“Two or More Adjacent Cemeteries”: A Last-Minute Bill Amendment Could Stall an L.A. Street Project

Language added to budget trailer bill SB 194 just before 10 p.m. on August 28, 2026 would restrict a city of 2,000,000 or more from cutting travel lanes on the only street reaching two adjacent cemeteries. Both houses are expected to vote August 31.

Language added to a California budget trailer bill just before 10 p.m. on August 28, 2026 could stop a Los Angeles street safety project the city had ready to install. The amendment to Senate Bill 194 was filed roughly two hours ahead of a midnight deadline, first reported by Streetsblog Los Angeles on August 29, 2026. Who requested the language is not named in that account.

The bill does not say Forest Lawn Drive anywhere. It applies to “a city with a population of 2,000,000 or more,” and California has exactly one.

The added text would bar that city from “reduc[ing] the number of vehicle travel lanes on a street that provides the only access to two or more adjacent cemeteries” unless it satisfies a set of conditions first. Streetsblog identifies Forest Lawn Drive as the Los Angeles street that fits the description. The outlet does not spell out what those conditions require.

The stakes are narrow and concrete: one road, the people who drive and bike it, and a city department that had the work queued and then stopped.

The calendar is the mechanism

The Legislature's annual session ends at midnight on Monday, August 31, 2026. SB 194 does not pass through any committee and cannot be changed further this session, Streetsblog reported. It goes to the full Senate and Assembly as written, with votes expected late on August 31.

That timing leaves no hearing at which the cemetery provision could be debated on its own, and no amendment window in which it could be struck.

How the project got here

In 2023, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and City Councilmember Nithya Raman announced a redesign of Forest Lawn Drive intended to make the street safer for drivers and for people on bikes, according to the outlet. Forest Lawn and Mount Sinai cemeteries opposed it.

The project was delayed, then reached the point of being ready to install this summer, before Mayor Karen Bass paused it, Streetsblog reported. The account does not say what conditions, if any, the mayor attached to that pause, or whether the city intends to resume the work.

Streets for All, an advocacy group, published an action alert urging people to contact state legislators and ask them to oppose SB 194.

What is still unknown

Several things the vote will turn on are not established in Streetsblog's report. It does not identify the legislator who authored the inserted language, does not describe what SB 194 covered before the August 28 amendment, and does not say whether the cemeteries or anyone representing them sought the provision.

It also carries no statement from the bill's author, from the mayor's office, from Raman's office, or from Forest Lawn or Mount Sinai. Two votes are scheduled for August 31, 2026. Neither of them is on Forest Lawn Drive by name.

Source: la.streetsblog.org, retrieved August 30, 2026.