Posted on 11/11/2025 4:47:56 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
Nearly a decade ago, Los Angeles County voters overwhelmingly approved Measure M, a half-cent sales tax to fund projects focused on public transportation. The idealistic vote gave Angelenos a lot to look forward to, including a $365 million plan for an 8-mile bike path along the Los Angeles River, which would close a crucial gap between existing paths lining LA’s concrete channelized waterway. The expected opening date: 2025.
But, as the year nears a close, the bike path still isn’t open. In fact, construction hasn’t even started, and the environmental review process is still in the early stages. In the meantime, rising construction costs and other factors have increased the total project cost to approximately $1 billion.
Next steps include releasing the draft environmental impact report later this year, holding public hearings on that report, determining a preferred project option between several different alternative designs, and finally, releasing the final environmental impact report by 2026 or 2027, two years after bikers and pedestrians were supposed to be on the path. At the same time, LA Metro is still searching for an agency to take over the project’s ongoing operation and maintenance.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
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Reminds me of a guy I saw doing jokes about different types of engineers changing light bulbs. How many civil engineers does it take to change a light bulb? Six - one to do it and five to complete the environmental impact study.
I found the link: Not all engineers are the same!
“billion-dollar California bike path”
What do you call a billion-dollar California bike path? A bargain, for California.
Never ever vote for tax increases.
Valid points, especially in a congested metro area.
Using derogatory terms like ‘carheads’ probably isn’t the best.
I have to take care to not badmouth bicyclists based on the actions of a very few I’ve encountered - such as the couple of occasions where one has blown through stop signs and between stopped traffic directly in front of my vehicle going the under the speed limit, but still at lethal velocity.
Only by the grace of God and decent brakes that I’ve managed to not carry the guilt of killing an idiot by their error.
You make interesting arguments.
Unfortunately, they are marred with the vitriol aimed at the people you denigrate.
Many of the problems you expose are problems of minority desire. A small minority want to ride bikes. I rode a bike as a daily commute for years. I don’t hate people who prefer to ride in cars.
People who drive cars pay taxes to build roads.
My suggestion is to dial back the vitriol a bit, and your arguments will gain force.
Benjamin Franklin learned this lesson in life early, and it served him well.
You have a better chance experiencing a “bad fall” jogging than bike riding. Walking and bike riding are the most efficient forms of transportation we have ever known.
Now they are saying a billion dollars. A billion dollars for 8 miles of pathway. Hell I bet the Boring company could put in an 8 miles of pathway tunnel for a billion dollars.
Sorta like that train to nowhere.
Yes California never changes it always takes the wrong path it makes the lemmings happy.
Who uses a bike path? Is it the homeless and poor? No. Is it the working poor? No.
It will be the milleau of the snobby upper crust. They will transport their Pinarello with their BMW to the paid, secure parking lot.
They’ll change into their Castelli Lycra shorts and jersey. They will slip into their Bont Vaypor S Full Custom shoes. They will be distinguished by the decals on their ARRO Helmet.
This elitist trinket is just another gift to the ‘In’ crowd.
EC
” a half-cent sales tax to fund projects focused on public transportation.”
bike paths are NOT a form of public transportation, in fact, bike are not a form of transportation at all, just a form of recreation:
Here on the Front Range of Colorado, at an altitude of about a mile, we have very few days that any but a very few extremely healthy youngsters could bike to work.
Yesterday for example, the wind was gusting at 75+ mph. Try biking to work in that!
In the summer here, it can be brutally hot most days.
In the winter, of course, we have plenty of days where the high is 20 below zero, with even more days with a high of 10 degrees. Oh, and then there’s all that white stuff that comes down all the time here then and piles up and stays on the roads. And add a bit of wind to that, and guess what, you’ve got a blizzard!
And then what about that 15 pounds of laptop, accessories, and papers to be toted back and forth tow work each time?
And what about moms and dads that drop off and pick up their children to and from work?
And how about those of us who are old and/or sick?
And what if work expects you to use your own vehicle for various job related activities in the day?
What about trips to the store before or after work to buy weekly groceries and such?
What about visiting the doctor or dentist in the middle of the day?
And finally, don’t forget, you’re going to be bicycling to work in the dark at least half the time, except for those brutally hot summer days centered about the Summer Solstice.
So, if you multiply the few days of decent bicycling weather times the number of people who are extremely fit and completely well, don’t have children, don’t need to go to the store, don’t need their vehicle for work activities, don’t have 15 pounds are more of work-related stuff to tote, don’t need to make other trips in the middle of the day for other reasons, well then, how many people are left that can bike to work? About the number you see now! Which is virtually no one at any time compared to the number in automobiles.
L.A. is dead.
Soporific, criminally grifting politicians run the city.
Ethanol besotted, weed, cocaine, fentanyl,and meth muddled denizens,who are served by the same politicians. Projects probably will not never get done because politicians are trying to figure out how to grift money from the funding first.
As soon as possible, every right thinking person needs to leave to much better places.
The bike trail in question just so happens to be the same path that they wanted a light rail train from the Government Run Ghetto housing in Norfolk to the oceanfront in Virginia Beach.
Voters have said He’ll No to that plan at least twice. So the choo choo only runs in Norfolk at the moment.
Oh, but wait, enough of the easment will be left over from this luxe bike path for “future use “ .
The bums do like to congregate at the light rail station. The cops now have a mast camera , a camera on a 20 ft pole their at the light rail station to watch over the bums.
I know I slip easily into hyperbole on this topic. That is not aimed at rational people; it’s aimed at the people who regularly show up on these threads to denigrate cyclists and condemn every penny spent on sidewalks, bike lanes and off road trails as a waste of money, because somewhere out in the burbs the car lobby wants to add traffic lanes and create high speed, limited access roads that create near impassable barriers slashed across what used to be pleasant residential areas and neighborhood shopping districts.
I’ve lived for 46 years in an historic district that has been a continuous target for highway “improvements” that would destroy the neighborhood in the name of pumping ever more cars into a downtown that is already choked. We no sooner dodge a bullet than another comes along. Enough is enough. We need to respect the integrity of existing neighborhoods, prioritize mixed use neighborhoods to give a much larger number of people viable multimodal transit options, and insist on sidewalks and regular street crossings in residential areas.
If that means more traffic lights for commuters, fine. If it means more pedestrian and bike over-and underpasses across arterial roads, fine. This is part of the cost of building complete roads and it should come out of the road construction budget. There is a threshold, which varies due to local constraints like rivers, mountains and coastal areas, above which the automobile commute systems passes the point of diminishing returns. It then slides into serious dysfunction. Our larger cities are far past this point. People need to accept the necessity of living closer to their jobs or taking a train.
“a $365 million plan for an 8-mile bike path”
That averages out to $8600 per foot. At a billion dollars, it averages out to $23,674 per foot.
Reminds me of the “High Speed Rail” project that Newsom is hell-bent on continuing funding to the tune of $1B/year.
Not a single inch of track has been laid down after 14 years.
Bike path faces the same fate.
That money is gone. Politicos took it years ago.
Like the >$200M that Newscum “used” to racially gerrymander all GOP members out of Congress. That has already been skimmed.
Like the $100M bucket that was raised to provide relief to those made homeless by the Newscum/Bass fire at PacificPalisades — none of that money made it way to those no longer in houses
Like the $Billions blown on the BulletTrain.
Like the $24B on “homeless” programs — which only decreased the number of such street bums by letting them die.
The list is long. And, the other 49 states fund it all.
An 8 mile bike path shouldn’t cost more than 1 million dollars and should have been completed in 90 days.
Money laundering.
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