Long Range Transportation Plan Video
Part 1 (3 minutes)
Part 2 (3 minutes)
Part 3 (2 minutes)
Part 4 (2 minutes)
Part 5 (2 minutes) | Version en Español
What else does Metro fund?
Measuring the benefits
Part 6 (2 minutes)
Part 7 (3 minutes)
Part 5 - Video Transcript
Metro also funds a wide range of other projects and programs through the long range plan. Although the plan doesn’t identify specific projects, the plan reserves funding for a variety of other regional project categories. Some of these categories include the plan reserves funding for city street projects on major streets including lane widenings and turn lanes and even traffic signal coordination. The plan reserves money for goods movement projects including projects such as bridges, underpasses for streets that cross rail lines like in the Alameda corridor east project. As well as looking at projects from our new goods movement action plan which is developed in cooperation with our neighboring counties.
Metro is also looking at maximizing the current highway and our trail system through what’s called System Management and we’re recommending funding for computerized traffic control centers that help us manage traffic across cities and on the highways as well as provide information to the public and dispatch emergency vehicles.
The plan also dedicates funding for strategies that get us to leave our cars behind. Programs such as our Ride Share and Van Pool programs, as well as working with cities on transit friendly urban design. Looking at smart growth strategies so that people can live near transit and not even need to get in their cars.
Finally the plan looks at recommending bike lanes and pedestrian improvements and some of the types of projects include completing gaps in our county wide bike lane system, as well as encouraging urban design which promotes walking rather than driving. And of course, taking your bike or walking promotes a healthier life style as well.
So that’s kind of a summary of the recommendations of the funded portion of the plan but we also need to look at how well the plan is performing to justify the investments that we’re making. And we’ve looked at a variety of factors: first we’ve looked at mobility and speed and we’ve looked at 2030 and we’ve compared how well the plan performs and we’ve looked at what would happen if we just have our current transportation system today and we found that freeway speeds, by implementing the plan, increased by 15% in 2030. Also air quality improves by 5%. We’ve also looked at how the plan benefits the transit dependent and minority populations and it clearly improves access county wide. So we know we’re headed in the right direction, but we could do more and we could do more if we had more money to invest in the plan.