Metro unveils plan for walking, bicycling or rolling to a train station or bus stop
From SGVTribune.com
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:
