VISION LOS ANGELES
Executive Summary
Vision Los Angeles seeks to advance economic and environmental success for Los Angeles County by focusing on transportation mobility. It is led and driven by a partnership between a leading national environmental group, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and one of the premier business development organizations in California and the Los Angeles region, the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC). It is guided by an advisory group of prominent regional leaders from the non-profit, business, and government sectors. It is informed and managed by an expert team of consultants.
It began with a mutual desire to stop the gridlock, figuratively and literally. Through conversation, debate, charrettes, scenario modeling, collaboration, and quantitative and qualitative analysis, project participants helped to develop Vision Los Angeles’ ideas and strategies. These are strategies that:
• Reduce the combined high cost of housing and transportation
• Improve transportation access and mobility
• Improve air quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions
The core strategy is focused on developing an integrated operating system that both enhances transportation performance and provides people with more choices for accessing the daily events in their lives (work, home, school, recreation, etc.). Enhancing system performance and increasing access choices lead to reduced congestion and, as a result, improves business and personal economics, the environmental quality of the region, and accessibility for all Angelenos.
What is our transportation operating system? By way of example, every computer has an operating system. It is the basis for all that the computer does. The operating system manages the computer hardware. Similarly, a Los Angeles transportation operating system can more efficiently and economically enhance a mix of transportation choices and provide people with the information to make economic, environmental, and personal value choices of how they access the events in their lives.
Vision:
“Los Angeles County is one of the world’s most diverse and creative regions. Its transportation system should reflect this. We need a system that supports a vibrant and world-leading regional economy, clean air, minimal greenhouse gas emissions, and access to safe, efficient and abundant transportation choices for all.” – Vision Statement, Vision Los Angeles
This is the focus of Vision Los Angeles. Vision Los Angeles proposes to deploy strategies that serve our transportation needs. This approach recognizes the need to address the root problems, not the symptoms. Pollution and congestion are symptoms of an inefficient system. Vision Los Angeles focuses on developing and nurturing a functional system as the best option to fully address the ill effects resulting from our current dysfunction.
The plans to improve our infrastructure — our access hardware — are important. We need to continue to develop new transit capacity for a growing population and a changing demographic that needs and values myriad transportation choices. But we also must assess whether our systems – including existing and new assets – perform optimally and provide people with the access and mobility they need.
We can’t only build new capacity as a means to improving our system – in essence, throwing money at transportation projects with the false hope that we will get a better outcome from the sheer act of spending. Doing the same things that haven’t worked before yet expecting a different outcome is the antithesis of common sense.
We need a new operating system for accessing Los Angeles. We need to make existing and planned infrastructure work as intended, and integrate new elements in a way that complements the existing elements. This will improve the performance of the region’s infrastructure. It will make travel times more reliable, improve the transportation experience, help reduce smog, greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution levels. The new operating system will provide individuals with viable, real-time access alternatives — based on time, money and personal values.
We need the most up-to-date transportation hardware to support a globally competitive economy and a healthy environment. But we must also update the transportation operating system — “Access Los Angeles” — to meet our current and future mobility needs rather than continue to rely on an antiquated operating system. If we don’t do both, our system will fail.
Vision Los Angeles holistically addresses the root problem by building upon our unique character, our assets, and our successes. It is a project organized to advance a series of transportation ideas and strategies that can effectively transform Los Angeles County from a region choked by congestion and pollution to one that is accessible, prosperous, and healthy.
Download the full version (PDF): Vision Los Angeles
About Vision Los Angeles
www.visionlosangeles.org
Los Angeles County is one of the world’s most diverse and creative regions. Its transportation system should reflect this. We need a system that supports a vibrant and world-leading regional economy, clean air, minimal greenhouse gas emissions and access to safe, efficient and abundant transportation choices for all.
Tags: Non-profit, Vision Los Angeles
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