Metro's Active Transportation Plan needs your input!

Good advice lasts.  I remember hearing a talk in November of 2008 entitled "Leading Professional and Institutional Change through Subversion, Revolution and Meterology."  The speaker was Debra R. Rolison of the U. S. Naval Research Laboratory. She told us about the Rule of 18, which states that when you take a new research direction, it will take 18 months to get yourself up to speed in the [new] area.

Last week I attended an Open House Workshop about active transportation in the San Fernando Valley. I didn't study transportation planning or urban design in school, so it has taken some time to learn the ins and outs of the transit system here in Southern California.  I will try to explain some of the basics here so that you can take part in the conversation, too.

Metro is the major operator of bus and rail service in Los Angeles County, California.  Metro hosted the first round of Open House Workshops as part of the development of the Active Transportation Strategic Plan.  Active transportation refers to any form of human-powered transportation – walking, cycling, using a wheelchair, in-line skating or skateboarding. There are many ways to engage in active transportation, whether it is walking to the bus stop, or cycling to school/work.

Councils of governments (CoGs—also known as regional councils, regional commissions, regional planning commissions, and planning districts) are regional governing and/or coordinating bodies that exist throughout the United States. The Open House Workshop we attended was co-hosted by Metro and the San Fernando Valley Council of Governments (http://www.sfvcog.org/).  The SFVCoG represents parts of Los Angeles County: Burbank, Glendale, San Fernando and Santa Clarita. The Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) is the nation's largest metropolitan planning organization, representing six counties, 191 cities and more than 18 million residents.

When we arrived at the open house, there were posters on the perimeter of the room and Metro provided copies of the posters in 8.5" x 11" format.  We scanned them and some are posted here.  The pillars of Metro's Active Transportation Strategic Plan are:

• Acess to transit
• Physical activity as an integral part of transit
• Enhancing safety
• Promoting clean transit
• Improving public health
• Nurturing equitable/sustainable communities

The objectives of the strategic plan are to (1) identify improvements to 661 Metro transit stations (2) create a regionally-integrated active transportation network (3) develop policies that support education, encouragement, enforcement, and evaluation (4) to propose a funding strategy so that local jurisdictions and community partners can work together with Metro to enhance the overall quality of the transportation network.

The "First Last Mile" concept is used to describe difficulty in getting people from a transportation hub (rail or bus) to their final destination. When people live and work in lower-density suburbs that are not within walking distance to existing public transportation options, transit use is less practical. Population density in suburban areas promotes a reliance on cars, which results in more traffic congestion, pollution, and urban sprawl.  Metro is aiming to help more people access Metro stations more safely and more conveniently, as well as making bus and light rail station improvements.

Complete Streets is a transportation policy and design approach that requires streets to be planned, designed, operated, and maintained to enable safe, convenient and comfortable travel and access for users of all ages and abilities regardless of their mode of transportation. Complete Streets allow for safe travel by those walking, bicycling, driving automobiles, riding public transportation, or delivering goods. Complete Streets offer improved safety, health, economic, and environmental outcomes for ALL roadway users.

Every subregion has its own mobility plan.  Metro's responsibility is to weave these together to maximize efficiency and reduce redundancy in planning. Measure R was a ballot measure during the November 2008 elections in Los Angeles County that levied a half-cent sales taxes increase on each dollar of taxable sales for 30 years in order to pay for transportation projects and improvements. There are currently 12 transit and 16 highway projects underway.  Also, 5 rail lines are under construction.

California Senate Bill 743 gives us an opportunity to promote sustainability, improve air quality, reduce city congestion by encouraging car owners to walk or bike instead.  Miguel Nunez emphasized the demand for a bicycle network that can attract a variety of cyclists, by creating safe routes that traverse the LA county subregion.  He noted that active transportation projects can be completed more quickly and at a lower cost than highway improvements.  Metro is looking to maximize their return on investment.  Some ideas: parklets (for pedestrians to stop and rest in the shade), and bikeshare programs (for bike-curious residents that do not currently own bicycles).

Metro has compiled 0.5 mile radius and 3 mile radius "walkshed" data.  One such compilation is shown here.  These data will be publicly available so that cities can use it when applying for grants.  After this, the workshop split into Breakout Sessions: (1) Potential Collaborations and Strategies to Overcome Barriers to Implementation of Active Transportation Plans (2) Regional Network Desire Lines.  Tham Nguyen of Metro encouraged all attendees to take an online survey and share the link. 

 http://www.metro.net/projects/ati-survey/

metro.net/walkbikeroll

Metro hopes to answer questions like:

• What are the gaps in the transit network?
• What would it take to get residents out of their cars?  

The deadline for responses has been extended to September 30, 2015 so there's still time to participate.  Please share the link with your friends, colleagues, and neighbors.

The first breakout session I went to was about barriers to implementation of active transportion infractructure.  The conclusions boiled down to (1) lack of leadership at the local level (2) lack of oversight at the local level, cities are not held accountable to make proposed changes (3) lack of community support for "road diets" (4) lack of feasability studies, there is a need for data showing that active transportation infractructure actually enhances communities (5) generalized resistance to change at the neighborhood level.  Some of the solutions proposed were: 

• educate anti-bike lane folks that we're not taking anything away, just using leftover space
• being "strategic" in the implementation of projects, doing community outreach first
• call something a "pilot program" so that if it REALLY doesn't work, you can remove it, but people are more willing to be open-minded to change if it's not going to be permanent, when they see how the change improves livability then they won't let you undo it
• get signatures from the community members (both "for" and "against" projects) compare numbers
• propose projects as a "bundle," putting cycletracks together with lighting & sidewalks so that residents either get all-or-nothing
• Metro (or their hired consultants) could attend city council meetings to present proposed projects, as a non-biased community outsider, the data showing decrease in accidents and slowdowns might be more convincing than an angry resident or crazy bike person
• designate a regional spokesperson who can attest to the improvement in safety, economic development/revitalization, and quality of life for communities with "complete streets"
• CicLAvia is one of the greatest agents of change because of its transient nature.  It's a demonstration of what protected bike lanes could look like.  It shows businesses how increasing cyclist access actually impacts their bottom line

The second breakout session I went to was about regional network desire lines.  I spoke with Mark Seinen about regional routes from Glendale to Pasadena and Claremont (East), from Glendale to Northridge and Chatsworth (NorthWest), from Glendale to Venice Beach (South), etc.  The Hyperion bridge may not go the way of cyclists, but we marked it as a "Desire Line" anyway.  We noted that certain scenic routes were better candidates for a cycletrack than other more straightforward routes.  Understanding that these plans are for the next 30 years, we heard that there may eventually be a cycletrack along the Ventura County Metrolink rail line that would be a more direct path to CSUN from Glendale.  Of course, we don't know where we'll be living by then so our input was for the greater good of residents from all corners of Los Angeles County.  In retrospect, events like CicLAvia have given us the opportunity to ride throughout the region.  Being dedicated to car-free travel, regardless of the distance, before we really learned how to use the light-rail, gave us insight into desirable regional connectors.  When you bike the landscape, you get to know the landscape.

A second round of workshops will be in Fall-Winter of 2015 and round three will be in Spring 2016.  Since this is a long-term project plan, we may not see immediate action, but it would be good to have a diverse range of community input.  Metro cannot prioritize enhancements to our neighborhoods without feedback from the residents who live and travel through them.