Zach Behrens at LAist has a story au juice about 17 years of city inaction regarding a 22-mile hiking trail that was planned, in 1992, to wind alongside Mulholland Drive, the 1924 car parkway linking Topanga Canyon with the Hollywood Bowl area. The so-called Core Trail should be a no-brainer, as L.A. doesn't have to acquire the land, since it already owns it, and the trail is already pretty much in place — the city's Mulholland Drive rights of way vary between 100 and 200 wide. The likely reason, it turns out, is a kind of conspiratorial Not in My Right of Way attitude by influential Hollywood Hills homeowners that has intimidated politicians from finding the backbone to implement the plan.

Writes Behrens, quoting an anonymous source:

“Currently, much of the public space is being used by land owners under revocable permits, which allows them to landscape or build security fences within the public right-of-way. What politician wants to revoke those permits and tell the wealthy homeowners and campaign donors of Mulholland Drive that a trail that will bring people, cyclists and equestrians outside their homes, the source hypothetically questioned.”

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