The 2015 My LA2050 Grants Challenge is on right now, with six days left for you to vote. The challenge lets the community—that is, you—to choose ten organizations win $100,000 each to help them realize their projects.
That’s two from each of five categories: making, in LA2050’s words, “Los Angeles become the best place to learn, create, play, connect, and live.”
While there are numbers of projects worth considering, including several that directly support bicycling in our region, there’s one in particular that I want to tout here—one whose benefits to cycling may not be immediately obvious, but which will benefit us in a big way, just indirectly.
That is GRID Logistics Inc, a massive infrastructure proposal to which I’ve devoted countless hours over the last four years.
Its goal: to get almost all the freight containers going into or out of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach off of diesel trucks and onto rail cars&mdashusing either standrad surface trains or our own all-electric automated underground rail loop, which would serve the vast network of local distribution centers.
The result would be less air pollution, less noise, and—most important for cyclists and residents of the east county area—far fewer heavy trucks on our freeways and the streets that feed them.
You don’t need a horrific crash such as last night’s in Long Beach to be convinced of that.
So I’m asking you to vote not for some charming (and very valuable) grassroots project whose results will be as visible as they are limited, but to help support a large infrastructure project almost all of which will be invisible—out of sight, out of mind, as it should be.
One that is supported by the Sierra Club, dozens of local grassroots groups, and almost all the major regional unions.
Press the button at Freight Underground at MYLA2059 today. Voting ends at noon on November 3rd. Winning this would give us the bit of bridge funding we need to carry us to the investment phase that will let us build this thing.
The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are vital to the economic health of the country. Millions of containers per year come into and out of the San Pedro Bay facilities–and all too many of them are trucked along the region’s freeways, to warehouse clusters or out to the major trainyards in the Inland Empire. This traffic clogs freeways, streets, and our children’s lungs alike, and the situation simply must change, radically and soon.
Evolution or revolution? You can have them both. GRID reconfigures currently-available technologies to move freight among ships, trains, trucks, and warehouses in a way that gets products to market faster while taking tens of thousands of diesel trucks off our battered streets and freeways.
The result? Cleaner air, healthier children, faster commutes, and more and better jobs…with less demand on tax dollars as roads are freed from the pounding of heavy trucks.
GRID’s Superdock can interface with standard railroad trains, our all-electric underground Freight Pipeline, and even visionary technologies such as the Hyperloop.
We’re laying the groundwork now, and your vote helps us keep going as we strive towards a healthier, wealthier, and less-congested future. All it takes is one click to change the world.