Los Angeles

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Q: What is Vision Los Angeles?
A: Vision Los Angeles is a 30-year consensus action plan to mobilize Angelenos to improve the region’s economy, environment, and equity by improving everyday mobility. It promises clearer roads, clearer skies and a brighter future for Los Angeles County.

Q: Why do we need this?
A: Traffic congestion costs this region billions of dollars each year in wasted time, lost productivity and public health impacts due to traffic congestion and associated pollution. To meet the region’s economic, environmental and equity goals, we need a transportation system that operates more efficiently than the one we have today.

Q: How is this different from other transportation plans?
A: Our first product is an action plan that lays out a package of 15 solutions that, once adopted, will reduce traffic congestion and transportation-related air pollution, and provide additional, better and more reliable transportation options to the region’s residents. The document is not a transportation analysis but a plan of action. It defines ways to more effectively operate the transportation system. A sophisticated computer-based model was used to estimate the benefits that would come from adopting these solutions.

Nearly all of the actions in the Vision Los Angeles action plan are practiced throughout the world, including here in the Los Angeles region. They are proven solutions that can help improve our transportation system, economy and environment.

Q: Who is involved with Vision Los Angeles?
A: The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, the premier economic development nonprofit organization in the region, and Environmental Defense Fund, a national environmental group active in California for nearly 40 years, partnered to develop Vision Los Angeles. The project is managed by Point C Partners, led by David Grannis. Point C Partners also produced the Vision Los Angeles document. Technical analysis was provided by Fehr & Peers, an internationally recognized transportation consulting firm, and a series of charettes informing that analysis were conducted by Community Design and Architecture with input from a select group of thought leaders from business, labor, local government, and nonprofit organizations (see Who is Involved). Leaders include:

  • Paul Arevalo, City Manager, City of West Hollywood
  • Bill Bogaard, Mayor, City of Pasadena
  • Maria Elena Durazo, Executive Secretary – Treasurer, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor AFL-CIO
  • Julio Fuentes, City Manager, City of Alhambra
  • Larry Eisenberg, Los Angeles Community College District (former)
  • Wendy Greuel, Los Angeles City Controller
  • Jerry Groomes, City Manager (former), City of Carson
  • Con Howe, Managing Director, CityView Los Angeles Fund
  • Andrea Hricko, Associate Professor, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California
  • Cynthia Kurtz, President & CEO, San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership
  • Angelo Logan, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice
  • Adriano Martinez, Urban Programs, Natural Resources Defense Council
  • Alberto Mendoza, Executive Director (former), Coalition for Clean Air
  • Hilary Norton, Executive Director, Fixing Angelenos Stuck in Traffic (FAST)
  • Jonathan Parfrey, Executive Director, GreenLA Coalition
  • Tracy Rafter, CEO, Los Angeles Business Federation (BizFed)
  • Robert Scott, Vice Chair, The Valley Economic Alliance
  • James E. Starbird, City Manager, City of Glendale
  • Thomas Smith, Senior Vice President Real Estate, NBCUniversal
  • Gary Toebben, President & CEO, Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce
  • Denny Zane, Executive Director, Move LA

Q: Who is paying for this?
A: Vision Los Angeles has been funded by grants from the Bank of America Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Dipaola Family Foundation.

Q: When will Vision Los Angeles be completed?
A: It is a dynamic plan of action with a set of short- (1 to 5 years), mid- (6 to 10 years) and long-term (11 to 20 years) actions. The benefits will start to accrue as soon as any of the actions are implemented, although the full implementation will bring the greatest benefits to the region.

Q: How much will this cost and who will fund?
A: Assigning a price tag to Vision Los Angeles is challenging because countless variables affect the individual project costs. No single entity will bear the costs. The government won’t pick up the tab for everything. In those cases where there might be private investment, the return in employee attraction and retention could exceed the costs. Likewise, the reduction in transportation’s pollution will reduce employers’ and employees’ health costs.

Some costs we know; some operating system and hardware costs (i.e., 30/10, bicycle improvements, ITS improvements, etc.) are either known or can be calculated. However, these are gross outlay numbers not the net costs, which can only be evaluated after benefits are assessed.

Other costs are unknown. For example, the precise application, breadth and full cost of the Access Efficient Mortgage program is not known. Pilot programs will help in understanding the relationship between cost and benefits, as well as how best to use our resources.

Q: How likely it is that any of this will be implemented on time or at all?
A: Some businesses, institutions and governmental entities are already moving forward on applying actions included in Vision Los Angeles. However wider implementation will depend upon broad support for the effort. Our consultants have been working with local government and business entities that are willing to develop and showcase proposed solutions. Vision Los Angeles leaders are committed to making sure the effort doesn’t end with the roadmap but with solutions being implemented.

Q: What are the next steps for Vision Los Angeles?
A: The next step is to implement aspects of Vision Los Angeles, which will include establishing pilots that test on-the-ground feasibility of proposed solutions. It will also involve helping develop and promote state, federal and local policies that allow solutions to be adopted. Two of the early pilot programs will be the establishment of Transportation Management Associations (TMAs) in the healthcare, educational and entertainment industries, and developing and starting a pilot program on Networked Work Centers and housing programs.

Q: Will any of these next steps need to be put before the voters or require new regulations or laws before they can go forward?
A: Some of the hardware elements will benefit from or require federal, state or local government action such as the proposed 30/10 program that Vision Los Angeles strongly supports. Additionally, new public finance policies that leverage private capital sources might help accelerate development and adoption of transportation management associations in key commercial areas. Other recommendations, such as the Transportation Management Associations, don’t require government action. Interested partners can start them at any time.

Q: Will any one agency be in charge of overseeing Vision Los Angeles?
A: Vision Los Angeles is and will remain a collaboration that is independent of any specific government agency. Although its formal structure as an organization is being considered, every sector (public, private, non-profit) will have a role in its implementation.

Q: Will Vision Los Angeles create jobs directly or indirectly and/or stimulate the economy?
A: Project construction and operations would create tens of thousands of jobs in the state’s most decimated economic sector: construction. In addition, Fehr & Peers’ analysis found that improving transit as recommended in the Vision Los Angeles report would lead to greater access to tens of thousands of jobs in the County. The difficulty getting to and from job centers is a key barrier to employment for many inner city residents in the County.

Q: What are the existing plans upon which the Vision Los Angeles recommendations are based?
A: Vision Los Angeles developed and measured its ideas and strategies against the baseline of assumed projects and programs in the Southern California Association of Governments’ (SCAG) Regional Transportation Plan and Los Angeles Metro’s Long Range Plan.

Q: How will Vision Los Angeles results be measured?
A: Vision Los Angeles considered a range of potential effective metrics (low, medium, high) and then incorporated findings into an empirical analysis for each level of effectiveness. We will develop and test these using a regional traffic demand model and then measure results against forecasted assumptions.

Q: How were the Vision Los Angeles objectives for equity, environment and economy selected? How were the numbers decided upon? What are the current numbers and how can these be measured over time to track progress?
A: They were selected based on tested indices from what the project’s consultant team deems “best practices” as well as from established, recognized global indices (i.e., Mercer). As an example of current benchmarking, Los Angeles county’s average housing + transportation index exceeds 50, the Mercer Eco Cities ranking for Los Angeles in 2010 is 55, and Los Angeles doesn’t currently rank at all in the top 50 in Mercer’s Quality of Living index.

Q: How will Vision Los Angeles improve the environment?
A: Analysis by Fehr & Peers indicates that if the solutions outlined in the Vision Los Angeles plan are fully implemented, health-threatening air pollution from transportation would be reduced by more than 10 percent, and greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by more than 9 percent per capita over business as usual. These levels of reduction are encouraging for an area where population is projected to grow in the coming years.

The Los Angeles air basin is one of the most polluted in the country, with more than two-thirds of pollution resulting from our transportation system. Economists estimate that not meeting national clean air standards costs its residents and businesses at least $22 billion each year in health costs, premature death and lost days at work and school. Actions in the Vision Los Angeles plan will reduce air pollution and reduce the need to spend money caring for a sick child or missing work because of the health effects of air pollution.

Q: How can I learn more?
A: Visit the Vision Los Angeles website at http://www.visionlosangeles.org.moreinfo@visionlosangeles.org