Los Angeles will be a much more walkable city in the future.

Honestly I was pretty surprised I managed to convince you to change your mind on R. I’m used to two opposing sides in an online forum being mostly an exercise in futility.

I don’t know if I would call my self enlightened yet, but I do what I can. Things certainly aren’t over yet, and I think in the months ahead we will need to come together to put pressure on Metro and hold them accountable to that money. Of significant importance for us is that we follow that local return funding and make sure it goes to all modes.

For the moment though, I want to take a little vacation from transit issues. Prop1A is golden, Measure R is a reality, and little Prop T over here that I thought was misguided is a bust. So I’m going to chill out, ride a bike because it’s fun, and come back refreshed and ready for action.

-Gary

If that rail line does get built, it’s going to do way more than increase pedestrian traffic downtown!

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Well, as one of those “rail loving commies”, I would happily join you in that goal.

There was a great article in the LA Times this past weekend about how Prop. 1-A would increase pedestrian traffic and street life in downtown.

Wanna know what pushed me to vote for Measure R? It is a debacle in the making – taxing the poorest to pay for more highways (to keep the MTA board from making hard political decisions).

I remember taking the Gold Line across the 110 freeway for the first time. If a Measure R was on the ballot back then, and I had voted no it, I would never have had that moment of victory, soaring over the 110 and into the hills around South Pasadena. I would have been hating life, stuck in a stuffy car, angry at everything.

The manic boosterism of all you rail loving commies didn’t do it. You guys would sell your own mothers on Avenida Revolution if it will give you another shiny new train line to pick a color for. You’d pave over anything and anyone, as evidenced with your extreme disregard for the people pissed about the Expo Line.

What did it was an online conversation with one of L.A.’s most enlightened bike advocates (Gary Kavanaugh).

Since the MTA will have even more cash to throw around now, I think it is a reasonable political goal to have them reform their Local Returns funding guidelines to include bicycle, pedestrian and bus projects. We’ll see how that goes.

I am sorry some folks decided it is better to whine than cooperate and told many lies to further their selfish crusade. And yet despite themselves the folks in the San Gabriel Valley will now thanks to R get the Pasadena to Azusa extension of their precious light rail line years before their fantasy federal funding scheme would have ever produced results. I guess the folks out there should count their lucky stars that their clueless leaders in the end lost.

Measure Q passed in Marin and Sonoma, which means passenger rail and a bike trail from Cloverdale in northern Sonoma County to Larkspur in Marin County, just a ferry ride away from San Francisco.

California and Los Angeles County in particular has taken a major leap forward in investing in a economically and environmentally sustainable future.