal and Sunset
2. Click on the Table of Contents icon.
3. On the left side of the screen, click on Bureau of Street services for the drop-down menu, and click on pavement conditions.
The current assessment notes that there about 1,000 miles of failed streets in Los Angeles and about 3,000 miles require resurfacing. The City give the overall system a C grade.
On the Bureau’s web site (streetsla.lacity.org), it explains that 80 percent of all resurfacing dollars are spent on normal resurfacing, and the other 20 percent goes to failed roadways. “These dollars have to be spread over the entire 6500-mile street network system to save as many streets as possible before they fail,” according to street surfaces.
Many people in Pacific Palisades complain that the same streets in the Huntington Palisades seem to be paved over and over again.
Street services explains that “As part of normal maintenance 3-5 years after a street is resurfaced, a slurry seal application is applied to prevent water penetration into the asphalt. This inhibits oxidation of the oils from the pavement, deters asphalt cracking, prevents water from seeping into the sub-base, and extends the serviceable life of the street, thereby reducing the need for repaving.”
To see the streets currently listed for repaving or preservation in Pacific Palisades, visit https://labss.maps.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=af0a4dab5c594ab8bbb22b525c628c95
Temescal Canyon Road is on the list for 2021 to 2022 (it has a PCI of 17, the condition is listed as poor, and it was last resurfaced in April 2003). Albright from Monument Street to Charm Acres place is slated for pavement preservation, too, which means the woman living in her car will need to be moved for the paving to take place. That street has a PCI of 86, the condition is good and it was last resurfaced in July 2015.
Sunset Boulevard Chautauqua to El Medio is slated for repaving in 2022 to 2023 (Chautauqua to Hartzell St has a PCI of 37, the condition is poor and it was last resurfaced in February 2004) and from El Medio to Livorno is scheduled in 2023-2024 (the portion between Temescal and El Medio has a PCI of 16, condition is poor and was last resurfaced in June 1998).
Maybery Road between Ocean Avenue and Ocean Way has a PCI of 12, was last resurfaced in January 1945—the street age is 77.1 years.
The two potholes on Temescal Canyon Road were slowly merging into one large one. They were filled in, but now the entire road is on a list to be repaved.