Open Letter to CD 11 Candidates, RE: Healthy Streets L.A.

 Hello!

My name is Damien Newton, I’m a reporter with Streetsblog and a Mar Vista resident working to make our streets safe for all road users. I’m gathering signatures for the Healthy Streets L.A. Ballot Initiative. The website for the initiative is still under construction, but can be found here : https://www.healthystreetsla.com/

I’m reaching out to all the CD 11 candidates to see if they would be willing to sign the petition (I’ll come to you) and let me take a picture for social media to highlight your support. It would be great to have as many candidates sign the petition to get the measure on the ballot as possible.

So what is Healthy Streets L.A.? Streetsblog explains:

Based on similar mandates in Cambridge, Providence, and Seattle, Healthy Streets L.A. would require the city to implement its own approved Mobility Plan whenever the city repaves or otherwise works on a street. Cambridge Mayor Marc McGovern credited his city’s ordinance with taking ambiguity off the table, so people know that bike lanes are being implemented, and the conversation shifts to how to do them most effectively.

L.A. City approved its Mobility Plan 2035 back in 2015. The plan designated extensive networks of transit-priority bus lane streets, pedestrian-priority areas, and protected bikeways. The plan also ratified Vision Zero as L.A. City policy – committing the city to end traffic deaths.

If you are interested in signing the petition and publicly supporting it, please let me know and I’ll come to you to get your signature (and take a picture). I can be reached via email at damien@streetsblog.org.

All the Best,

Damien Newton

Testimony on LA City Council File 21-1222 before 11/2 Transportation Committee Meeting

Thank you for the opportunity to write today. I am a Slow Streets Volunteer for "Mar Vista Slow Streets" representing St. Andrew's Lutheran Church. I am writing the following testimony as an individual.

I urge you to support this motion and to encourage the Department of Transportation to quickly respond with steps forward for Slow Streets Communities and communities wishing to become Slow Streets communities.

During the Stay at Home Order and through until today, the Slow Streets program has been a good program in Mar Vista. With a minimal investment from the city, and countless volunteer hours from residents, Slow Streets signs were put up and maintained. In addition to creating safe places for people of all ages to recreate, it created confidence among community members to take advantage of the space to get creative with unofficial community events including weekly "Lite Brite Bike Rides", a "Socially Distanced Halloween" Map and bicycle themed fundraisers for the local school.

However, ever since LADOT reorganized the Slow Streets program so that it now falls on the district offices for next steps, the program has pretty much vanished city-wide. In Mar Vista, we decided earlier to scale back the program a little, leaving us with extra signs we can deploy for events such as the upcoming Halloween weekend and our volunteers remain engaged. However, we are told that the city is no longer moving on "permanent slow streets" as promised in late 2020, no longer fulfilling sign replacement requests, no longer taking requests from Slow Streets communities to expand or modify their program and no longer taking applications for new Slow Streets programs.

I write this testimony from two POV's. One one hand, of course I want the permanent Slow Streets for our neighborhood. Portions of Mar Vista that have the program don't have sidewalks or marked street crossings. Other parts have trafficked (both motorized and non-motorized) areas between Richland Avenue School and St. Andrew's Lutheran Church. Bringing the permanent Slow Street promised to fulfillment could mean great things.

As a former editor of Streetsblog LA, I want every community to experience the success that we had in Mar Vista. Anything the city can do to bring back this low-cost, extremely popular program to improve safety and increase access to our public spaces is much appreciated.

Marcy Winograd's full statement on 30/10

As a congressional candidate, I advocate transitioning from a permanent war economy to a new Green economy that fast-tracks mass transit projects like the 30/10 initiative to accelerate construction of 12 key Metro expansion projects. When I campaign, people often tell me that one of their greatest concerns in Los Angeles is the traffic. 'Please,' they beg, 'do something about the gridlock. I can't take it anymore.' When LA County voters approved Measure R, a half-cent sales tax increase to fund critical transportation projects, they, too, said they couldn't take it anymore. Rather than wait 30 years to expand our Metro transit system, we need to speed up this initiative with a federal loan guarantee that will create new jobs and provide much-needed relief.

Certainly, California pays its fair share of taxes, with virtually half of our tax money subsidizing perpetual war policies championed by my opponent, Jane Harman. For every million dollars she voted to invest in the Iraq invasion or the Afghanistan occupation, we could have doubled the number of jobs had we invested the same money in mass transit.

In Congress, I will fight for federal dollars, low-interest bonds, to construct 30/10 transit projects that will help us get where we really need to go - sustainability. We need light rail, affordable buses, and safe bike lanes to get us out of our cars and into a new frame of mind.

Full 30 in 10 answer from Dana Gabbard

For what it is worth, my worry isn't Metro's competence. I wonder whether there is an ability to marshal the physical forces and materials to do the work. Construction projects of this magnitude can only be undertake by a handful of supersized companies and there are projects in other parts of the world (like the NY 2nd avenue subway extension) that may be gobbling up that capacity. There are structural limitations on massive infrastructure projects that may be a difficult hurdle to do the work in 10 years even if the funding stream to do so is in place. Do we have supplies of aggregate and other materials in this state that we would need for the subway etc., or can transport be arranged?

Full 30 in 10 answer from Jerard Wright

(responding to Alpern):

No, that battle needs to be figured out or at the very least have a preliminary plan of attack at this early stage or the very least have options on the table to make that possible because one of the pieces that will make a difference in securing an infrastructure bank loan are where's the money to operate the service? This is no different then securing a business loan, they need to know where your revenue is coming from and if you can afford to operate at the levels that are needed.

Full 30 in 10 answer from Ken Alpern

In the big picture, the Orange Line, the Silver Line, the Expo Line, the Eastside and Foothill Gold Lines have and appear to be moving along nicely. Same with the Crenshaw Line and the Downtown Connector and the Wilshire Subway.

Do I take issue with Metro on key points at times? Of course, but overall I think that David Mieger and Renee Berlin and Jody Litvak and Roderick Diaz and Alan Patashnick and the bunch are doing a great job. I think that the Foothill Gold and Expo Authorities are carrying their own from their end of things, and I think we've replaced one great CEO with another great CEO.

A much greater and real threat is state underfunding of transit operations...but at this time the folks at Metro are doing a pretty good job with the tools they've been given. While I don't believe they can be all finished in ten years, I do think that the planning and consensus will be well-completed and construction more limited by the availability of workers and raw materials than any limitations associated with Metro itself.

Full 30 in 10 answer from Kymberleigh Richards

Going on your presumption, that money is essentially no object, I'm going to also presume that the unions can deliver on the warm bodies needed for construction (they certainly have made enough noise at Metro Board meetings about that). So I believe the following projects are possible by 2020 (with the rationales):

Crenshaw/LAX: LPA is the target for year's end. That makes EIR/EIS possible by 2012, and Eastside Gold Line took about eight years to build, including underground.
Expo Phase II: Expo Authority is now in shovel-ready mode and there are no underground grade separations to complicate matters. This would probably be the second Measure R project -- Foothill Gold Line being the first -- to go into revenue service.

Eastside Gold Line II: EIR/EIS will be released this summer, but it depends on which of the two final alignments Metro chooses to build first (as you know, Antonovich already had the Board approve a motion that whichever isn't the chosen alignment be put on the list for future LRTPs) as to whether or not this can make the deadline. It all depends on how much grade separation is in the LPA.

Green Line to LAX: While Metro is only in "early planning stages" on this, a lot of work was done when the Green Line was originally built and that created a database that can be drawn on for the engineering. That, plus the relatively short length, means that even if the EIR/EIS doesn't happen until 2015 or 2016 it could be operational by decade's end.

Regional Connector: With the EIR/EIS coming this summer, this could begin construction sometime in 2011. Yes, it's probably all going to be underground, and that means tunnel boring and station box construction, so it'll be a tight squeeze to finish by 2020, but it's within the realm of probability.

I-405 Corridor: I expect a Metro Express bus service between Van Nuys and Westwood shortly after the northbound carpool lanes are finished (in fact, Jerard Wright and I are the catalysts on our respective governance councils for this to happen). I don't expect rail in this decade, though; at best, I expect it to be built concurrently with the last phase of the Purple Line, opening at the same time as Wilshire/Westwood Station. But I'm including it here because you could consider the express bus to be a first step toward that Measure R project, and that's very likely in the next couple of years.

Green Line South Bay Extension: A long shot, since only the preliminary environmental studies are being done, but if it ends up largely at-grade, it might be doable by 2020.

Westside Subway: EIR/EIS is scheduled for this September, and tunneling could begin within a year after that. It took seven years for Union Station to MacArthur Park to be completed, and Wilshire/Western to Wilshire/Fairfax is only slightly longer with fewer complications, so I'll say that segment is conceivable by the end of the decade.