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ChineseThe Long Range Transportation Plan Meetings Have Begun
Last night in West Hollywood the first of seven community meetings scheduled to discuss the Metro Long Range Transportation Plan took place. Streetsblog LA’s Damien Newton was there with over 60 other Westsiders to report on and contribute to the discussion about the LRTP and what it means for Los Angeles and the West Side in particular. In journalist mode, Damien reports that support for rail was unanimous among the 20 people who spoke. In citizen mode, Damien gave a stirring testimony encouraging Metro to place more emphasis on biking and pedestrian improvements, and less on highway expansion projects. Check out his full report on Streetsblog LA and read his testimony in its entirety on Street Heat LA.
If you were hoping to find out what the folks out Metro thought about the first meeting, you won’t find it on Metro’s own Imagine… blog, which hasn’t been updated since its first impersonal post over two weeks ago. That post has collected 43 comments so far, and there’s yet to be one response from Metro, so it’s likely the blog is little more than window dressing, created just because websites are supposed to have blogs now.
The next community meeting is tonight at Metro Headquarters, aka the Taj Mahal, adjacent to Union Station. The fun starts at 6:30pm on the 3rd floor Board Room. Take the train, bus, bike, or walk tonight and share your thoughts on the future of transportation in Los Angeles.
Discussion
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Wow Fred, that was an incredibly kind opening paragraph. I’m totally printing and framing it.
And who knew anyone still reads Street Heat?
The nonprofit I work for has requested a presentation of the draft Long Range Transportation Plan and the MTA has scheduled one in a couple of weeks.
If you cannot make one of the “official” presentations, perhaps you know of an organization that might quickly request a presentation that you can stuff with rail friendly people.
It sounds like the MTA is willing to come out and talk to people when invited. Let’s just hope they are as willing to incorporate comments as well.
I missed thurdays meeting. what happened?
The Thursday meeting was moderately attended (about 60 to 80 people I guess).
There were a lot of general comments about making buses connect better, and several very specific bus line improvements suggested.
One guy made a great point about bus AC blasting on full and having someone open a window on the bus thus wasting fuel. He suggested either window locks or simply turning the AC off.
Lois Arkin from the L.A. Eco Village gave a rousing speech, as did an old man from South L.A. (I think).
There was a guy with a 3 foot mohawk.
The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition was there to demand that bikes get a bigger share of dollars. I made two suggestions about changing MTA policy regarding measurements of roadway performance and the official definition of transportation.
There was an awesome two minutes from a kid who goes to high school using the bus - and live between an 11-block rapid bus stretch with no stops.
The MTA peeps were actaully really very friendly and seemed quite open to our suggestions. They handed out DVD’s that talk about the LRTP. you can see it online here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-417806148100502889