Residents of Benedict Canyon Drive may soon see their street restriped after the Beverly Hills Traffic and Parking Commission approved a proposal for the work at its June 5 meeting. The proposal will now go before the full City Council.
The city began considering the possibility of restriping the road after several residents submitted complaints detailing unsafe driving in the area, including speeding and dangerous passing maneuvers, that have resulted in car crashes and property damage.
City staff issued a report finding that the width of Benedict Canyon Drive may be contributing to the problem.
The street is approximately 40 feet wide, with two travel lanes on each side that allow space for parking. Citing a 2023 investigation by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the staff report states that research has found “a correlation between wide travel lanes and excessive speed and increased crash risk.”
In response, the Public Works Department, in consultation with the Beverly Hills Police Department, developed a plan to paint edge lines between the travel and parking lanes, resulting in 11 feet for travel and 9 feet for parking on each side of the street.
At the June 5 meeting, several residents spoke out against the project during the public comment period.
Colleen Rabin, who identified herself as having lived on Benedict Canyon for four decades, said her mailbox was hit by a speeding driver, causing bricks to fly through the air. She said she would prefer to see the city install speed humps, signals, drones or more surveillance.
“Your plans to stripe Benedict seem simplistic,” she said. “This won’t stop drivers from racing along Benedict. They don’t care about lines. They just want to race; they want to get home quick.”
Brian Rodier, a resident of Summit Drive near Benedict Canyon, said the larger problem facing the street is traffic, which moves slowly during rush hour. Rodier said that striping the street would worsen the issue by eliminating the option of a passing lane to circumvent slow-moving cars.
“If you do these markings, it is going to be a traffic nightmare,” he said. “You’re going to have bumper-to-bumper traffic that’s going to back up to Sunset, then it’s going to spill further down south. It’s going to be mayhem.”
Another resident of the area, Michael Dubelko, suggested that at the same time restriping is taking place, workers could create a dedicated right-turn lane at the intersection of Tower Road and Benedict Canyon.
“It would increase safety and speed up traffic through that bottleneck,” he said.
During discussion, commissioners largely agreed that the restriping was a cost-efficient measure that could be undertaken even as other, more complex solutions were taken under consideration.
“This is the inexpensive, low-hanging fruit,” said Vice Chairperson Hadar Geller.
Commissioner Sharon Ignarro pointed out that, based on residents’ comments, there appear to be two opposing problems on Benedict Canyon.
“I’m hearing from the residents two problems: that it’s too fast and too slow,” she said. “And of course that’s always very difficult to balance.”
Ignarro added that research supports the idea that striping will help to slow drivers who may be inclined to race dangerously along the street.
“The traffic literature will definitely show that striping a narrower lane, even if it’s just paint, makes people go slower,” she said. “They have the perception that they don’t have a big freeway. So, it may not seem intuitive, but it does make a difference in terms of speed.”
The commission moved to approve the proposal, and to add an evaluation of Dubelko’s suggestion to install a right-turn lane at Tower Road and Benedict Canyon.
