Metro is making plans to close an eight-mile gap in the L.A. River bike/walk path. The project is largely funded, but don't expect construction any time soon.
Metro's 2016 Measure M sales tax expenditure plan funds for two long stretches of L.A. River path: in central Los Angeles and in the San Fernando Valley. Additional Valley path is expected to be under construction soon.
This post concerns the central city path, which will extend from the existing Glendale Narrows bikeway in Cypress Park/Elysian Valley through Downtown L.A. and Boyle Heights, to connect to the South County River Trail in the cities of Vernon and Maywood.
Measure M programmed $365 million for the river path, scheduled for a 2023 groundbreaking and a 2025-27 opening. The project had been on the initial Metro Olympics project list, but was quietly removed when it became clear that construction would not be completed ahead of 2028.
Metro held river path project input meetings in 2019. That year the Metro board approved proceeding with environmental studies. Then nothing happened.
In a project update meeting yesterday (a second similar meeting will be held tomorrow - Thursday evening), Metro project staff now anticipate some portion of the path might be open in "at least five years." Or maybe not.
As SBLA noted earlier, the delays are mainly caused by the lack of a public agency that will be responsible for path operations and maintenance.
When Metro expands freeways, the state (Caltrans) maintains them. When Metro expands rail or bus facilities, Metro maintains them. When Metro expands bicycle and pedestrian transportation... it depends.
Metro is maintaining the new Rail-to-Rail bike/walk path, which Metro built on a Metro-owned right-of-way.
But Metro representatives state that Metro will not maintain the L.A. River path because Metro doesn't own the right-of-way it will be built on.
Yesterday, Metro reps stated that they had "started [a] conversation with the leadership level of at least the County of L.A." as a possible maintenance partner. L.A. County, through its Flood Control District (responsible for the concrete structures encasing local rivers and creeks), does maintain several waterway paths. These include the downstream L.A. River paths: the South County Bike Trail and the Lario Bike Trail (along the Rio Hondo and the lower L.A. River).
Upstream, L.A. River path segments (in northeast L.A. and the San Fernando Valley) are located in L.A. City, and maintained (somewhat imperfectly) by the city.
Based on past and current maintenance practices, one would expect the city to maintain its part (~5 miles in DTLA) of the Metro river path project, with the county responsible for its part (~3 miles in Vernon).
Yesterday Metro staff suggested that project maintenance could go to a new governmental agency not yet formed: a Joint Powers Authority spanning the full ~51 mile L.A. River. The idea of a single river authority has been proposed since the early 1990s, and is no closer to happening today than it was then. Waiting to put any cart behind that non-existent horse would be a recipe for years of delay.
And speaking of delays, the wait for a maintenance agency has delayed the central river path project for a half-dozen years, during which the construction costs have risen.
This means that Metro's ~$430 million (the above-mentioned Measure M funding adjusted for inflation) is no longer enough to build the entire project, now expected to cost around ~$1 billion.
It was never a cheap project to thread a path along a river (prone to rapid water level rise), active freight/passenger rail, freeways, bridges, electrical towers, and other infrastructure - but it appears that Metro's design team may have overshot an optimal affordable design. The funding picture worsened as the project scope expanded from a mostly less-expensive at-grade path, to one that features more costly structures and bridges.
Metro anticipates the current funding shortfall means the project will need to be broken up into several phases. Phasing an 8-mile long multi-city path project makes a lot of sense. It probably should have happened around 2019.
Metro anticipates the project's draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) will be released this fall. That will be followed by the Metro board selecting the final project design (the Locally Preferred Alternative - LPA) soon thereafter.
Despite so many prior delays, it might be premature to finalize an EIR before finalizing maintenance arrangements.
It is unclear how this project gets built any time soon. For years, Metro staff have been unsuccessful in arranging for someone else to pay for facility maintenance in perpetuity. It will likely take leadership from L.A. City and L.A. County elected officials (all facing their own budget issues) to get this project out of the limbo it has been trapped in for the last half-decade.
For additional Metro River Path project information attend a virtual informational session tomorrow - Thursday 10/2 - from 6-8:30 p.m. See also Metro's project webpage and story map. Above slides are screengrabs from Metro presentation to be posted soon at project webpage.
