Emphasizing that Los Angeles county receives far less in federal matching funds for transportation than other jurisdictions — due to the Federal Transportation Agency’s narrowly defined measure for prioritizing Federal investments — Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas is convening a community conference on Friday morning in Exposition Park.
In conjunction with the group PolicyLink, Mr. Ridley-Thomas will use the community forum, running from 9 to 12 noon, to solicit ideas for new funding criteria for urban transportation systems, a favorite project of the Supervisor’s.
The forum, “New Ideas for New Starts: Equity Considerations and Federal Transit Funding,” will convene in the Muses Room of the Annenberg Building at the Science Center in Exposition Park.
Mr. Ridley-Thomas said the transit funding future for Los Angeles is at stake.
“We enthusiastically welcome the FTA’s reopening of discussions,” he said. “We hope to offer material suggestions for improving the transit funding process. This is one of the most significant testing markets for new transportation methods over the last century.”
Here is Friday’s guest list:
U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (whose appearance is tentative);
State Sen. Alan Lowenthal, Chair of the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee;
Thomas Jenkins, P.E., Principal Consultant, InfraConsult, LLC;
Paul Taylor, Metro Deputy Chief Executive Officer;
Denny Zane, Executive Director, Move L.A.;
Damien Goodmon, journalist and community activist;
Efren Martinez, Empowerment Congress;
Michelle Banks-Ordone, Project Manager, Community Redevelopment Agency, city of Los Angeles.
The Federal Transportation Agency currently is reviewing its criteria for funding public rail transit projects by considering economic development and environmental criteria as well as cost effectiveness.
Billions of dollars are distributed through he largest discretionary funding opportunities in the federal budget.
The Los Angeles region has lagged due in part to the FTA’s historic focus on cost-effectiveness and a lack of alternate measures for prioritizing federal investments, Mr. Ridley-Thomas said.
When he was sworn into the Supervisor’s office, Dec. 1, 2008, he promised to take civic engagement to the highest level yet of activism by expanding the boundaries of participatory democracy.
Mr. Ridley-Thomas was not happy when he noticed that the Federal Transportation Agency — originally — had scheduled public comment meetings for Vancouver and San Francisco but not Los Angeles, the largest county in the United States. But that issue now has been resolved by the Supervisor.
See: http://ridleythomas.lacounty.gov/Pages/issues/newstarts.htm
