This curb, which was not ADA accessible and reported in 2019, is still on the City list to be fixed.
(Editor’s note: This story first appeared in the Westside Current June 11 and is reprinted with permission. CTN added Pacific Palisades information.)
By RACHEAL GAUDIOSI
The City of Los Angeles settled a massive lawsuit over crumbling sidewalks in 2016. The result? A 30-year commitment to spend $1.37 billion fixing walkways, ramps, and curbs to meet ADA accessibility standards.
Nine years and $226 million later, residents—and soon international athletes arriving for the 2028 Paralympics—are still dodging many cracked, tilted, or completely impassable sidewalks across the city.
If this billion-dollar lawsuit wasn’t enough to spur the city into action, perhaps one of the four trip-and-fall settlement payments discussed last week on June 2—or one of the more than 20 others approved by the City Claims Board https://ens.lacity.org/atty/claims_board/attyclaims_board3307189285_06022025.pdf
Six months into 2025, the City of Los Angeles has completed just 150 sidewalk repairs. While this may not seem like a lot, from 2010 to 2015 the city didn’t complete a single sidewalk repair, according to the 2016 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report from the City Controller Ron Galperin. The following year, a federal lawsuit over ADA noncompliance forced the city to begin addressing the issue.
Nine years after the lawsuit, fewer than 1,500 full repairs have been done, while more than 3,000 sidewalks remain in the repair queue—most without a scheduled start date. About 42 of the sidewalks listed in the queue are in Pacific Palisades, one of the sidewalks at 15317 Antioch Street, also handicapped inaccessible.
(Editor’s note: CTN reported in 2019: Longtime resident Dick Littlestone, 95, put in a request to have a handicapped sidewalk access ramp built by the alley at 15317 Antioch. Somebody in Councilman Mike Bonin’s office told him to contact Mike Patonai, the West L.A. District Engineer, for more immediate action. He did so on May 7, 2019, sending a photo and his sidewalk access request.
Littlestone wrote: “Note that there is a simple, inexpensive asphalt ramp for sidewalk access on the other side of that alley next to the [Cafe Vida] cafe. I use a walker. It is difficult for me to access the sidewalk at that curb with a caregiver. Would be impossible for a wheelchair-bound person. Littlestone died in May 2021.)
Colonel Dick LIttlestone was the oldest male attending 90th Birthday Party in 2019. He asked for a handicapped ramp from the City, but it was never done.
The sidewalk case—Willits v. City of Los Angeles—was originally settled in 2016. Plaintiffs argued that L.A. was breaking state and federal disability laws by failing to maintain safe pedestrian routes. The settlement terms mandated a $1.37 billion fund over three decades to fix public walkways, plus millions more in legal fees and payouts: $5,000 to each plaintiff, $25,000 to the advocacy group CALIF, and a whopping $15 million to the plaintiffs’ legal team.
The 2025–26 fiscal year will mark year nine of the $1.37 billion obligation—yet many of the city’s sidewalks remain in disrepair despite a price tag of $30 million a year in repairs.
As part of the settlement, the city also launched Safe Sidewalks LA, a program that lets residents report damaged sidewalks through MyLA311. But with the repair queue, as long as it is, it’s anyone’s guess as to when or if those requests will actually be addressed.
In addition to structural damage, some sidewalks can be made inaccessible by tents and encampments that block the right-of-way. This has added another layer of difficulty for pedestrians—particularly those with mobility challenges—trying to navigate the city’s already limited accessible routes.
With the clock ticking toward the 2028 Paralympic Games, the question isn’t just whether sidewalks will get fixed in time. It’s whether the city can show that nearly a quarter-billion dollars wasn’t poured into yet another issue with no visible improvement.