Please consider joining Move LA’s “Zoomposium” TOMORROW (July 16) at 3 p.m. for a conversation with local leaders about a program we believe will help address our long-time need for affordable housing in transit-served, walkable, bikeable neighborhoods in LA County.

Globally, climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, and nationally, the challenge to ensure racial justice, are all challenges that present us with generation-defining choices. 

Locally, our need to provide sufficient affordable housing without displacing current residents and to end homelessness also presents us with generation-defining choices. And, as noted on Metro’s The Source blog this week, mobility in LA County is “at an intersection” and the choices before us "could be generation-defining.”

We’ve told you about our program to re-imagine stretches of commercial property along some of LA County’s underutilized boulevards—we call them “Boulevards of Equity and Opportunity”—with the addition of high-quality transit, especially bus rapid transit (BRT), and new moderate-density neighborhoods comprised of mixed-use, mixed-income, multifamily development.

The world has become more challenging for all of us these past several years, especially recently. Move LA started building a campaign in 2007 to address LA's then soul-crushing traffic congestion. But we did not know then how deep our community's affordable housing crisis would be become nor how severe would become our crisis of homelessness. We knew climate change would be a generational challenge, but we did not know an IPCC report in 2018 would say we had but a decade to turn things around. 

Last week we emailed you about the opportunity expand Bus Rapid Transit in Los Angeles County because it will create jobs, help get our economy moving, and it could just be part of the solution to our impending climate crisis (less than a decade away from irreversible harm).

LA Metro understands all this and has been conducting a “Vision & Principles Study” to develop an overall vision, goals, and objectives for BRT in LA County. They have analyzed the top 30 highest performing corridors (see image) and are working on assessing these corridors to shorten the list to 3-5 priority corridors for recommended BRT implementation. These are in addition to the BRT projects already funded and in planning in the North San Fernando Valley and the NoHo to Pasadena lines.

Please visit MetroBRTstory.com and take 5-10 minutes to complete the survey and provide your input. The survey will be open for responses through May 31, 2020.

The website also provides an incredibly detailed map of corridors analyzed by the Study Team. Your input to the survey and your feedback to the opportunity to expand BRT throughout Los Angeles County will be critical for Metro as they move forward with this important effort.

Los Angeles and every urban area in California is looking for solutions to transportation challenges as well the affordable housing crisis.

Fortunately, a big part of the solution to one—where to build new housing without threatening existing neighborhoods, for example—is part of the solution to the other. These solutions have been taking root here over the past few decades. We need to encourage, even accelerate, them. 

You may have heard of EcoRapid Transit, the Sepulveda Pass Line, or the Green, Gold, and Crenshaw Line extensions projects. These new rail projects, along with dozens of others being completed or in the works, will all have transformative benefits throughout LA County. And all of them were included in Measure R (2008) and Measure M (2016) and supported by voters.

Move LA has always worked with a wide range of civic leaders and organizations to “dream big” and identify strategies that address fundamental community challenges. Our motto has long been "Fortune favors the bold."

Yes, we meant it when we said maybe we could vote to end climate change in 2022 or come pretty close. It is very important that we try – especially since the 2018 IPCC report said we had maybe 12 years to turn climate change around.

And with the need for serious money to recover from the economic shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic and the need to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs quickly to get people back to work, what better way to stimulate the economy, clean up our air and environment than to invest in modern transportation? Of, course the revenue source matters.

Here’s how:

Mission Critical #1: Dramatically reduce, or capture and use, Short-Lived Climate Pollutants, a.k.a. “Super Pollutants” such as biomethane, black carbon, and ozone from landfills, wastewater treatment facilities, dairies, livestock, from diesel uses, fireplaces and wildfires. These gases are the most powerful climate forcers and drive 40% of global warming. Fortunately, they decay in 12-15 years or less. Dramatically reducing these emissions is a strategy that can actually roll back global warming. 

Mission Critical #2: Accelerate the rollout of zero-emission cars, SUVs, and pickups in the most significant transportation marketplace in the world – California! With the possible need to social distance, we don’t want people getting back into their pollution emitting vehicle or, even worse, purchasing a new or used pollution-causing vehicle.

Mission Critical #3: Accelerate the rollout of zero and near-zero emission trucks, trains, ships and planes in the most significant transportation marketplace in the world – California! Such vehicles are the largest source of smog in California.

Mission Critical #4: Transform our regional commuter rail transit systems into a zero-emission, high-velocity, regional express systems – in Southern California, perhaps in San Diego County, the Bay Area, even in the Central Valley. Even connect them up to create a statewide high-velocity system (do we dare call it high-speed rail?)

Photo by Olenka Kotyk on Unsplash

The stay-at-home orders have shown us what blue skies, singing birds, and clean air can look like in Southern California. But this is only a temporary side-effect of these extraordinary times. Will all this change when we return to a "new normal"?