Get a nice good look at that image above. Take your time. Print it. Analyze it. Maybe even write notes on it – that big green blob over New York has plenty space to write on, but not Los Angeles. See anything awfully wrong and off with that image?
The Metro Board of Directors did, and yesterday they held their monthly Board meeting – with one of its main focuses on a new federal funding agreement Metro is hoping to pursue with the U.S. Department of Transportation. Metro’s current federal funding agreement netted the agency $491 million for the construction of the Gold Line Eastside Extension (NOT Foothill Extension, just to clarify). And with the last batch of federal dollars from that agreement coming in this year, Metro has had its sights set on pursuing funds from the New Starts program for the Subway to the Sea and Regional Connector.
At yesterday’s meeting, Metro staff reported that the county faces the prospect of losing out on hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government, starting in 2011, if they do not pursue any local rail projects for the New Starts program (at this point, the Metro Board had not formally recognized the Subway and Regional Connector as their choices). The comments that followed from the Board and staff were no less grim. Chairman Ara Najarian stated, “we are terribly underfunded as a region.” Using the old use-visuals-for-greater-effect method, Metro staff presented a map (see image above) of the FY2010 projection for New Starts funding throughout the nation – which saw many other (and some less populous) cities having federal funds that dwarfed the amount for Los Angeles County. Metro staff jokingly referred to the New Starts program as the “New York” program, seeing as the east coast region is set to receive nearly half of all the federal funds from New Starts. And in facing this situation, the Board unanimously voted to direct Metro CEO Art Leahy to pursue a federal funding agreement with the U.S. Department of Transportation to construct the Subway to the Sea and Regional Connector.
So now Chairman Najarian is going to send a few delegates to Washington to test the waters, and the county isn’t going to lose out on hundreds of millions of federal dollars right? This would’ve been an easy question to answer were it not for a small detail Metro staff had potentially used in error.
That error was brought to light at the meeting courtesy of a representative from Congresswoman Judy Chu’s office – who pointed out during public comment that Metro’s staff had given an unrealistic timeframe of 3 years to receive federal funding for the Subway and Regional Connector. In fact, it takes 7-10 years for rail projects from the beginning to receive federal money. Judy Chu’s office proposed Phase 2B (Azusa to Montclair) of the Foothill Extension as a project that is further ahead in the pipeline than the Subway or Regional Connector, and one that could receive federal funds in as soon as 5 years. Seeing as how the Foothill Extension has had much more Congressional work done on its behalf, this wouldn’t be surprising. Judy Chu’s office stated:
“We need a federal strategy that truly leverages the billions of dollars being raised by Measure R and gives the county the most bang for its buck. If the Gold Line Foothill and East Side extensions and Crenshaw Line are excluded from entering the federal process, myself and the rest of the local Congressional Delegation will very literally have our hands tied from helping meet our community’s transit needs.”
So our question before the meeting was: how is the Foothill Extension going to get its federal money? After the meeting, that question still stands. However, it was alluded to during the meeting that Metro would try to find other sources of federal money for the extension. We’ll see.
After a two month hiatus, the Metro Board of Directors is set to host another monthly board meeting. If you recall from the last public meeting in July, this meeting was supposed to be the day the Metro Board voted on the Long Range Transportation Plan – along with their plan to pursue federal funding for certain preferred projects as well. But like Board member Richard Katz remarked in July, “MTA never fails to miss an opportunity to delay,” the opportunity has been delayed once again. The discussion and vote has moved to their October meeting. However, that’s not the source of our recent frustrations and questions.
A lot (kind of) has happened since the Board reintroduced and discussed federal funding at the July meeting. First, we found out that a lot of the federal stimulus dollars in California went to projects that didn’t exactly fit President Obama’s preferred criteria: ready to build, creates jobs, reduces congestion and pollution – criteria that the Gold Line Foothill Extension can meet. Second, in a good show of putting differences aside, the Subway to the Sea’s biggest supporters – including Mayor Villaraigosa and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky – called for a unified effort to get as many rail projects (including the Foothill Extension) into a federal funding agreement with Washington.
Third and last, which as you will see deserves its own paragraph, Mobility 21 – a regional transit coalition of which Metro is a part of – recently held a conference to identify Southern California’s biggest transit needs. Out of that conference came the conclusion that only two transit projects should receive federal funding: the Subway to the Sea and the Regional Connector. By using Measure R’s tax revenue (the same revenue that millions of San Gabriel Valley residents contribute to when sales tax increased half a cent in July), the plan is for Metro to show the federal government that they have used enough local funds to warrant federal funding. Let’s try to talk rational for a second and see the problem with the outcome of the Mobility 21 conference – as explained by Azusa Councilmember Keith Hanks:
“It looks to us like the other projects are 10 years away from needing federal money.”
We’ll be covering tomorrow’s Metro Board meeting on Twitter @iwillride, and hopefully we’ll get to see how the situation/issue turns out. The meeting takes place at the Metro building at 9:30 AM.
That seems to be the mantra for Los Angeles County when it comes to transportation.
We all know that Measure R was passed partly as a reactive (and somewhat proactive) effort to ease the everyday pain of being a commuter in Los Angeles. Of course, most major cities’ residents suffer the same fate every weekday to and from work as well – so why does our region deserve special attention? Because according to the results of an IBM survey – as reported in a recent article by Reuters, our commutes hurt THE MOST. In a survey of 4,446 commuters in the top 10 metropolitan cities in the country, Los Angeles took the title for giving its residents the most emotionally painful commutes. Ouch – reading that hurt, but it won’t hurt as much as getting back onto the 210. To calculate scores for the aptly-titled “commuter pain index,” IBM surveyors measured responses to time, traffic, congestion, stress, anger (lots here) and impact on work.
But the pain doesn’t stop there.
Facing a different kind of hurt are the cities that sit further east along the Foothill Extension corridor. In an article published a few weeks ago in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, several inland cities expressed their angst and displeasure at the extremely long wait before their transit-oriented development plans – centered around their respective Foothill Extension stations – can come to fruition. In the words of La Verne resident Richard Taskesen: “maybe we’ll be dead by then.”
According to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, the City of Montclair officials are hoping to create their own downtown – complete with residential buildings, shopping centers and restaurants – with transit (read: Foothill Extension) at the heart of it. La Verne has reserved land for similar development around its station. Claremont has already made its transit-oriented plans come to life, but is waiting for the Foothill Extension to arrive to make the “transit” in “transit-oriented” work. Ontario, which will be the last city to see the Gold Line as part of the Ontario Airport extension, has already identified land to be used when the train does finally arrive.
Unfortunately, talking about these plans nearly a decade before they can even start construction (because there’s no other choice) just adds more points for anger to the San Gabriel Valley commuter pain index. The culprit? Politics. But you already knew that.
Three articles in Friday’s editions of the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Daily News focused on the the Subway to the Sea and its federal funding status (status: unknown). Now we support the Subway to the Sea as much as your average West LA folk, so there’s no issue with the project itself. Mass transit options, whatever and wherever they are, are good. The whole county is in dire need of a legitimate public transit alternative to the congested freeways as well as freedom from the polluted air that comes with traffic snarls.
In one Los Angeles Timesreport, it was revealed that much of the federal stimulus money that California had received for transportation was going to “routine” projects – not toward projects that President Obama had hoped “would both be built quickly and achieve long-term goals such as reducing pollution and congestion.” Now if you’re a Foothill Extension supporter, you can’t help but read this and scream: Oh come on! The explanation for perhaps why the ready-to-go Foothill Extension was stymied and not put up for federal stimulus money can be found in this excerpt:
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority thought about applying for stimulus funds to stretch the Red Line light rail to the sea but scrapped the idea when officials realized the project couldn’t be completed in the timeline the president outlined, said David Yale, MTA’s deputy executive officer of regional programming.
“The president’s charge was to get the economy jolted, so we needed to identify projects that could move quickly and get out to bid quickly,” Yale said.
The Foothill Extension seems to fit that “charge,” seeing as how with the help of federal funding, the entire line to Montclair can be finished and operating by 2017. Not to mention the thousands of construction jobs that would come with it, the billions of dollars that would jolt the San Gabriel Valley economies, the reduction in congestion on the 210, and the improvements in air quality for millions of residents.
However, all is not lost, as a group of the Subway’s biggest supporters –including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky – are urging “local governments to put aside their differences over planned transportation projects and launch a coordinated effort to secure enough federal stimulus dollars and matching funds to expedite the subway extension as well as other much-anticipated projects to be financed by Measure R, the county’s new transportation sales tax.” The list of projects they want to come along with the ride to the federal government?
Those include the Expo Line light-rail route from downtown to Santa Monica with a completion date in 2015, the Gold Line’s Foothill extension to perhaps Azusa by 2017 and a downtown light-rail line to connect the Blue, Gold and Expo lines by 2025.
Though we’re currently emphasizing the use of federal funds to build out these projects, remember that the revenue from Measure R’s half-cent sales tax increase is still slated to pay for the majority, but not all, of the cost of these lines. And with the Subway to the Sea doing its best roommate-who-raids-your-part-of-the-fridge-without-paying-their-fair-share impression, Supervisor Michael Antonovich’s office seems to be having none of it:
Tony Bell, spokesman for county Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, said the subway extension will only serve three of the county’s 88 cities, all of which will be required to “foot the bill.”
“The residents of the San Fernando, San Gabriel, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys will all be paying for a gold-plated, multi-billion dollar underground subway that will have no impact on our regional transportation crisis,” Bell said. “In fact, it will funnel money away from projects that will improve mobility on a regional basis.”
That was the reaction of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune’s editorial board when it was announced that a certain extension of the Gold Line would be getting $66.7 million in federal funds. Yay? Not really. It wasn’t the Foothill Extension that was the recipient, but the Eastside Extension – a project that is almost complete. The editorial’s biggest gripe towards Metro can be summed up in the irony surrounding the federal funds that were given to an almost-completed transportation project:
Meanwhile, the Gold Line Foothill Extension here in the San Gabriel Valley got zero dollars. Local officials estimate the Gold Line Foothill Extension to Azusa would have created 26,530 new jobs, while the Eastside, since it will open in a month, won’t create any new jobs. Instead, the money will help the MTA pay off its bond a little faster.
We are not making this stuff up. It’s all true. The MTA, the powerful transportation board that takes federal dollars for new projects, has said to hell with creating new jobs with stimulus money. While the Eastside line will be a fine addition to rail transit in the county, it didn’t meet the spirit of the $787 billion stimulus bill because it is a month shy of opening!
The bad news doesn’t stop there, as the editorial points out that the $40 billion (over 30 years) that Metro is scheduled to collect – through the Measure R sales tax increase – is now projected to be considerably less. This obviously leads to a situation that San Gabriel Valley elected officials had predicted would happen: more delays.
Besides being the first and only shovel-ready rail project in Los Angeles County, the editorial hopes the Gold Line Foothill Extension could become one more first for the region:
It could become the first rail line in Southern California to connect to an airport – in this case, Ontario International Airport. Not even [Los Angeles Mayor and Metro Chair Antonio] Villaraigosa or the previous configurations of the MTA were able to accomplish that task.
If you missed our live-tweet @iwillride of the Measure R and Economic Recovery Information Forum this past Saturday, below is a summary of the meeting and an update on the status of funding for the Foothill Extension that was recently sent out from the Construction Authority’s CEO, Habib Balian. You can still visit our Twitter page to go more in-depth into the conversations that took place at the forum.
There was also a video that was shown at the Measure R Forum entitled “Waiting.” Care to guess what it’s referring to? The video is pasted below and also contains a tune known to brighten your day.
On Saturday, Assemblymember Ed Hernandez and the San Gabriel Valley Legislative Caucus hosted a Measure R and Economic Recovery Information Forum where elected leaders – including Assemblymember Mike Eng, Mayors Joe Rocha of Azusa, John Fasana of Duarte and Cory Calaycay of Claremont, City Councilmembers Keith Hanks of Azusa (Construction Authority chair), Doug Tessitor of Glendora (JPA chair) and Sam Pedroza of Claremont – along with Construction Authority gubernatorial appointee Lara Larramendi and Ed Rendon of the Teamsters Joint Council 42 – outlined the economic and jobs benefits that the Gold Line and other Measure R projects will bring to the fastest-growing portion of Los Angeles County. Councilmember Uriel Macias from Azusa and Citrus College Trustee Sue Keith were also in attendance providing support. Along with presentations focused on Foothill Extension readiness, Caltrans projects, and Alameda Corridor East progress, there was a candid discussion and Measure R Delivery update by Metro’s new chief executive officer, Art Leahy.
Leahy emphasized the Foothill Extension is a priority for Metro but he did not commit to when the funds will flow. “We are duty bound, honor bound, to do the project,” Leahy told the nearly 100 people in attendance at the Azusa Senior Center. He also recognized there is a rift between the Westside and San Gabriel Valley leaders and pledged to work to build consensus on the long-range plan.
Metro is currently analyzing financial data to determine how and when it will fund the projects promised to voters in the November ballot initiative. The board will discuss its finances and planning this Thursday (special board meeting on the budget), May 20 (public hearing on the budget and long-range plan) and May 28 (general board meeting). There is no Measure R Oversight Committee meeting in May.
Lastly, you may have heard some news that the Gold Line received federal stimulus package funding. The news refers to funding provided to the Eastside Extension, not the Foothill Extension. The Eastside Extension is scheduled to open in about a month. As we confirmed this morning, so-called “New Starts” stimulus rail funding went to projects currently in the federal grants stage. Had Metro included the Foothill Extension in its previous attempts at updating Long Range Transportation Plan and committed a small amount of funding, we would have been positioned to compete. As it stands today, our efforts are focused on securing Metro’s commitment of Measure R funding in 2010; this means revenue service to Azusa in 2013. The Extension is guaranteed to receive at least $735 million to help us build the line to Claremont by 2017. The total project cost from Pasadena to Montclair is $1.2 billion.
Habib Balian, who is the CEO tasked with overseeing construction of the Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension, recently sent out a brief update on a local editorial focusing on the federal stimulus and the status of Metro’s plans (or lack thereof as of yet) to approve the timeline for funding the extension:
The San Gabriel Valley and Pasadena Star News, in an editorial last week, made a terrific argument for spending federal stimulus dollars on a regional approach to solving congestion and improving mass transit in our communities. The editorial singled out the Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension as one of two San Gabriel Valley “shovel ready” projects that could begin soon and put people to work, if Metro would step back and take a bigger picture view of the transit landscape.
It’s been more than two months since Metro staff released a draft of the Long-Range Transportation Plan and no action has been taken. The Metro board meets on Thursday, March 26th, and we hope there is a serious discussion about when the board will consider the LRTP.
[Habib Balian is the CEO of the Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority.]
The Metro board, at its meeting Feb. 26, approved a plan to seek federal stimulus package funding that included $150 million for the Gold Line Foothill Extension. The good news is that the Metro board in a unanimous vote officially supported the project and directed Metro staff to make sure that the Gold Line Foothill Extension is ready to seek federal funding when the money becomes available. LA County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, Duarte City Councilman John Fasana and LA County Supervisor Gloria Molina led the effort at the meeting.
The more interesting news is how it came about. The funding request was part of a larger item on how to apply for funding through the recently enacted 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Keeping in mind that the proposal prepared by Metro staff was based on speculating Metro’s share of stimulus funding, the motion proposed seeking $300 million for the Gold Line Foothill Extension and Expo Line Phase I.
During the debate on the motion, an amendment was made to remove the section regarding the Gold Line. Proponents argued that the Federal Transit Administration had yet to issue funding guidelines for rail projects, so the item containing the Foothill Extension should be removed from the motion. Board members Fasana and Antonovich protested, arguing the board should support the Gold Line because it is ready to go and could leverage the Measure R funding to secure additional federal money. Measure R is the county’s half-cent sales tax that goes into effect on July 1.
LA County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavksy countered if the motion was supported as it was written the Foothill Extension could “leapfrog” other rail lines for federal funding, adding that the board’s support for the measure would be tantamount to giving permission to the Foothill Extension Construction Authority to apply for federal funds. Supervisor Molina stood up in support of the Foothill Extension, saying the effort to remove the Foothill Extension from the spending proposal was “payback” for the San Gabriel Valley’s vote on Measure R.
Molina’s argument immediately shifted the debate, forcing proponents of the amendment to retreat and support the staff proposal, with some minor amendments that allow the board to alter its recommendation depending on the federal guidelines for rail projects.
Ultimately, there was a lot of debate over the Foothill Extension and it was clear to everyone involved that we are ready to go – all we need is funding.
