US News Metro Long Island Politics

Sports NFL MLB Olympics NBA NHL College Football College Basketball WNBA

Entertainment TV Movies Music Celebrities Awards Theater

Lifestyle Weird But True Sex & Relationships Viral Trends Human Interest Parenting Fashion & Beauty Food & Drink Travel

Health Wellness Fitness Health Care Medicine Men’s Health Women’s Health Mental Health Nutrition

Science Space Environment Wildlife Archaeology

Today’s Paper Covers Columnists Horoscopes Crosswords & Games Sports Odds Podcasts Careers

Email Newsletters Official Store Home Delivery Tips

Switch between CA and NY editions here.

Socialists offer more of the same decay while LA crumbles in the dark

See more of our coverage in your search results.

Los Angeles’ Sixth Street Bridge was supposed to be a triumph. Completed in 2022 after years of delays and cost overruns, the new structure connecting Boyle Heights to downtown LA was hailed as a civic landmark.

At $588 million, it was the most expensive bridge project in the city’s history. Its ten soaring arches and thousands of LED lights led its designers to call it the “Ribbon of Light.”

Today, the bridge is dark. Within months of its opening, thieves began tearing copper wire from its electrical infrastructure to sell for scrap. By one estimate, nearly 7 miles of copper were stripped from the bridge, extinguishing what was meant to be its defining feature.

The city’s new showpiece soon became a monument to broader civic dysfunction. Officials now estimate that repairing and relighting the bridge in time for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics will cost $2.5 million.

This is Los Angeles in 2026: the nation’s second-largest city, the center of a trillion-dollar regional economy and an entertainment industry mecca — yet one that struggles to perform the basic functions of urban government.

And the troubles extend far beyond streetlights. The city seems unable to repair its sidewalks, repave its streets or maintain aging infrastructure. It cannot keep public parks from becoming open-air drug markets or streets from turning into homeless encampments. It cannot build enough housing for its residents or attract and retain businesses. Its most famous industry, Hollywood, is struggling. Families are leaving and school enrollment is falling.

Los Angeles isn’t poor. Its tax base includes some of the most valuable real estate in America, and its economy is larger than that of many countries. The city’s annual budget hovers near $14 billion, larger than that of every American city except New York. Its police department alone spends more than the entire municipal budgets of Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis combined. Yet despite its vast resources, Los Angeles is falling into a cycle of visible decay and disorder that threatens its long-term future.

Los Angeles’ decline is readily apparent in an area where city government is least ideological: maintaining streets, sidewalks and other basic infrastructure. The city has turned something as ordinary as cracked pavement into a billion-dollar governance problem. Its basic physical systems — streetlights, sidewalks, streets and curbs — have become growing sources of legal liability and fiscal strain.

Consider the sidewalks. For decades, Los Angeles allowed its pedestrian infrastructure to deteriorate as tree roots buckled concrete slabs and intersections lacked curb ramps compliant with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. In 2016, the city settled Willits v. City of Los Angeles — the largest disability-access class-action settlement in American history — by committing itself to spend $1.4 billion over 30 years to repair and upgrade the public right-of-way.

A decade later, the obligation remains largely unmet. At the current pace, the controller warned, fixing all the broken sidewalks could........

© New York Post