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Posted by Fred Camino on October 29, 2009 - 8:21 pm

Villaraigosa to offer plan to speed up projects

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says that he is going to offer a plan at Friday’s housing summit at UCLA to build 12 transportation projects in the next 10 years, according to a story posted this evening on the Los Angeles Times’ website.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/10/villaraigosa-has-bullish-plan-for-la-rail-transit-projects.html

I heard the mayor was going to announce something about accelerating projects, including some of the Measure R projects, and called the mayor’s office on Thursday afternoon. They declined to discuss it.

The Times’ story does not include a list of which projects he wants to speed up. But the mayor has said publicly that he would like to see the subway completed to Westwood by 2019. Under current funding plans, the subway would get there in 2036.

The Metro Board voted last month to request federal New Starts money for the subway and downtown regional connector projects. Villaraigosa’s plan apparently involves asking the Feds for billions more dollars. My best guess is the list of 12 projects is designed to satisfy elected officials in all quarters of L.A. County and quicken construction of some popular ones such as extending the Green Line to LAX.

We’ll post a press release on the plan when Villaraigosa’s office puts one out.

I posted this for Steve Hymon because he’s out of town for the next few days.