CITY OF LOS ANGELES INTER-DEPARTMENTAL CORRESPONDENCE Date: May 17, 2016 To: The Honorable City Council c/o City Clerk, Room 395 Attention: Honorable Mike Bonin, Chair, Transportation Committee From: Seleta Reynoldf^eheral Manager Department of Transportation Subject: AUTHORITY TO SUBMIT GRANT APPLICATIONS TO THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION TO COMPETE FOR THE ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION PROGRAM (ATP) CYCLE 3 CALL FOR PROJECTS SUMMARY The Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) is requesting authority to submit grant applications to the State of California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to compete in the State's third cycle of ATP Call for Projects grant award process. RECOMMENDATIONS That the City Council, subject to the approval of the Mayor: 1. APPROVE the final list of projects (Attachment A) as the City's priorities for pursuing this grant; and 2. AUTHORIZE the General Manager of LADOT to submit grant applications to Caltrans on behalf of the City for all recommended projects for possible funding through this grant; and 3. DIRECT the General Manager or Director of the respective lead city department to identify any additional resource needs, including staff, and/or overtime funding, for the implementation of the projects that are awarded funding through this grant opportunity, and to seek approval for any additional staffing from the City Council prior to accepting the funds; and 4. AUTHORIZE the General Manager or Director of the lead city department to execute any necessary funding and contractual documents, subject to the approval of the City Attorney as to form and legality, for accepting the grant; and 5. SUPPORT the efforts of Metro in applying for the "Reconnecting Union Station to the Historic/Cultural Communities of DTLA," a project that was identified in the Union Station Master Plan (USMP), subject to the findings of the final Programmatic Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) and its recommendations for any public improvements. AN EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY - AFFIRMATIVE ACTION EMPLOYER
The Honorable City Council -2- May 17, 2016 BACKGROUND In September 26, 2013, Governor Brown signed legislation creating the ATP in the State Department of Transportation (Senate Bill 99). Senate Bill 99 consolidated existing federal and state transportation programs, including the Transportation Alternative Program (TAP), Bicycle Transportation Account (BTA), and the Safe Routes to School (SRTS) into a single ATP funding program. This is the third year that Caltrans is soliciting projects to compete for this ATP grant opportunity, and has established the following criteria and weights for evaluating and selecting projects: (1) Potential for increase walking and bicycling (30 points) (2) Potential for reducing the number and/or rate of pedestrians and bicyclist fatalities and injuries (25 points) (3) Public participation and planning (15 points) (4) Cost effectiveness (10 points) (4) Improved public health (10 points) (5) Benefit to disadvantaged communities (10 points) Opportunity On March 16, 2016 the California Transportation Commission (CTC) approved the ATP Cycle 3 guidelines and made available $240,000 statewide for this grant opportunity, 25% of which shall be allocated to disadvantaged communities. The funds will be programmed for the two state fiscal years of 2019-20 and 2020-21. The project sponsors are required to submit their applications to Caltrans by June 15, 2016. The $240 million grant distribution will be as follows: $120 million (fifty percent) will be competitively awarded by CTC on statewide basis; $24 million (ten percent) will be competitively awarded by CTC to the projects that are in small urban and rural areas of 200,000 populations or less; $96 million (forty percent) awarded through MPOs. Once Caltrans has identified their recommended projects for funding, the rankings of unsuccessful projects will be shared with the Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) across the State. The MPOs will then make funding recommendations for the remaining of the projects in their respective jurisdictions. It is estimated that the share of Southern California Association of Government's (SCAG) in this Call is about $50 million. City's Project Recommendation Process On April 12, 2016, LADOT sent out a Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) to the Mayor's Office and all Council Offices advising them of this funding opportunity. It was requested that if there was any interest for nominating projects for consideration for this grant opportunity, to contact LADOT and to provide following information to the department by May 6, 2016 to make the requests official: Project Title Detailed project description and project limits Project sponsor (i.e. City Department that will lead the application and implementation efforts)
The Honorable City Council -3- May 17, 2016 Detailed project budget {including sources for front-funding and any over match) Detailed community engagement efforts After receiving five (5) eligible project nominations, a committee of technical staff from LADOT was formed to review and evaluate the proposed projects and make recommendations for selecting competitive projects to go forward with the application process. The technical committee was comprised of members that have extensive experience in past ATP and other funding opportunities and in identifying competitive projects for grant solicitation purposes. In addition to the ATP's criteria, the technical committee considered the following criteria when selecting projects: (1) Project's readiness and community outreach that has been conducted; (2) Right of Way and/or utility relocation issues; (3) Presence of federal environmental issues; (4) Project elements have been vetted for feasibility by the appropriate City departments; (5) "shovel-ready" within one year of funding approval. After a thorough evaluation and analysis of proposed projects, all five (5) projects were found to be valid projects for the ATP grant, and were advised to move forward with application preparation process. All recommended projects reflect the consensus view of the committee after conducting a technical assessment of these projects with an overview of the ATP grant requirements. The committee considered both adopted city and departmental policies, as well Caltrans' evaluation criteria, when considering these projects. All projects were determined to be consistent with the city's policies and competitive under ATP evaluation criteria. These projects are shown in the attachment A. This expedited project selection strategy was implemented due to lack of adequate time for creating a citywide Interdepartmental Task Force Committee, similar to the Metro's Call for Projects, to establish a uniform citywide project selection and prioritization strategy. There is no requirement for ranking agency-sponsored ATP projects. As such, the projects identified in the attached list are sorted in alphabetical order. Reconnecting Union Station to the Historic/Cultural Communities of DTLA On February 17, 2015 the Los Angeles City Council adopted Motion 15-0075 that directed the relevant City departments to report to Council with recommendations to establish a formal partnership between Metro and the City of Los Angeles for the implementation of the Union Station Master Plan. As part of this master plan, Metro is submitting the ",Reconnecting Union Station to the Historic/Cultural Communities of DTLA" project for funding consideration under the ATP Cycle 3 opportunity. The project includes design and implementation of public improvements that will improve pedestrian and bicyclist connections from Los Angeles Union Station into El Pueblo, Chinatown, Cornfield Arroyo Seco, Civic Center, Arts District, and Little Tokyo. At present, Metro is leading the effort to develop the Program Environmental Impact Report (PER) for the overall master plan. The project being submitted for this funding opportunity is at the conceptual design phase and will be further defined in collaboration with the City of Los Angeles and through the PEIR. As such, the proposed improvements are contingent on the findings of PEIR.
The Honorable City Council -4- May 17, 2016 FISCAL IMPACT There is no impact to the city's General Fund due to no match requirements for this grant. The grant is on reimbursement basis, therefore Proposition A and C and/or Measure R funds should be made available to provide front funding for this grant. Future appropriations by the Mayor and City Council will be required to finalize the approved grant funding agreement and to deliver the projects (i.e. design, project management, construction, and inspection costs). SJR:am Attachment
CALIFORNIA TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION (CTC) ACTIVE TRANSPORTATION PROGRAM (ATP) CYCLE 3 CALL FOR PROJECTS CITY OF LOS ANGELES' FINAL LIST OF PROPOSED PROJECTS PROJ NO PROJECT TITLE PROJECT SCOPE COUNCIL DISTRICT LEAD CITY DEPT. ESTIMATED COST GRANT REQUESTED GRANT % CITY MATCH Construction of a pedestrian and cyclist bridge over the Los Angeles River to bridge a vital transportation gap between the long separated communities of Elysian Valley and Cypress Park and between the Los Angeles River Greenway Trail and the Rio de Los Angeles State Park. In addition to the bridge, the project will provide ADA accessible pedestrian and cyclist linkages from the Greenway Trail to nearby public streets on the Elysian Valley side of the river and to San Fernando Road and to the future bicycle facilities on Cypress Avenue on the Cypress Park side of the river. 1,13 19,646,781 18,246,781 93% 1,400,000 14 15,000,000 14,850,000 99% 150,000 Discretionary funds. 8 8,415,000 8,065,000 350,000 Match will be provided by USC per development agreement with the City. 15 4,087,750 4,087,750 100% CW DOT 2,000,000 2,000,000 100% 49,149,531 47,249,531 1 Connecting Communities Across LA River- Elysian Valley & Cypress Park 2 Construction of pedestrian and cyclist safety improvements in the Arts District from 3rd to 7th Streets and from Alameda Street to the Los Angeles River. The improvements will facilitate walking and biking Downtown LA Arts District Pedestrian connections to the Metro Regional Connector and the new 6th Street Bridge and for the thousands of new 8t Cyclist Safety Project residents, workers and visitors in the burgeoning Arts District. Improvements include new curb extensions, high visibility crosswalks, traffic controlled intersections, pedestrian lighting, bike lanes. 3 4 5 Jefferson Complete Streets Project San Pedro Connect - LANI Attachment A Complete Streets treatments along Jefferson Blvd. between Vermont Ave. and Western Ave. including: bicycle facilities, curb extensions, raised landscaped median islands, sidewalk enhancements, bus stop security lighting and pedestrian lighting. The community partner, Redeemer Community Partnership, has held numerous outreach meeting with community stakeholders and businesses on Jefferson Blvd to discuss design. The outreach meetings have been documented. The community partner also prepared data to demonstrate eligibility for ATP including Cal Enviro Screen, demographics, bicycle needs, and proximity to schools. The project boundaries are 1st Street to the north, 7th Street to the south, Harbor Blvd. to the east and Gaffey Street to the west. Connecting the commercial corridor of Gaffey Street to the San Pedro waterfront, 1st and 7th Streets are main thoroughfares with diverse small businesses, pedestrian activity and robust transit including DASH San Pedro, Silver Line, Commuter Express and Metro lines. 7th Street also connects to the Harbor Blvd. realignment project, a massive re-envisioning of the Ports O'Call entryway that will create public open space and feature a Red Car stop. An 18 month long comprehensive community outreach and participatory planning process forms the basis for this project. In 2015 LANI, CD15and LADOT completed the Gaffey Street Conceptual Planning Project. The result of this $250,000 community-led planning effort is the Gaffey Street Conceptual Plan document that outlines a series of transformative improvements for San Pedro including curb extensions, lighting and transit amenities. LADOT recently commissioned a pah of Coro Fellows to develop a Vision Zero Education Strategy that researched best practices and made recommendations on developing a strategy tailored to Los Angeles. This work will be incorporated into a forthcoming Vision Zero Action Plan, currently scheduled to be released in August 2016, which will outline a series of actions for the next two years to achieve the City's Vision Zero goals. This Action Plan will be informed by a series of community-based focus groups to ensure all the strategies, including Engineering, Enforcement, Education, and Evaluation, are vetted by Angelenos. In the second half of 2016, a consultant will use the Education Strategy to develop an education and outreach campaign for LADOT, in line with the Vision Zero Action Plan and LADOT's Great Streets for Los Angeles Vision Zero Education Implementation Strategic Plan. The campaign will conduct message testing (focus groups) and develop a campaign plan to deliver the Vision Zero message to the diverse Los Angeles community. Once this plan is developed, we will need funding to implement the various portions of the plan, specifically the paid media strategy and on-theground community outreach. This ATP grant would go to fund $1.5 million to purchase advertising and develop collateral to spread the Vision Zero education message, and $500,000 to partner with communitybased organizations to implement ground-level outreach & education. 1,900,000 COMMENTS Match will be provided by Metro and DWP.