Smart Growth Stories: Point C’s David Grannis on creating vibrant neighborhoods in downtown Los Angeles

Read the article and full transcript here

Point C's Tony Harris appointed to the 6th Street Viaduct Design Aesthetic Advisory Committee (DACC)

Mayor Villaraigosa and Councilmember Huizar appointed nine community leaders and professionals to the Design Aesthetic Advisory Committee (DAAC) to provide input during the design of the new structure.

The Design Aesthetic Advisory Committee (DAAC) will provide input on:

• Bridge aesthetics for the new structure
• Associated roadways under new structure
• Colors, textures, lighting, railings
• Community/City gateway monumental elements

The DAAC will also participate in the design review meetings.

The first DAAC public meeting was held on July 10, 2012 at the Police Administration Building in downtown Los Angeles.  At this meeting the DAAC was introduced to the public, and the public was able to provide comments on the project for the DAAC's consideration.

Read more about the 6th Street Viaduct Design Competition & Advisory Committee here: http://6stbrp.nationbuilder.com/daac

Clearer roads, clearer skies & a brighter future for Los Angeles

Last week, Point C, along with a broad coalition of groups led by LAEDC and the Environmental Defense Fund released 'Vision Los Angeles'. Vision LA is a groundbreaking effort to eradicate the region's devastating transportation crisis by reducing congestion, increasing transportation options and minimizing air pollution by building upon existing transportation plans. 

Vision LA outlines 15 specific strategies that range from adopting Complete Streets methods to implementing an operating system that includes a phone app, LAccess, that allows the user to compare the cost of riding transit to the cost of driving in their cars. The Vision LA report includes the input and consensus of a wide range of regional leaders representing the public, private and non-profit communities. 

"...we need to spend less time and energy on highway expansions and more time and energy on solutions that actually resolve our intractable transportation problems in Los Angeles... provides real-world context for why our decision-makers need to implement the recommendations in the Vision Los Angeles report." -Adrian Martinez, A Better Transportation Vision for Los Angeles 

Response to Vision LA’s strategies has been overwhelmingly positive. The positive feedback demonstrates that identifying common ground is easy when it comes to transportation in Los Angeles - no one likes traffic and everyone wants clean air. 

Several Vision LA participants are developing pilot programs to demonstrate these strategies. "The next step in realizing our vision is to implement the initial short-term actions, which will include starting key pilot projects to test their feasibility. These include implementing Transportation Management Associations in the healthcare, educational and entertainment industries and starting a program on Networked Work Centers and housing programs," said David Grannis, President and CEO of Point C, an experienced transportation-land use consulting firm that led the Vision Los Angeles work effort." - The Sacramento Bee, L.A. Gridlock, Air Pollution Can Be Cut Significantly With Proven Solutions in Visionary Plan

Stay tuned for updates on new programs! 

For more information and to download the report, please visit: visionlosangeles.org

Follow Vision LA's updates and progress on Twitter: twitter.com/vision_la

Facebook: facebook.com/visionla

Articles + Blogs

The Los Angeles Times Blog - LAccess App

LA StreetsBlog - EDF, LAEDC Release Their 'Vision Los Angeles'

Bad Traffic in LA: Can Vision LA help end it?

Ortega Highway Widening Project wins ASCE Project Achievement Award!

Planning Company Associates, Point C's sister company, is honored to be a part of the Ortega Highway Widening Project. This project was just awarded the 2010 Project Achievement Award by the Orange County branch of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Planning Company Associates (PCA) created a partnership between Orange County, CalTrans, and RMV to implement this project. In addition, PCA worked on behalf of RMV to get $10M of funding from OCTA. Combined with momey from the State, Measure M, and developer funding, this project will move forward without spending a cent of the county's general or gas tax revenues.

Project design was expedited by delegating oversight of the project to RMV. Cooperative use of private and public sector resources is what makes this project unique.

Lets look at transportation metrics in a different light.

What are the appropriate metrics for determining how we use and operate our transportation infrastructure? Right now farebox recovery is the most common metric for transit. (Farebox recovery is the ratio of total operation costs to how much money is brought in by paying customers.)

But do we use similar metrics for other modes of transportation, like highways? Why not? The metrics are out there. For example, we have a gas tax, but you never hear talk about subsidizing highways when the amount we collect on the gas tax doesn't meet the needs we have for operating our highways. The bottom line is that for transit we often use different metrics for different modes of transportation.

But rather than split hairs about why one metric is appropriate for one mode and not for another, let's look at it in a different light. Really, this is a problem of how we think about metrics.

It would benefit our communities to start thinking about metrics in terms of the total transportation system instead of individual modes like transit or highways. The reason for this is that these individual metrics often fail to serve their purpose. For example, farebox isn't really a great metric to determine service for transit anyways. Transit isn't only about the ROI for moving people, it's about quality of life, safety, and the environment which lead to a stronger economy and thriving communities. Highways, when incorporated to the operation of complete streets and transit, are also about our quality of life.

When we step back, we see that measuring how the system works as a whole benefits each of its parts. So, rather than limiting a conversation to hiking taxes to pay for highway maintenance, we can also talk about incentives for multi-occupancy driving, using transit or alternative routes, employer-subsidized transportation, implementing smart grids that synchronize non-highway traffic lights with highway access, congestion pricing, and so on, because all of these issues contribute to operating and maintaining highways effectively.

Newsworthy Solutions: The Diverging Diamond Interchange

The country (California especially) is at a point where we don't have a lot of money for highway infrastructure, but we've still got plenty of issues like congestion, maintenance, and so on. One of the things we've been concentrating on at Point C is investigating alternative solutions that are cost effective and relatively unintrusive. 

The diverging diamond interchange is one of these solutions. It's a little weird to see at first, because it requires you to drive on the other side of the road as you cross the over or underpass. In short, the two directions of traffic that are coming off the freeway cross over to the other side using both sides of the bridge at the freeway, but only one direction goes at a time.

Sounds complicated, but it's actually a great safety improvement because it eliminates left turns that cross oncoming traffic and gets rid of horizontal road curvature that can be the source of accidents. In addition, everyone moving is controlled by a light, rather than yielding. It also reduces delay by using short, two-phase signals.

Here's a video showing how it works:

Sprinfield, Missouri is the first city to build one in the US, but France has a few. 

Here at Point C, we feel that alternative solutions like the diverging diamond interchange and the continuous flow intersection, a close cousin, are exactly what we should be looking into to keep costs down but still find effective, sustainable solutions to congestion, environmental impact, and safety.

Our project gets press

The Santa Clarita Valley Signal published an article on the Golden State Gateway Coalition. It's great to see the public and media respond to projects that promote a new way of doing business.

Unlike traditional public-private partnerships where a government agency contracts out work to private companies, the GSGC brings the public and private sectors under one roof, forming a true partnership. The public agencies and private groups share responsibility for delivering the much needed I-5 HOV and truck lanes

Read the article here.

Click here for our project page on the GSGC to learn more.

Introducing pointC

We’re kicking off the pointC website today. Planning Company Associates, Inc., our sister company, took a close look at itself after 24 years of doing business decided it was time to branch into a new direction focused on holistic thinking and sustainable solutions to mobility challenges.

Planning Company Associates (PCA) is still supporting its clients with the dedication its known for. We’re retaining the personnel and qualities that you depend on at PCA while focusing our efforts on what we do best at pointC:

Comprehensive mobility programs. Creative funding solutions. Unique partnerships.

Let’s look beyond Point B.