SOLANA BEACH — When it comes to traffic, it’s not often people look to Los Angeles for solutions. But that’s exactly what Councilman Dave Roberts asked his colleagues at a City Council meeting to do sooner rather than later.
At the Aug. 25 meeting, Roberts said he would like local transit organizations such as the San Diego Association of Governments, North County Transit District and Los Angeles-San Diego Corridor Agency to consider L.A.’s 30/10 Initiative.
Roberts said he learned about the plan when it was discussed by Duncan McFetridge, a guest speaker at a recent town hall meeting in Solana Beach addressing the Interstate 5 expansion.
The concept of the 30/10 Initiative is to build 12 key mass transit projects in 10 years rather than 30 by using long-term revenue from a sales tax measure as collateral for long-term bonds and a federal loan.
According to the L.A. Metro website, the project could create 160,000 jobs and result in 77 million more transit boardings, 191 million fewer vehicle miles traveled and 521,000 fewer pounds of mobile source pollution emissions.
It is also expected to reduce gas consumption by 10.3 million gallons.
“This is the program we need to emulate,” McFetridge, creator of Transit San Diego and president of the Cleveland National Forest Foundation, said.
“It’s just amazing what this project really is,” Roberts said, adding that he would like to see a regional effort to move public transit projects “into the next 10 years so that we don’t have to keep just paving everywhere to move cars.”
“I would like to ask that this be agendized for a … meeting in the near future to see what we can do working collaboratively within the region to try to replicate, for once, what L.A. is doing on moving public transit funding up front now to try to push off having to just keep widening our freeways,” he said.
Roberts said there is interest in Oceanside, Carlsbad and Encinitas.
Mayor Tom Campbell asked the city manager to see if representatives in neighboring cities are interested in forming a regional committee. View upcoming meeting agendas on the city website to learn when the topic will be discussed.
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