Joel Epstein, a communications and public policy expert who writes at the Huffington Post, has written a column on the need for Los Angeles to get behind the "30/10" plan proposed by Move L.A. and backed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to accelerate the Measure R transit projects so that all of them are completed in the next decade. For those of us that have never completely grasped how the Mayor was going to pull off spending thirty years worth of revenue twenty years before it was completely collected, Epstein breaks down a daunting laundry list of all the policy changes that would be needed to achieve Move L.A. and the Mayor's goals.
Move LA has a laundry list of important encore projects it will need toachieve if it wants to see the benefits of the Mayor's 30/10 initiativerealized. These include a national infrastructure bank committed tosupporting mass transit projects like the Subway to the Sea,enhanced Federal funding for regional mass transit projects through theFederal transportation re-authorization bill, a set of guidelines forpublic private partnerships for mass transit development; and a Stateconstitutional amendment that enables agencies like Metro to seek voterapproval of new taxes for mass transit by a 55 percent vote rather thana two thirds majority of the electorate.
The bad news is that a lot of the policy changes that Villaraigosa would like to see are outside of his powers as the chief executive for Los Angeles. The good news? A lot of those changes can occur with a new Federal Transportation Bill that focuses on transit expansion more than highway expansion and two of the people that can make those changes happen are going to be in town this Friday.
