Mt. Wilson toll road update

There's a good post by my colleague Julie Sheer at The Times' Outposts blog on the Mt. Wilson toll road above Pasadena and Altadena. A couple of big portions of the fire road used by hikers, cyclists and horses succumbed to landslide during the big rains of the winter of 2005-06 and -- guess what? -- still haven't been fixed.

Turns out there's been a bureaucratic delay getting some of the money for repairs from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (shocking!), but it looks like work could begin soon. That's kind of interesting, given that we're on the verge of the rainy season.

In the interest of full disclosure, Ms. Sheer also happens to be Ms. Road Sage. It also should be noted that on a recent hike on the toll road, Ms. Road Sage dispatched yours truly to "scout" the trail that had been cut across a pair of big landslides to make sure the slopes were "stable" and then stayed behind to capture pictures for her blog. Luckily, the Road Sage is as sure-footed as a mountain goat and survived to take the garbage out, do the dishes, walk the dog and pick up milk and toilet paper for at least a few more days!

-- Steve Hymon

Angeles National Forest can collapse time and distance!

In the late 1990s, the four national forests in Southern California instituted a plan: If you wanted to park in most places in the forest, you needed to buy a parking pass.

Why? Congress was cutting national forest funding and they needed the dough. At the time, a lot of people howled and protested -- parking was previously free -- but the U.S. Forest Service stuck to its guns. And the fees are still in effect. You pay either $5 a day to park or you can get the annual pass for $30.

So, a couple of weekends ago Ms. Road Sage and I decided to take a nice afternoon hike to the top of Mt. Islip in the Angeles National Forest. We parked at Islip Saddle (where I made the stunning discovery the Angeles Crest Highway has been closed for nearly four years but may reopen soon!) and hiked up to the Little Jimmy campground, where the trail to Islip's peak begins. Here's the sign at the start of the trail:

And if you walk another five to 10 minutes (depending on your pace), here's the next sign you encounter:

It doesn't take a genius to figure out one of them is wrong, unless in the Angeles National Forest it's possible for Point A and Point B to be the same distance from Point C, even when B is obviously closer. Who knows? Maybe the Angeles is enveloped in a black hole that collapses time and distance.

In the cosmic scheme of things (pun intended), no big deal. I had a map and knew the first sign was correct.

But this points to a larger problem: trail signs in the Angeles National Forest are often lacking, wrong or offer incomplete information. Look at the sign in the background in the above photo -- a real professional job, eh?

The local national forests have a list on their website of the projects they say they've completed with the parking fees between 1997 and 2006, including the boast that permanent toilets are now cleaned four to six times more frequently. Well, without being too graphic, the outhouses at the Little Jimmy campground are really scary disgusting. If I'm doing my math correct, six times zero equals zero.

There's also this little factoid: 19% of the $26,633,135 collected between '97 and '06 -- a little more than $5 million -- went into maintaining the fee collection program.

Now, to be fair, the Angeles is a big place surrounded by urbanity. Bodies get dumped there. Lots of trash, too. Fires get started. I'm sure many of the individual projects completed in the Angeles were worthwhile.

My favorite one: A photo showing a new sign that reads "Leaving National Forest Fee Recreation Area."

-- Steve Hymon

Pedestrian deaths in the U.S. 1997 to 2006

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration recently issued a comprehensive report on pedestrian deaths across the United States between 1997 and 2006. It's a follow-up to a 2003 report and takes a deeper look at the available data to try to identify trends.

Among some of the findings:

*Pedestrians have a slightly higher chance of being killed in a car crash than those in a vehicle. For every 100 million miles that people walk, 1.42 pedestrians were killed in vehicle-related crashes between 1997 and 2006. For every 100 million miles that people drive, 1.3 vehicle occupants were killed during the same time-span.

*Motorists failed to stop in 20% of pedestrian deaths.

*About one-third of the pedestrians killed between '97 and '06 were legally drunk.

*"The highest percentage of pedestrian fatalities occurs from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., followed by 9 p.m. to midnight," according to the report. Also, autumn months are the most dangerous. The report doesn't say why. Also, bad lighting contributes to more pedestrian deaths than bad weather.

*Overall pedestrian deaths in the U.S. have dropped slightly between 1997 and 2006, although when a crash happened pedestrians had a slightly higher chance of being killed.

*Male pedestrians are more likely to be killed than female pedestrians.

*New York, Los Angeles and Chicago -- the nation's most populous cities -- led the nation in pedestrian deaths over the last 10 years. The surprise was Phoenix, which had the fourth-most pedestrian deaths but not as many people living there over the time span studied as did Houston, which had the fifth most deaths. I was in Phoenix and the surrounding suburbs earlier this year for a story on speed enforcement cameras and officials said that historically red-lighting running has been a real problem in the area because of its long, flat and wide roads. 

*The report also has pedestrian death statistics for cities between '97 and '06 -- not easy numbers to come by without doing a lot of digging. The City of L.A. doesn't have numbers for 2007 yet, but the LAPD is going to try to get them for me. In order, here are the numbers for some of the state's largest cities in that span (the report has a year-by-year breakdown):

Los Angeles - 986
San Diego -- 292
San Francisco -- 240
San Jose -- 171
Fresno -- 117
Sacramento -- 111
Long Beach -- 80
Santa Ana -- 75
San Bernardino -- 73
Bakersfield -- 63
Anaheim -- 60
Riverside -- 48
Huntington Beach -- 39
Pomona -- 38
Modesto -- 36
Garden Grove -- 34
Rialto -- 34
Santa Monica -- 34
Chula Vista -- 33
El Cajon -- 31
Compton -- 28
Escondido -- 28
Lancaster -- 27

-- Steve Hymon

Photo: Mark Boster / LAT