LA Metro laid out a plan on Tuesday to create a chain of paths, regional bikeways and pedestrian crossings to connect passengers who are walking, rolling or bicycling to and from the transit agency’s train lines, bus stops and depots.
The release of the agency’s Active Transportation Strategic Plan is the first update in seven years to a plan from 2016, but it comes with a hefty price tag, no concrete funding sources and plenty of pushback.
Metro, during a virtual public meeting Tuesday afternoon, Aug. 29, outlined three areas for improvement, identifying 602 “first and last mile” areas located near transit, 81 pedestrian districts and 1,433 miles of regional bikeways.
Just completing the list of regional bikeways, which would connect to existing ones, would cost about $36 billion, which is four times the entire LA Metro annual budget.
Metro narrowed down the ambitious plan by prioritizing all the projects by need. For example, many projects would be in areas where many people do not own cars, including mostly Black and Latino neighborhoods in L.A. County, in an effort to give potential passengers a driverless way to reach transit.
Completing just 2.5% of the projects would cost about $1.86 billion, and breaks down as follows, Metro reported:
• Adding walkways, safer pedestrian crossings, including better signal timing, improved sidewalks, bike lanes and bike parking for areas within a half-mile of a train or bus depot, called “first/last mile” projects ($724 million)
• Making it safer to walk by adding crosswalks and better landscaping in nine identified pedestrian districts ($902 million)
• Building 20 regional bikeways to attract more pedal-powered customers to use trains and buses, so they can reach longer-distanced destinations ($170 million)
By building the entire system of bikeways identified in the plan, bicycle miles traveled would increase by 300,000 miles and trips by 120,000 in L.A. County, Metro estimated. Bike riding adds…
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