The City of Los Angeles has nearly 20 square miles at risk of tsunami inundation, including 10 miles of beaches and the Port of LA. The City received an Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) grant to update its tsunami preparedness plan to be compliant with the recently updated inundation zone maps. Accordingly, the City awarded a design-build contract to Willdan to update its Tsunami Response Plan Annex (including updating maps and evacuation routes), emergency information brochures, and tsunami warning signs. Customized hand-held GPS units were used to collect sign data in the field, which was then downloaded into a GIS program, exported into spreadsheets and plotted on maps. The spreadsheets and maps were used instead of the usual street plans to install the signs, prepare a punchlist and provide the data to the City electronically.

Ruth Smith,T.E., Project Manager at Willdan Engineering's Anaheim office, presented a paper and slide show titled Updating the City of Los Angeles' Tsunami Preparedness Plan, from Venice Beach to the Port of Los Angeles to the 2011 Western District Annual Meeting of the Institute of Transportation Engineers in Anchorage, Alaska, on July 11, 2011. Co-authored by Larry Meyerhofer (City of Los Angeles) and Lew Gluesing (Willdan), the presentation and paper detail the project challenges, state-of-the-art methods used, and issues remaining to be resolved.

Willdan Presents a Fresh Look at Developing an Effective Complete Street Retrofit Plan

Complete Streets is a new roadway concept that aims to safely accommodate all transportation modes, including pedestrians, bicyclists and equestrians, within a given street’s right-of-way. With Willdan’s assistance, the City of Rancho Palos Verdes, California took this concept a step further, and developed an implementation plan that is prioritized based on #1 Safety, #2 Coordination with other planned/proposed improvements, and #3 Linkages to other segments. The methodology was developed while addressing conflicts between several transportation modes on Palos Verdes Drive East, a 6-mile long, steep, winding two-lane roadway that is popular with pedestrians, cyclists and equestrians. The multimodal, safety-related and planned improvements were incorporated together into a comprehensive, prioritized Complete Streets retrofit plan.

On July 13, 2011, Ruth Smith, T.E., Project Manager in Willdan's Anaheim office, presented a slide show and paper to the 2011 ITE Western District Annual Meeting in Anchorage, AK, which detail the key elements of the analysis that resulted in the Complete Streets retrofit plan.