Red light for Olympic-Pico plan

The city of Los Angeles has to complete a thorough environmental impact study before resetting the traffic lights to make parts of Olympic and Pico boulevards function as something like one-way streets, a judge ruled. It's a blow to Mayor Villaraigosa, who had made a bit of a show of summarily ordering the project to go forward. From the LAT:

In his five-page ruling, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge John Torribio wrote that the Olympic-Pico proposal had a reasonable chance of causing impacts that required study. He took particular umbrage with a claim by the city that the project didn't need to be studied because it wasn't a major change to how the streets are managed.

"In other words, the very purpose of the project is to expand the use of the existing streets," Torribio wrote. "To claim that the project will not expand the current use and is therefore exempt" from further study "seems inconsistent with the stated purpose."