Measure R Highway Funds Ready to Roll. Transit Funds? Not So Much.

Yesterday, the Bottleneck Blog publicly released the changes to Metro's Long Range Plan that will be voted upon by the Metro Board at the end of the month.  Steve Hymon noted that there were many changes to the timelines to complete projects, and many of them weren't acceleration notices.  Below is the timeline, with various comments that were collected from around the Internet and news reports included.

First is the Subway to the Sea, which many people felt was the jewel of the promised Measure R projects.  The timeline for the project looks like this:

The timeline was panned by everyone: first by LAist which noted that less than a year ago Metro officials opined that the line could be open in five years,  later by Curbed who noted that the Expo Line would be 22 years old by the time it was completed, and lastly by Mayor Villaraigosa who called the timeline "too long."  How long is too long?  Metblogs notes that by the time it is competed, "you could be dead."

The Bus Bench notes that the "usual suspects got bent over."  Using numbers crunched at Metro Rider, Browne Molyneaux shows that voting for more transit doesn't equal getting more transit.  The Gold Line Foothill's Extension will be completed by 2015 or 2017 but the Gold Line Eastside Extension won't be done until 2035.  The communities benefitting from the Foothill extension voted for the project with about 55% of the vote.  Eastside communities voted for Measure R with about 75%.

Damien Goodmon, who wrote to me and others about the project list on Monday night,  was particularly incensed that South L.A. residents, who voted overwhelmingly for Measure R, were actually seeing a major delay in the completion of the Crenshaw line.  In the first draft of the Long Range Transportation Plan unveiled last year, the completion date for the Crenshaw project was listed as 2025.

In his email, he wrote, "And I will remind all parties, that the Crenshaw project was in the
dedicated funding plan in the 2001 Long Range Transportation Plan and
the Draft 2008 LRTP, meaning, the project was to be funded, built and operational well before 2029, EVEN IF MEASURE R FAILED."

Back when Measure R was being debated by the Los Angeles City Council, that Councilman Bill Rosendahl announced that Metro had promised him that the Green Line extension would be accelerated under Measure R.  I guess that's one promise that Metro has been able to keep.

So what are Measure R funds going to be used for in the short-term?  The Whittier Daily News has the answer with the timeline for highway projects that will be funded based on their start dates and total cost: