Los Angeles's streets need help. They've got potholes, cracked pavement, and conditions that are often crappy enough to screw up your drive, bike ride, or walk. Fixes are on the way, Mayor Garcetti announced at a press conference today, where he outlined a plan to generate $50 million to go directly into paving the streets, Streetsblog reports. And one moneymaker would change the way we pay for parking all over tow—Councilmember Buscaino will introduce a motion today that would require that all privately-owned parking lots offer a credit/debit card payment option. Private lots have to pay 10 percent of revenues to the city so the thinking is that the option to pay with plastic will leave a better paper trail and probably a bigger (more honest) cut for LA. The increased tax revenue is expected to be between $20 and $25 million, and it would all go toward paving expenses. A press release outlines the city's other plans to come up with the cash to patch LA roads, including:
· Developing a new process for reimbursement for damage done to streets by "utilities and other entities" that cut into the roads. (Currently, the repayments are calculated by and "outdated" and "flawed" formula.)
· Upgrading the city's South LA asphalt plant so that LA can produce its own asphalt instead of buying from an outside source.
· Instituting a ban on cutting on cutting into streets for anywhere from one to three years after resurfacing.
The goal is to have these initiatives pay for 200 additional miles of street-pavings annually, for a total of 400 miles of new paved streets a year.
· Garcetti, City Leaders, Promise Hundreds of Repaired Streets Every Year [Streetsblog LA]
· Visualizing Los Angeles's Crappiest and Best Streets [Curbed LA]
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