“Changing Zero to Hero” Gateway Cities Recap

On Tuesday, Investing in Place and the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition hosted a webinar on the opportunities in the next potential transportation ballot measure to increase walking, biking, safe routes to school, and complete streets investments in the Gateway Cities subregion — an area that includes many low-income communities of color in Southeast LA.  Our webinar panelists were Jessica Meaney, Managing Director of Investing in Place, Tamika Butler, Executive Director of LACBC, and Caro Jauregui, Whittier resident and Southern California Policy Manager for California Walks.

Over 30 people joined our webinar (see open notes document here, feel free to add!) — and over 75 people joined the Gateway Cities COG/Metro meeting that night — to voice their support for #metrofundwalkbike, the campaign co-run by Investing in Place and LACBC to maximize active transportation investments in a potential 2016 transportation ballot measure. At the meeting, there was considerable support for #metrofundwalkbike:

While hundreds of millions of dollars were dedicated to active transportation in the potential transportation ballot measure by neighboring COGs like Central City, Arroyo Verdugo, and San Gabriel (see first image below), the Gateway Cities subregion committed zero to active transportation despite support from local elected officials and community members like Caro, a Whittier resident, who spoke on our webinar about her and her family depending on the area’s sidewalks and transit system to get around.

This is simply a missed opportunity for elected leaders in the Gateway Cities subregion to meet the needs of future generations of youth, elderly adults, and individuals with disabilities who depend on sidewalks, public transit, and safe streets to navigate their lives.

As we move the #metrofundwalkbike campaign forward, we invite you to review and sign our comment letter on Metro’s draft expenditure plan next week. If you live in the Gateway Cities region and you care about #metrofundwalkbike, we will be circulating a letter template you can use to write to your local elected representatives, pictured in the list below. Please email john@investinginplace.org for opportunities to plug into the campaign.

Thank you to our webinar participants and those who attended Tuesday night’s Gateway Cities/Metro meeting. The webinar is the first of many meetings where we are helping to build the vision for stronger and more complete communities in the Gateway Cities region. For our webinar presentation, please click here.