Denny Zane is calling on the Measure R Champions and challenging them to engage in a second round of battle, this time mobilizing to embrace the 30/10 campaign which will leverage the anticipated $40 Billion in funding and then expedite the process so that 30 years of transit construction can be completed in the next 10 years.
This "all or nothing" campaign has several anticipated benefits, including significant discounts on American product, significant environmental impact, significant employment opportunities, and, most of all, the completion of the 12 mega-transit projects that are currently in line, all within 10 years.
The MoveLA Camp Meeting was held Monday evening at LACMA's Brown Auditorium and the invitation came complete with Metro instructions, a touch I appreciate. Of course, the sign-in table offered parking validation, an amenity I will continue to consider as a sign of disconnect until the day it is complemented with free air for my bicycle and Metro tokens for those prefer mass transit.
County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, Metro Boardmember Richard Katz and Deputy Mayor Jaime de la Vega all addressed the eager audience which included officials and staff from Beverly Hills to San Gabriel alongside consultants and reps from transit non-profits and advocacy groups. The audience nodded eagerly as the "pie-in-the-sky" Long Range Transportation Plan was brought to the "now" and a timeline for the upcoming decade was laid out. Katz and de la Vega both moved quickly over the details of the 30/10 plan, dropping enough data and showing enough graphs to elicit a few "ooh's" without having to slow down the momentum of the pep rally.
Art Leahy, CEO of the Metro, called on the MoveLA congregation saying "We ought to work together, we've got to build a countywide coalition of folks from the westside and San Fernando and San Gabriel and the harbor area and the South Bay Valley and then to go to Washington DC to compete for funds. This place, Los Angeles, is an economic engine and we ought to get our politics in line with that objective to help create the recovery that the Supervisor (Zev Yaroslavsky) was referencing."
Denny Zane closed with a battle cry for support from the Champions who did the heavy lifting on Measure R and who now simply need to work together to accelerate and implement, putting the $40 Billion revenue stream to work changing the world as we know it. This is the beginning of some very interesting times!
