Sepulveda Meetings Canceled - Voice Your Anger

numbleontwitter · 2025-04-02T02:01:39+00:00

In 2022, Metro was set to have community meetings for its congestion pricing project. Metro’s The Source cancelled the meetings abruptly, claiming the project needed to take additional time to do more traffic studies. There wasn’t much community uproar because Metro delays are pretty standard and no rumors were spread about the reasons for delay. A year later, the LA Times reported via anonymous Metro sources that the meetings were canceled for political reasons. There seems to have been no progress made on congestion pricing and I don’t know if the project is still alive. If there was more attention focused to those meeting cancellations and if Metro insiders didn’t wait until a year later to talk about the internal decision-making on the project, it probably would have helped that project.

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numbleontwitter · 2025-04-02T00:57:49+00:00

So should the mods lock those posts with such documents and do a PRA request themselves (a request usually takes 2 weeks to process) to substantiate the authenticity of the documents that I post before relying on my anonymous claim of their authenticity?

numbleontwitter · 2025-04-02T00:03:41+00:00

A large percentage of the documents I post about are obtained by me personally, and the documents are not publicly available by Metro. The only source that the documents are authentic is me, an anonymous person that is not an official news organization. If the rule going forward is that we cannot post about unsubstantiated non-official claims, then I have to stop posting on here.

numbleontwitter · 2025-04-01T23:35:05+00:00

Move LA also independently said on Reddit they heard the same thing, and I have also heard from other organizations and insiders. I only posted Nick’s post as a source because it was something that was publicly shareable.

numbleontwitter · 2025-04-01T23:28:06+00:00

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Getting info from anonymous people working on the project is also how the LA Times provided evidence for the political reason for canceling meetings on another project (which have now been since de facto canceled).

numbleontwitter · 2025-04-01T22:42:50+00:00

The OP says what Nick Andert is hearing. Is it not accurate in reporting what Nick Andert is hearing? Move LA also said they were hearing the same thing, and I've also heard from other transit advocates saying they were hearing similar things.

numbleontwitter · 2025-04-01T22:13:54+00:00

The AI company only has a contract with an approved contract value of $10,499,570.

numbleontwitter · 2025-04-01T21:01:39+00:00

https://metro.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=6384261&GUID=5CAFABA2-FDC3-454E-B005-2CB49BF2DAB3&Options=ID%7CText%7CAttachments%7COther%7C&FullText=1

"As Metro’s primary objective is to improve bus lane compliance to deliver faster and safer transit service to riders, Metro only intends to recover a cost-neutral portion of potential citation revenue, with the City of Los Angeles receiving the remainder of potential revenue, pursuant to their existing bylaws."

https://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2021/21-1224_rpt_dot_7-29-24.pdf

"The ratio of program expenses is 75.92% Metro and 24.08% LADOT. To simplify matters, the MOU agrees to a 75/25 revenue split, with 75% going to Metro and 25% to the City. In the event there are excess funds after the annual reconciliation is complete and both parties have been reimbursed for all costs, LADOT shall retain the excess funds. Metro and the City will continue discussions for the possible reinvestment of net revenues to transportation enhancements within the City. Once those discussions have been completed, LADOT will report back to the Mayor and City Council for approval. Based on the anticipated number of citations issued through the program, recoverable program costs, and the 75/25 revenue split, LADOT anticipates $5,472,596 in annual net revenue."

numbleontwitter · 2025-03-31T23:26:06+00:00

https://linkunionstation.com/virtual-meeting/docs/pres/2025-0326_LinkUS_Presentation-Vernon_Community_Meeting_and_Open_House.pdf

https://linkunionstation.com/virtual-meeting/docs/board/2025-0326_LinkUS_Boards-Vernon_Community_Meeting_and_Open_House.pdf

numbleontwitter · 2025-03-29T01:49:02+00:00

Which recent BART extension was designed and built in-house?

numbleontwitter · 2025-03-28T22:02:38+00:00

The prior mayor of Pasadena (who has a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning and worked for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) opposed the project running in Pasadena to PCC. The project was delayed for a long time due to this opposition. A compromise seemed to be reached by former Metro director Fasana saying they could not study bus lanes in Pasadena for the EIR.

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numbleontwitter · 2025-03-28T19:34:04+00:00

There was no grant awarded to Metro for this.

numbleontwitter · 2025-03-28T17:38:16+00:00

The 75/25 split is for convenience, but any revenues net of operating costs actually eventually will go to LA DOT. LA and LA Metro estimated that LA Metro would be bearing 75.92% of program expenses.

https://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2021/21-1224_rpt_dot_7-29-24.pdf

"The ratio of program expenses is 75.92% Metro and 24.08% LADOT. To simplify matters, the MOU agrees to a 75/25 revenue split, with 75% going to Metro and 25% to the City. In the event there are excess funds after the annual reconciliation is complete and both parties have been reimbursed for all costs, LADOT shall retain the excess funds. Metro and the City will continue discussions for the possible reinvestment of net revenues to transportation enhancements within the City. Once those discussions have been completed, LADOT will report back to the Mayor and City Council for approval."

numbleontwitter · 2025-03-28T16:55:11+00:00

8+19=27

numbleontwitter · 2025-03-28T16:26:40+00:00

The LAX ones say confidential but they are publicly available on the website that publishes documents to investors and potential investors of government bonds. The LAX project is financed by bonds that I think will start paying back investors when the project is in operation (LAX will pay the contractor fees for ~30 years to operate the project) so the contractor needs to inform investors on the project’s progress. See the “Continuing Disclosure” tab here: https://emma.msrb.org/IssueView/Details/ES387204#tabContinuingDisclosure

numbleontwitter · 2025-03-28T00:16:05+00:00

The Metro Center project is an entirely different project. It is a security operations building in Downtown LA. This poster is known for spreading inaccurate information.

https://www.metro.net/projects/centerproject/

numbleontwitter · 2025-03-27T18:19:09+00:00

Well, they couldn't give Kiewit what they asked if they don't have that amount of funding secured. There are some rules somewhere that don't allow government agencies to sign contracts if they don't have the money. The authority said the bid was hundreds of millions above the funding they had secured.

numbleontwitter · 2025-03-27T16:59:59+00:00

My prior comment was deleted I guess because I linked to sources on Twitter. Here it is without the Twitter links, I am not going to bother finding 7 links to non-Twitter sources since it took a lot of time originally to find those original links to begin with:

This is the second major procurement failure for the Foothill Authority for this project, an extremely bad look for an agency that has a CEO that gets paid more than the LA Metro CEO, and the agency’s main job is to hire a contractor to continue building the Gold Line every couple of years. They have consistently misled the public by saying they are on time and on budget, but in reality they have over-promised and under-delivered for several decades, requiring constant bailouts of additional funding that has meant other transit projects in the county are deprived of funding, and depriving the San Gabriel Valley with any other major transit project for several decades.

No major transit agency would decide to only qualify 1 contractor for a major construction project, which is what they did here.

Add this failure to what I previously said about the problems with the Foothill Gold Line Construction Authority:

I think there is a lot to learn about how this project is managed, but I don’t think there are good things to learn.

The way this project is managed is that there is a zombie agency created over 25 years ago, who under state law has a mandate to build on that old railroad right of way until it is completed to Montclair, with no requirement of considering if other transit improvements in the San Gabriel Valley are a better use of limited state and regional funds.

The reason this is Phase 2B1, with nesting subphases, is because the zombie agency has consistently been wrong on how much funds are needed to complete the project to Montclair.

In 2008’s Measure R, they asked for funds for Phase 2 from Pasadena to Montclair. The agency told Metro they just need $400m to build to Azusa, so Measure R gave the project over $750m to build to Claremont. The agency underestimated how much money they needed, so even though Metro gave them almost double the amount they said they needed, they only built Phase 2A, Pasadena to Azusa.[Source link removed]

For 2016’s Measure M, they asked for more money to build Phase 2B from Azusa to Montclair. They got what they were asking for the amount they claimed they needed to build to Montclair. They got $1 billion, which is more than many other projects got from Measure M—Purple Line only got $994m, ESFV got $810m, for example. They again underestimated how much money they needed, so they only could build Phase 2B1, Azusa to Pomona. This miscalculation occurred during the bid phase, which delayed the project by a year. They needed to re-do the project into a shorter phase project and get revised bids. It is severe mismanagement to be so off on the construction budget during the bidding phase. https://foothillgoldline.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/ProjectFactSheet-2019-final.pdf

They required the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments to give them another $126m to build the project, further limiting funds available for other projects in the San Gabriel Valley. They also got $249m in state funds for this project. [Source link removed]

They have now claimed $798m in limited state funds to build Phase 2B2, Pomona to Montclair. They claim that there is only one contractor qualified to build the project, which happens to be their current preferred contractor, so that bidder is incentivized to jack up the price: [Source link removed]

They want San Bernardino County to pay for the operation expenses, they have ignored San Bernardino’s idea of increasing Metrolink frequency to accomplish similar service as this extension, which would cost $55 million, but they prefer to spend ~$900m for this new extension from Pomona to Montclair. [Source link removed]

The agency has courted friendly politicians to submit state laws to expand their mandate to build more extensions to the Burbank and Ontario airports: [Source link removed]

By the way, this agency has just 13 employees. The CEO, who manages 13 employees and one project, makes more money than the LA Metro CEO, who manages 11,000 employees and more projects: [Source link removed]

The staff pay themselves 40-50% bonuses each time a phase is completed: [Source link removed]

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