Updated Long Range Transportation Plan Released for L.A. Metro

"The Metro Board of Directors on Thursday authorized the release of the updated draft 2020 Long Range Transportation Plan, a $400-billion, 30-year transportation blueprint for our region," reports Rick Jager for The Source, Metro's own website dedicated to public transit news in the Los Angeles region.

The plan is organized into four primary goals: Better Transit, Less Congestion, Complete Streets, and Access to Opportunity.

According to Jager, Metro has constructed roughly 130 miles of rail and bus rapid transit in the past 30 years, and plans to add another 100 in the next 30 years.

But transit isn't the only mode included in the plan. There are bike and pedestrian projects too. And cars: "Metro will invest in arterial and freeway projects to reduce congestion — such as the I-5 North enhancements project and adding more ExpressLanes," according to Jager.

The plan as currently written results from 18 months of public outreach that included "77 community meetings, 28 public workshop meetings and 20,000 survey responses from the public," reports Jager. 

The plan is now up for public comment, which might be a good time to raise the lack of any use of the word police in the entire document (the word policing is used once), as Metro system buses play a central role in the police response to protests and growing calls to reckon with the lack of public safety afforded to Black Americans and people of color in public. From reporting on the use of buses to transport arrested protestors, we know that some coordination between local police departments and transit agencies takes place during emergency planning processes, which get a brief mention on page 26 of the same document (the same page as the word "policing," through no coincidence at all). It's safe to say that the plan does not specifically address the safety of people of color who use the Metro system. 

For further focus on the plan's effort to center issues of race and equity, look also to discussion about Metro's Equity Platform, and the plan's promise to focus investment in "Equity Focus Communities," as defined and mapped on pages 56 and 57 of the document.