Photo by John Livzey

 

Facilitated by donor sponsorships, twelve students from the University of Southern California, California State University Northridge, Biola, and Mississippi State University joined the WTS Los Angeles luncheon on June 16, 2016, at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. The event featured representatives from transit planning teams seeking to bring sleek, 21^st-century streetcar transit service to the downtowns of both Los Angeles and Santa Ana.

Jessica Wethington McLean, Executive Director of Bringing Back Broadway and Director of Downtown Economic Development for the City of Los Angeles, and Shane Phillips, Project Director of LA Streetcar Inc., explained the lucrative benefits of bringing a streetcar to downtown Los Angeles. Their presentation highlighted how the service—proposed on a circuit alignment connecting South Park, the Financial District, and the Civic Center—could significantly enhance pedestrian accessibility and economic activity in the local area.

McLean and Phillips also detailed recent and upcoming milestones in the project’s development, particularly with respect to the upcoming countywide transportation sales tax ballot measure. McLean shared that LA Streetcar Inc. expects to complete a Draft EIR for the project by the end of June 2016, and ultimately to complete construction by 2020, despite its low scheduling priority on the ballot measure plan.

Mary Shavalier, Program Manager of Rail Programs and Facilities Engineering for the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA), took the stage to discuss the benefits of a similar streetcar project under development in Santa Ana. Named the OC Streetcar, it is planned to stretch between Santa Ana’s Metrolink depot and the nearby city of Garden Grove, with a similar goal of sparking local economic growth, but largely by attracting tourist traffic from nearby Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm.

Following the OC Streetcar presentation was a Q&A session featuring all three speakers. Audience members, including students, asked questions pertaining to each projects’ route alignment and possible traffic management strategies.

Student attendance at this event was generously sponsored by John Livzey, Arthur Schurr, Alexandra Spencer, Lou Cornell of Jacobs Engineering Group, and James E. Moore II of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.  Sponsors are recognized in chapter publications, news releases, and at the event.  METRANS Assistant Director, Victoria Deguzman, coordinates sponsored attendance at WTS-LA events for students. The students and the chapter greatly appreciate these sponsorships, and encourage interested parties to contact her ([email protected]) for information on affordable opportunities to sponsor a student to attend a similar program.

WTS-LA is the Los Angeles Area chapter of WTS International, an organization dedicated to the professional advancement of women in transportation and the championship of their career accomplishments. For more information on the chapter, see http://www.wtsinternational.org/losangeles/.

Griffin Kantz

Kantz is a third-year undergraduate studying Sustainable Planning in the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. He can be reached at [email protected].