Metro Board July 2026 Recap: Open Streets Funding, Governance, Freeway Expansion, and More

Below are highlights of today’s Metro board approvals.

Open Streets Funding

It took nearly eight months (and a competitive mayoral race), but the Metro board finally got around to allocating an additional one million dollars for open streets events, including CicLAvia.

Metro’s Open Streets grant program is the largest source of funding for wildly popular open streets events – think CicLAvia – throughout L.A. County. When the Metro board requested that open streets events celebrate the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympics/Paralympics, Metro staff responded by zeroing out non-mega-event-related event grants for four years, including funding no open streets events all of 2027. In November 2025, County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath shepherded a motion directing Metro staff to find at least $1 million for additional open streets grants.

This month Metro responded to the motion [staff report, presentation] saying that it couldn’t find a million dollars for open streets. Staff claimed that an additional million for open streets events would jeopardize Metro’s $400+ million Vermont Transit Corridor Bus Rapid Transit project. Last week, the board’s Planning Committee bought staff’s “Sophie’s Choice” and rejected Horvath’s push for event funding.

Today, Mayor Karen Bass sided with Horvath in telling Metro that they really do need to find that million dollars. Initially Bass expressed interest in having staff bring a funding proposal back to the board in September. When Horvath noted that that same proposal had been due in March and was delayed until today, and that these events require some lead time to produce, Bass and Horvath joined forces to ensure the board approved the money today.

Metro Governance

With county governance reform expanding the Board of Supervisors to nine seats, and adding a new county CEO, Metro is grappling with how those changes will affect the Metro board. Currently all five supervisors are automatically on the 13-person Metro board.

Metro can’t change its own charter, but can recommend changes that the state legislature would need to enact. Metro has been hosting public input meetings and board committee meetings to formulate recommendations. This process led to proposals to include voices currently missing on the board. Mainly there have been calls for an actual transit rider representative; also under consideration are boardmembers representing labor and smaller cities.

Metro staff recommended [staff report] basically keeping the existing 13-member Metro board, and allowing the county flexibility to pick five representatives from among its nine supervisors and CEO.

Then Metro boardmembers put forward three separate motions regarding Metro board composition. Supervisor Janice Hahn’s motion proposed adding a new transit rider boardmember. Mayor Karen Bass’ motion proposed making one of L.A. City’s four seats go to a transit rider/advocate. A motion from Metro’s Governance Committee and Supervisor Lindsey Horvath proposed three additional boardmembers.

After extensive discussion, the board approved modified versions of the staff recommendation, Hahn’s proposal, Bass’ proposal, and part of Horvath proposal. As it stands, the result is that the Metro board is recommending including two rider representatives. There are still a few final wrinkles to iron out, but soon these proposals will proceed as Metro’s recommendations to the state legislature, which may have its own ideas about changes to Metro governance.

Freeway Widening Funding

Metro approved more than $100 million for three freeway expansion projects – two on the 91 Freeway in southeast L.A. County, and one on the 605 Freeway in the southwest corner of the San Gabriel Valley.

Additional approvals in brief:

• The board approved allowing some outlying municipalities to shift a total of $35 million in state transit funding to general transportation purposes [staff report], meaning the cities will use the transit money to support more driving. The municipalities – Avalon, Lancaster, Palmdale, Santa Clarita, and part of unincorporated North County – have to declare that they have “no unmet transit needs” and Metro has to agree.
• Metro delayed a proposal [staff report] to purchase 40 new battery electric buses. At last week’s Operations Committee meeting the discussion was contentious.
• The Metro Board approved an Eastside E Line extension item [staff report, presentation] mainly related to making the light rail project eligible for potential federal funding. The next section of the E Line will extend 4.7 miles from East L.A. to Montebello, with a later extension to Whittier.
• Metro approved $6.9 million for developing plans for a new Pacoima Metrolink Station [staff report, presentation, map] at the north end of the under construction East San Fernando Valley light rail line.
• Metro approved a $25 million loan in support of a 97-unit workforce housing development very near Leimert Park Station [staff report, presentation, Urbanize article].
• Metro approved up to $69 million for early construction of Olympics improvements now called the Games Multimodal Infrastructure Projects [staff report, presentation], which includes mobility hubs, key station improvements, first/last mile facilities, bus corridor enhancements, and electric bus chargers. All, or nearly all, of the GMIP is from the Metro’s $139 million federal Reconnecting Communities grant awarded in 2024. Also Olympics-related, Metro accepted an $89 million federal allocation [staff report] for Olympic transportation planning and operations.
• The board approved a Supervisor Janice Hahn motion to continue to lay the groundwork for a San Pedro to Long Beach water taxi service anticipated to debut in time for the 2028 Olympics. Last week Metro staff presented on water taxi feasibility [staff report].