A one-mile stretch of road has become a political flashpoint in the Hollywood Hills.
The long-standing dispute centers on plans to address an especially dangerous section of Forest Lawn Drive that is adjacent to Griffith Park and situated between Memorial Drive and Zoo Drive.
Since 2013, the mile-long stretch has seen 95 crashes and four deaths, including a fatal crash last month that renewed calls for added safety measures.
Since 2013, the mile-long stretch has seen 95 crashes and four deaths, including a fatal crash last month that renewed calls for added safety measures.
But in recent months, the planned safety upgrades have grown highly contentious for Los Angeles politicians, street safety advocates, and nearby cemeteries.
How did plans to make a dangerous road safer become mired in controversy?
As the 2026 mayoral election looms large in L.A., Forest Lawn Drive represents yet another pawn in the campaign battle between its two runoff candidates.
On one side of the political debate is Councilmember Nithya Raman, who spent three years working alongside the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) to implement safety and mobility upgrades in her district, which are widely supported by street safety groups.
On the other side is her opponent, incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, who has aligned with two local businesses that paid lobbyists nearly $500,000 to stop the upgrades from happening.
The Forest Lawn Drive Safety and Mobility Project, which has been in the works since 2023, aims to prevent collisions by reconfiguring travel lanes. The proposed upgrades would reduce one travel lane, create a center turn lane, and add physical barriers to protect existing bike lanes.
On the other side is her opponent, incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, who has aligned with two local businesses that paid lobbyists nearly $500,000 to stop the upgrades from happening.
Councilmember Raman and LADOT spent three years gathering data, looking at traffic models, and collecting “extensive community feedback” for the final project design. With construction slated to begin over the summer, the project was essentially a done deal until Mayor Bass unexpectedly halted plans in May.
“The final striping and design plans for safety improvements were complete, and construction was scheduled to begin in June,” Raman said during a press conference last month. “Then Mayor Bass directly intervened.”
According to Raman, it’s “unusual” for the mayor to interfere in city councilmembers’ projects.
Currently, LADOT has more than 100 road safety and mobility projects in various phases of development and completion listed on its website. Some projects, such as the Pico Boulevard Safety and Mobility Project, have received mixed feedback from community members, but have so far been allowed to proceed without mayoral intervention.
“Nithya Raman’s plan is opposed by local businesses, faith leaders, and community members . . .” a spokesperson for Bass’s campaign said in a scathing statement. “[Raman] is trying to distract from her failure as that community’s council member, which is why Mayor Bass had to step in with a plan that the community will actually support.”
The pointed statement came days before a heated mayoral debate where the two candidates traded personal jabs, and tensions reached a boiling point.
Political mudslinging aside, the biggest pushback against the Forest Lawn Drive upgrades appears to come from two adjacent cemeteries: Forest Lawn Memorial Park and Mount Sinai Hollywood Hills.
Both businesses claim that the proposed lane reconfigurations will create additional traffic delays to the detriment of their customers.
However, the cemeteries’ concerns run counter to data collected by LADOT engineers. A travel pattern analysis suggests lane reconfigurations would create minimal delays during peak traffic hours. At most, models show potential delays of less than two minutes—and that would only apply to cars driving eastbound during peak weekend traffic hours.
Additionally, the creation of a center turn lane and increased space for turning cars would give Forest Lawn and Mount Sinai visitors more room to queue. Currently, only about four to six vehicles can queue in the left-hand turn lanes for either cemetery without blocking through-lane traffic.
In a joint statement shared with Los Angeles Times, Forest Lawn and Mount Sinai said, “For years, neighborhood councils, faith leaders, residents, and other community stakeholders have shared Forest Lawn and Mount Sinai’s serious concerns about the proposed road diet for Forest Lawn Drive proposed by Councilmember Raman despite widespread objections.”
Michael Schneider, the founder and CEO of Streets For All, disagrees that objections against the project were as widespread as the mayor and businesses claim.
Streets For All is an L.A. and San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that advocates for climate and transportation justice. The group has been outspoken against Mayor Bass’s interference with Forest Lawn Drive’s planned safety improvements, as well as a recently amended Senate Bill that would create more roadblocks if passed.
“I think there was a little bit of pushback by two very wealthy, powerful interests: the cemeteries that hired lobbyists and got their way,” Schneider tells L.A. TACO.
“I think there was a little bit of pushback by two very wealthy, powerful interests: the cemeteries that hired lobbyists and got their way,” Schneider tells L.A. TACO.
According to Schneider, the community outreach surveys collected by LADOT tell a different story.
“If you look at the surveys and everything else, the majority want the street to be safer and are not with the cemeteries’ and mayor’s plan,” Schneider says.
The last-minute change was added to Senate Bill 194 about two hours before the deadline on August 28.
Though it doesn’t mention Forest Lawn Drive by name, the bill’s language is highly specific enough that it doesn’t need to: The SB 194 provision would require an additional public hearing and the mayor’s approval on vehicle travel lane reductions on streets providing “the only access to 2 or more adjacent cemeteries” in “a city with a population of 2,000,000 or more.”
Gavin Newsom has two weeks until the deadline to decide the bill’s future. Street safety groups, including Streets For All and Streets Are For Everyone, urge the California governor to veto the provision and prevent more deadly traffic collisions.
“Forest Lawn Drive should be a road that passes a cemetery,” Schneider wrote in a statement for Streets For All, “not a road that sends people to one.”
