The following is by Phillip A. Washington, the CEO of LA Metro:
Remaking the transportation infrastructure of a region is a once in a century opportunity. When planners sat down in 1916 to think about the needs of the 20th century, they focused on building roads where none existed.
The transportation needs we face in the 21st century are vastly different from those our infrastructure forefathers encountered. Planners realized that in the 1980s when they started drawing the outline of a rail system for L.A. County that began 25 years ago. Now, L.A. Metro has 87 miles of rail, operates 170 bus routes with the largest clean-air bus fleet in the world, and delivers safe, efficient, convenient and cost effective service. But these laudable achievements are only part of an evolving infrastructure that will require new ideas as much as rebar and concrete.
The agency has been hard at work expanding our system. However, we know that it will take new, innovative and outside-the-box thinking to keep up with future growth and rapidly changing mobility needs and desires. Whether it’s implementing emerging technologies such as driverless cars and trucks, safe and walkable transit-oriented communities, or local projects that enhance quality of life, Metro is opening the agency to new ways of delivering transportation improvements.
Twenty years ago such things were dreams, but we’re well on our way to making them a reality as L.A. County positions itself as the infrastructure capital of the world.
Having big dreams is not enough; we need big solutions. That is why I am issuing a “call for innovation” to forward-thinking firms to join LA Metro in an incubator of innovative thought.
On February 11, 2016, at the J.W. Marriott Hotel at L.A. LIVE, we will host an industry forum – Transformation Through Transportation (T3) – a half-day event to bring together the best and the brightest to partner with us to deliver capital projects, improve operations, implement mobile solutions and enhance the customer experience in new and unconventional ways.
This is the time for people with big ideas to come forward and help L.A. Metro transform transportation for current and future generations.
Click here to register for the T3 Industry Forum.
Categories: Transportation News
Unfortunately Mr. Washington’s first paragraph is way off base. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s Henry Huntington and others were putting together the largest and best transit system in the United States. What took the L.A.C. T.C. three years to build took Henry Huntington six months to build from Los Angeles to Long Beach over much of the same right of way. With the use of horses and little mechanized equipment the project was completed in six months because he used a construction method that seems to be lost on the MTA. He employed more than one construction crew and started at both ends and in the middle concurrently. Would a innovative idea!!
And what new rail projects should be built now in record time. Perhaps to start with one that relieves the worst and most extensive daily gridlock in the Los Angeles area from West Los Angeles to Downtown Los Angeles. But no!! We see proposals for rail lines running parallel to the Blue Line one mile away and light rail to communities where horses out number the residents that live there.