Post by kenalpern on Jan 3, 2010 12:19:20 GMT -8
Top 10 Hopes for Transportation in 2010
(From my regular column in CityWatch Los Angeles)
As a tumultuous 2009 closes down, and as 2010 becomes more of a reality in our minds, it’s clear that this year was a pro-transportation year that bodes well for a brighter future as we create a city, county, state and federal landscape that will create a first-class American economy for the 21st century.
Still, the same scary dragons remain out there to be slain by the grassroots that is, after all, the cornerstone of Angeleno, Californian and American society (that’s you and me, by the way).
Here are my Top Ten Hopes for Transportation in 2010:
1) With the looooong-awaited renewal of the Metro Long Range Transportation Plan that followed the passage of Proposition R, we can focus on more than one major freeway and rail project at a time: with federal and even state help, we can expedite light rail projects from Santa Monica to the Inland Empire (and everywhere inbetween), and from LAX to the Wilshire Corridor. The I-405, I-5 and Inland Empire freeway projects can also be done simultaneously.
My Hope is that our collective anger at projects’ delays be directed where it ought—to Sacramento and to Washington, not to our neighbors who (like us) voted to raise their taxes to get these projects done.
2) We survived the contractor-induced delay of the 405-widening between the 90 and 10 freeways, and we’re correcting the delays and ineptitude of our current Expo Line contractors.
My Hope is that these two projects will be examples of how NOT to do future projects in the City and County of L.A.; let’s see more contractor face-time with the public whose money they’re getting for what should be a first-rate job.
3) Let’s get the EIR process moving along for the Expo, Crenshaw, Downtown Connector, Wilshire Corridor and Foothill Gold Lines, as well as for any commercial rail, Metrolink, freeway or road projects!
Now that the Crenshaw Line EIR was passed by Metro, the time is now—RIGHT NOW!!!—to demand that L.A. World Airports build a connecting LAX People Mover Rail System to connect the individual airport terminals and other airport-related destinations at LAX to the Crenshaw Light Rail Line at Century/Aviation. Furthermore, a Major Investment Study (MIS) is in order to utilize the Crenshaw Line project to establish a linked Green Line extension to Century Blvd. destinations and Parking Lot C at Lincoln/Sepulveda.
My Hope is that neither egotism, colloquialism, narcissism, racism, nor any other obnoxious “ism” in the City and County of L.A. prevents these projects from being discussed, designed and built in a timely fashion.
4) We finally appear to have a working partner in Washington, D.C.: President Obama clearly shows more love for transportation, our cities, and our economic centers than our past President.
My Hope is that the competing priorities and special interests for federal tax dollars are spent more carefully, thereby creating more funds available for the infrastructure the nation is crying out for. That means using the stimulus money on infrastructure, not a more bloated federal bureaucracy.
5) Fix Sacramento politics and political correctness once and for all.
My Hope is for better leadership: asking the education lobby to spend smarter and better during these tough times is NOT anti-education, asking the public sector to behave and respect the taxpayers is NOT anti-police or anti-firefighter or anti-any other cherished priority, and deriving an immigration policy that respects the law and moves away from slave labor is NOT anti-immigrant--never has been, and never will be!
My Hope asks Sacramento to finally have the moral fortitude to pay for the transportation/infrastructure needed to support our economy, our environment and our basic quality of life, and that includes budgeting all legally-mandated transportation/infrastructure funding FIRST in the budget process.
6) Ask developers and their political puppets to stop "owning" the City of Los Angeles. My Hope is that City Planning and the City Council get a collective heart, brain and courage transplant (or does that only exist in the Wizard of Oz?). We’re developing full throttle at a time when we're rationing water, for crying out loud!
My Hope: Los Angeles City Planning needs to emulate other neighboring cities and virtually double whatever the required mitigation that developers are slithering their way out of (and enabled by political weasels) and should include not only traffic but also police/fire, sidewalks/bicycle amenities, environmental and especially water mitigations.
7) We’ve got Metro Guidelines for rail/road grade separations: commercial, freight and light rail should be grade-separated from roads whenever appropriate, and safety is nothing that can ever be threatened by costs. That said, the arguments about grade-separating light rail have been taken over by those "purists" who insist on 100% grade-separation or no grade-separation--every cross-street has its own pros and cons to grade separation.
My Hope: let the spin and legal manipulations end, and let the rational discussion begin!
8) We need to build all bus/rail stations with all appropriate transit, carpool, bicycle and pedestrian amenities, but don't "cheap out" on the parking or sidewalk repairs!
My Hope is that naïve City planners and politicians stop shortchanging those taxpaying commuters who need a car or bike to commute to the transit station, and start demanding developers cough up the dough to fund the parking structures and sidewalks…and while we’re at it, let’s expedite the fixing of our City sidewalk network and create a bicycle network like virtually every other City in California!
9) We’ve still got politicians and planners who throw out the terms "affordable housing" and "transit-oriented development" to promote overdevelopment that isn’t helpful for either endeavour.
For example, Playa Vista has a great complex of commercial developments to benefit its current residents and neighbors—but why create an expanded residential project at the same time? Furthermore, have the Playa Vista developers officially been held to a potential Green Line station at Lincoln/Jefferson should that line extend up Lincoln Blvd to Marina Del Rey as originally planned?
Huge megaprojects are being planned adjacent to the future Bundy/Olympic and Exposition/Sepulveda Expo Line stations, but are they really and truly and sufficiently transit-oriented? Is there really sufficient mitigation being demanded for the Bundy Village and Casden developers? Will they benefit their neighborhoods, or transform them into hellholes? Where are the freeway, road and rail/bus transit mitigations…and if they’re not there then why are they moving through the Planning process?
When does the paradigm of building ever more and more and more residential projects we don’t have the infrastructure to accommodate finally end? When does our policy of building more commercial space and reward telecommuting in the City of Los Angeles begin?
When do we have the guts to ask ourselves, “If a given project would never make it through Planning and the City Council in Santa Monica, Culver City, West Hollywood, or Pasadena, then why should it make it in Los Angeles?”
My Hope: That Bill Rosendahl, Paul Koretz and Antonio Villaraigosa get past their overreliance on the public sector and utilize the taxpayers and voters of Neighborhood Councils and other grassroots entities in the Westside. Similarly, the Mid-City, Downtown and Eastside should be allowed to do the same for their regions.
My Hope asks the grassroots to put their money where its collective mouth is, and as the City employees disappear we task the grassroots with planning a West L.A. blueprint that includes a Westside Regional Transportation Center filled with parking, bus and other transit-friendly links at Exposition/Sepulveda, with a smaller version at Bundy/Olympic, to accommodate the thousands of car, bus and other commuters that will access the future Expo Line, and create more commercial/restaurant space that will make the neighbors and region happy.
10) We just had some major voter revolutions at the City and State level in 2009, and with our hideous unemployment, economic and budgetary crises I predict more in 2010.
My Hope is that we will have a Mayor, City Council, City Controller and City Attorney who will actually do the job that they were voted in for: to represent, and not rule, the voters of the City of L.A., and who will each recognize that the explosive increase in grassroots interest and leadership is a first-rate, historic opportunity--not an inconvenient burden—that will attract residents in the 21st century to a world-renowned status in the economic powerhouse that should be the City of Los Angeles.
I wish all of Los Angeles a happier commute, and a Healthy and Happy New Year in 2010!
(Ken Alpern is a Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC) and is both co-chair of the MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee and past co-chair of the MVCC Planning/Land Use Management Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and also chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at Alpern@MarVista.org. This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
(From my regular column in CityWatch Los Angeles)
As a tumultuous 2009 closes down, and as 2010 becomes more of a reality in our minds, it’s clear that this year was a pro-transportation year that bodes well for a brighter future as we create a city, county, state and federal landscape that will create a first-class American economy for the 21st century.
Still, the same scary dragons remain out there to be slain by the grassroots that is, after all, the cornerstone of Angeleno, Californian and American society (that’s you and me, by the way).
Here are my Top Ten Hopes for Transportation in 2010:
1) With the looooong-awaited renewal of the Metro Long Range Transportation Plan that followed the passage of Proposition R, we can focus on more than one major freeway and rail project at a time: with federal and even state help, we can expedite light rail projects from Santa Monica to the Inland Empire (and everywhere inbetween), and from LAX to the Wilshire Corridor. The I-405, I-5 and Inland Empire freeway projects can also be done simultaneously.
My Hope is that our collective anger at projects’ delays be directed where it ought—to Sacramento and to Washington, not to our neighbors who (like us) voted to raise their taxes to get these projects done.
2) We survived the contractor-induced delay of the 405-widening between the 90 and 10 freeways, and we’re correcting the delays and ineptitude of our current Expo Line contractors.
My Hope is that these two projects will be examples of how NOT to do future projects in the City and County of L.A.; let’s see more contractor face-time with the public whose money they’re getting for what should be a first-rate job.
3) Let’s get the EIR process moving along for the Expo, Crenshaw, Downtown Connector, Wilshire Corridor and Foothill Gold Lines, as well as for any commercial rail, Metrolink, freeway or road projects!
Now that the Crenshaw Line EIR was passed by Metro, the time is now—RIGHT NOW!!!—to demand that L.A. World Airports build a connecting LAX People Mover Rail System to connect the individual airport terminals and other airport-related destinations at LAX to the Crenshaw Light Rail Line at Century/Aviation. Furthermore, a Major Investment Study (MIS) is in order to utilize the Crenshaw Line project to establish a linked Green Line extension to Century Blvd. destinations and Parking Lot C at Lincoln/Sepulveda.
My Hope is that neither egotism, colloquialism, narcissism, racism, nor any other obnoxious “ism” in the City and County of L.A. prevents these projects from being discussed, designed and built in a timely fashion.
4) We finally appear to have a working partner in Washington, D.C.: President Obama clearly shows more love for transportation, our cities, and our economic centers than our past President.
My Hope is that the competing priorities and special interests for federal tax dollars are spent more carefully, thereby creating more funds available for the infrastructure the nation is crying out for. That means using the stimulus money on infrastructure, not a more bloated federal bureaucracy.
5) Fix Sacramento politics and political correctness once and for all.
My Hope is for better leadership: asking the education lobby to spend smarter and better during these tough times is NOT anti-education, asking the public sector to behave and respect the taxpayers is NOT anti-police or anti-firefighter or anti-any other cherished priority, and deriving an immigration policy that respects the law and moves away from slave labor is NOT anti-immigrant--never has been, and never will be!
My Hope asks Sacramento to finally have the moral fortitude to pay for the transportation/infrastructure needed to support our economy, our environment and our basic quality of life, and that includes budgeting all legally-mandated transportation/infrastructure funding FIRST in the budget process.
6) Ask developers and their political puppets to stop "owning" the City of Los Angeles. My Hope is that City Planning and the City Council get a collective heart, brain and courage transplant (or does that only exist in the Wizard of Oz?). We’re developing full throttle at a time when we're rationing water, for crying out loud!
My Hope: Los Angeles City Planning needs to emulate other neighboring cities and virtually double whatever the required mitigation that developers are slithering their way out of (and enabled by political weasels) and should include not only traffic but also police/fire, sidewalks/bicycle amenities, environmental and especially water mitigations.
7) We’ve got Metro Guidelines for rail/road grade separations: commercial, freight and light rail should be grade-separated from roads whenever appropriate, and safety is nothing that can ever be threatened by costs. That said, the arguments about grade-separating light rail have been taken over by those "purists" who insist on 100% grade-separation or no grade-separation--every cross-street has its own pros and cons to grade separation.
My Hope: let the spin and legal manipulations end, and let the rational discussion begin!
8) We need to build all bus/rail stations with all appropriate transit, carpool, bicycle and pedestrian amenities, but don't "cheap out" on the parking or sidewalk repairs!
My Hope is that naïve City planners and politicians stop shortchanging those taxpaying commuters who need a car or bike to commute to the transit station, and start demanding developers cough up the dough to fund the parking structures and sidewalks…and while we’re at it, let’s expedite the fixing of our City sidewalk network and create a bicycle network like virtually every other City in California!
9) We’ve still got politicians and planners who throw out the terms "affordable housing" and "transit-oriented development" to promote overdevelopment that isn’t helpful for either endeavour.
For example, Playa Vista has a great complex of commercial developments to benefit its current residents and neighbors—but why create an expanded residential project at the same time? Furthermore, have the Playa Vista developers officially been held to a potential Green Line station at Lincoln/Jefferson should that line extend up Lincoln Blvd to Marina Del Rey as originally planned?
Huge megaprojects are being planned adjacent to the future Bundy/Olympic and Exposition/Sepulveda Expo Line stations, but are they really and truly and sufficiently transit-oriented? Is there really sufficient mitigation being demanded for the Bundy Village and Casden developers? Will they benefit their neighborhoods, or transform them into hellholes? Where are the freeway, road and rail/bus transit mitigations…and if they’re not there then why are they moving through the Planning process?
When does the paradigm of building ever more and more and more residential projects we don’t have the infrastructure to accommodate finally end? When does our policy of building more commercial space and reward telecommuting in the City of Los Angeles begin?
When do we have the guts to ask ourselves, “If a given project would never make it through Planning and the City Council in Santa Monica, Culver City, West Hollywood, or Pasadena, then why should it make it in Los Angeles?”
My Hope: That Bill Rosendahl, Paul Koretz and Antonio Villaraigosa get past their overreliance on the public sector and utilize the taxpayers and voters of Neighborhood Councils and other grassroots entities in the Westside. Similarly, the Mid-City, Downtown and Eastside should be allowed to do the same for their regions.
My Hope asks the grassroots to put their money where its collective mouth is, and as the City employees disappear we task the grassroots with planning a West L.A. blueprint that includes a Westside Regional Transportation Center filled with parking, bus and other transit-friendly links at Exposition/Sepulveda, with a smaller version at Bundy/Olympic, to accommodate the thousands of car, bus and other commuters that will access the future Expo Line, and create more commercial/restaurant space that will make the neighbors and region happy.
10) We just had some major voter revolutions at the City and State level in 2009, and with our hideous unemployment, economic and budgetary crises I predict more in 2010.
My Hope is that we will have a Mayor, City Council, City Controller and City Attorney who will actually do the job that they were voted in for: to represent, and not rule, the voters of the City of L.A., and who will each recognize that the explosive increase in grassroots interest and leadership is a first-rate, historic opportunity--not an inconvenient burden—that will attract residents in the 21st century to a world-renowned status in the economic powerhouse that should be the City of Los Angeles.
I wish all of Los Angeles a happier commute, and a Healthy and Happy New Year in 2010!
(Ken Alpern is a Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC) and is both co-chair of the MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee and past co-chair of the MVCC Planning/Land Use Management Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and also chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at Alpern@MarVista.org. This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)