It has a return of complaints regarding light interruptions. Why were they not fixed?

The city of Los Angeles received 43% more complaints of street light last year than it did, according to a Laistian review of the city data.

The neighborhoods with the highest number of complaints were the center of the city La and Boyle Heights.

It is part of a tendency in which complaints about the street lights in the city have increased significantly over a decade – reaching a peak last year of almost 46,000 complaints from persons reporting interruptions. About 40% of these complaints remain unresolved.

“If you do not have a well -lit path … you can make you a truly challenging walk,” said Cassy Horton, a co -founder of the Downtown Los Angeles Association. “Almost parts of our community separate from each other, because it is less easy to navigate how much you have to go.”

According to the city, there are several reasons for delay: the people who steal copper wire from the road lights to sell or recycle, the aging infrastructure, the city’s budget deficiencies and the lack of maintenance staff.

Several complaints from the residents who reported the same problems were added to the problem, the city’s authorities said.

“The data suggests that this increase is largely due to the constituents who have submitted several requests for the same problem to accelerate the resolution, combined with the staff constraints and resources that were added to the delay,” said the Light Light Office at LA.

Laistor asked how many complaints were duplicated. The city has not yet responded to this request.

What does the data look like?

The number of complaints to the system 311 of the city has been bloated over almost 10 years, according to data. In 2016, the city registered approximately 15,600 complaints with two thirds fewer complaints than last year.

At that time, the highest relative peak of complaints took place between 2021 and 2022, jumping 55% to 35,000, from about 23,000.

Since 2016, the numbers have decreased in three years, but the decreases have been relatively small. The most recent reduction in complaints was between 2022 and 2023, when they decreased by 8%.

Over 19,000 complaints made last year – 41% – remain open, which means they have not yet been resolved, and 13,000 applications remain open compared to the previous year.

Data do not include more granular details about each complaint. Therefore, it is not clearly clear from the data how many complaints made from the same address are about a single problem, one of the reasons why the office quoted for the delay.

But a Laistian analysis estimates that 73% of the 27,000 complaints made last year that were closed are probably for separate issues. Laist’s analysis found that the proportion increased around 90% of most of the years of 2019.

In 2022, the year with the second largest number of 311 complaints on street headlights, at least 76% of closed complaints were probably for separate issues, not duplicates.

In his explanation for the delay, the office mentioned safety issues when his teams were sent to repair the street lights that were “severely affected by copper wire theft, especially in the obstructed areas of homeless camps and RV.”

“These conditions not only delay repairs, but require coordination with the team (clean cleaning and involvement) and LAPD to ensure safe access for our crews,” said the office.

Data 311 do not include the suspected cause of each interruption that caused a complaint, but the office said that about 40% of the street light interruptions are because of the people who steal wire and copper power. This is 10% to 15% of the office estimate in June 2024.

The office said that the incidents reported by copper wire and power theft increased twelve times less than a decade.

Most interruptions are due to routine maintenance problems, such as burnt bulbs or rusty materials, according to a report that the office made at the Local Council last year. In the report, The office also said that “many” pieces used to operate 223,000 road lights from LA has been working for almost a century.

Properties owners pay an annual fee that funds the periodic maintenance of road lights. The tax has not increased since the late 1990s, so the office has collected $ 44 million a year for the last two and a half decades.

The budget for the current fiscal year eliminated 17% of the positions in the office compared to the previous year. These positions were all vacant at the time of discounts but included some jobs concentrated when strengthening and replacing copper wire and periodic maintenance.

“They do not have the power of people to work on their maximum ability,” said Laist, whose district reports more street light problems than most of the other districts of the Council.

To this end, Soto-Martine uses $ 200,000 in discretionary funds from his office to finance additional maintenance teams to repair dark headlights over the weekend.

Downtown is the hardest success

Gabriel Yeager, who works to improve the public space for the DTLA Alliance, a business improvement district in the center of Los Angeles, said that the work to restore working lights in the city center is ongoing.

Yeager said that last year, DTLA Alliance worked with the street lighting office and then with counselor Kevin de León to repair 12 blocks of defective road lights and rope lights on 30 trees on 7th street.

“All this attracts (to) the importance of well -lit streets,” said Yeager. “I am more welcoming; Are more welcoming; Are more walking. It is easier to promote business. “

But there are more to do.

The association of residents in the city center was sent a letter to the office, councilor Ysabel Jurado and Mayor Karen Bass in early February, asking the city “to take measures to address the lack of adequate lighting in the city center”.

Over 180 residents in the city center added testimonies, saying that a more enlightened city could attract families to live in the city center and help pedestrians to browse uneven surfaces and other dangers on sidewalks.

In a statement to the laist, Jurado confirmed that he received the letter.

“Make sure Angelenos has well-lit public spaces has wide implications on the quality of life, the feeling of safety and economic development,” she wrote.

In December at the first meeting of the Local Council, Jurado submitted a motion The Directorate of the Bureau to analyze the street lighting problems in the city center and evaluation could be suitable for alternative technologies, such as solar energy lights.

The Municipal Council has adopted the motion unanimously. A report is to be expected in the next two weeks.