In October, LA Mayor Bass issued Executive Directive 9 Streamlining Capital Project Delivery and Equitably Investing in the Public Right-of-Way. In this TPR Interview Deputy Mayor for Infrastructure, Randall Winston elaborates on this Executive Directive, which is intended to develop an integrated and funded city-wide, bureau-spanning Capital Improvement Plan. The directive specifically calls for consolidation of the city’s many mobility and infrastructure working groups as well as development of a Centralized Asset Management system to facilitate planning, lifecycle analysis, and equitable delivery of capital improvements in LA’s public right of way. Winston’s interview highlights the opportunity presented by the LA28 Olympic Games and other mega-sports events to focus city and civic attention, expand partnerships, and unlock resources to improve the city’s challenged infrastructure for generations to come.
Randall, TPR previously published your remarks from Curbivore 2024 where you spoke about LA’s incredible opportunity to showcase transformative public right-of-way projects to support upcoming mega-sporting events. Please update, as Mayor Bass’ Deputy Mayor for Infrastructure, on what that transformation will accomplish.
At the time of the Curbivore event, we were putting the final touches on an executive directive that would—for the first time in LA's history—set a long-term vision for planning and investment in our capital infrastructure.
A few weeks ago, the mayor signed Executive Directive Nine, Streamlining Capital Project Delivery and Equitably Investing in the Public Right-of-Way. It will streamline the way we plan, deliver, and develop projects in the City over the next 5, 10, and 20-year horizon. At the core of that effort right now is planning for major events and budgeting for them appropriately. Some of those events are the World Cup in 2026, the Super Bowl in 2027, and the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028.
There's a lot to do, and the first step in that process, in the next 60-90 days, is setting up a new system of governance for how our departments work together to deliver right-of-way infrastructure. Since 2011, under previous mayors, no less than 12 working groups on streets and street improvements were established—and for good reason! There were executive directives trying to make our streets safer and more complete, for example, Vision Zero. Efforts were made to streamline planning and budgeting. However, the working groups were set up in a way that was not necessarily coordinated, and oftentimes the budget wasn't there to support the work, particularly in the Mobility 2035 Plan, which builds out our network of pedestrian-related infrastructure, bike lanes, and more.
This executive directive dramatically consolidates those groups down to three and allows them to focus on maintaining, developing, and delivering projects in the right-of-way. It sets up a steering committee to drive our priorities in each of those areas for the long term, again over a 5, 10, and 20-year horizon.
The mayor has also charged the City, unsurprisingly, with developing funding strategies to help us get there. I'm sure your readers know that LA is experiencing some constraints to the budget, similar to other cities across the nation. It is a tight year, and it will be a tight year to come. That doesn't mean that we have the time or the ability to step back from meeting our needs and building a historic legacy for the games and what's to come. We'll just have to be innovative about how we fund the work. This directive will help us set those priorities to accomplish this.
The games are helpful by forcing us to focus. The Paris Olympics happened, and the Mayor was there to continue urgent preparations for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Now, the eyes of the world, and the machinery of the International Olympic Committee are turned to Los Angeles. We are redirecting our bureaus to focus accordingly.
What impact has the passage of the Healthy Streets Initiative had on the City’s infrastructure asset planning?
Indeed, earlier this year, HLA—the Healthy Streets Initiative— was approved by the voters and championed by local advocates and other partners, which legally requires the City to deliver on our Mobility 2035 planning goals to make our streets more walkable, bikeable, and ultimately safer. We need to act on those goals to make sure our streets and the venues for the games are more complete.
And planning for the Paralympics?
LA, yes, is also hosting the Paralympics for the first time. L.A. has hosted the Olympics twice but this will be the very first time we are hosting the Paralympics and the Mayor is thrilled about this opportunity. In Paris, the Mayor had an unmatched opportunity to learn from their record-breaking Paralympics, from innovations to deliver an accessible experience to continue to build the Paralympic movement in the U.S. ahead of 2028. L.A. took back invaluable insights into how to deliver a Paralympic Games that celebrates athletes and fosters inclusion and accessibility both on and off the field of play. We learned a lot from Paris about how they built out their sidewalks, transit system, points of access, and made them all more accessible.
Clearly, LA City has much to do re: right-of-way infrastructure and capital planning.
I actually think the list of things in our right-of-way that need improvement, beyond our larger projects, is not very long. We need to focus on repairing the core infrastructure of the city like the sidewalks and lack of access ramps, and the core parts of the Mobility 2035 Plan that we have been planning for, really, since 2015. We need to meet those obligations and get the funding.
Although this is straightforward, I don’t want to underestimate the challenges of funding and organization. But, because we are better organized and have our bureaus and departments consolidated and sharing resources, with the mayor’s leadership, and the CAO and Council’s leadership, driving priorities and ensuring that we are spending in a way that match those priorities, we’re going to get there. I think that we are not just going to be ready, but we are going to host the games, the likes of which the world has never seen.
Regarding the City’s new Centralized Asset Management System called for in ED9—How is it different from how LA currently manages its right- of-way assets?
I think this is one of the most exciting parts of the order.
It’s a little wonky. Currently, the City does not have a central asset management system. We have a bunch of departments that manage their assets—and manage them well—but separately from one another and do not really talk to each other. The Bureau of Street Services has the domain of the street network itself—managing potholes, sidewalk repairs, and other components of the street. The Bureau of Street Lighting maintains the street lighting and mapping where those lights are. The Bureau of Engineering manages public buildings, some parts of the right-of-way, bridges, and the storm system. The Department of Transportation manages traffic signals, safety-related enhancements on the street, and curb-related components.
Currently, we do not have a central repository that manages and catalogs our assets digitally to understand their lifespans, needed maintenance and upkeep, and further investments. All these things require a huge amount of decisions.
Our bureaus do a wonderful job planning independently, and they all have five-year plans and lists of investments that are presented to our City Council. But ultimately, the City Council and the mayor do not have the same or enough information to make city-wide decisions about how to invest in our assets. So, by default, sometimes the loudest voice and loudest interest accomplish what they want, and underserved areas are often overlooked, in terms of cleanliness, maintenance, and investment. We see this dynamic reflected in our streets and in our public right-of-way.
To remedy this, we're working with some companies, including OpenGov, to digitize our assets and create an interoperable toolkit that speaks to each other and across bureaus. We can model at-scale scenarios about our assets’ lifespans and understand the risk of not repairing them versus repairing them over a longer time horizon. Several bureaus have already started doing this.
And this is all exciting, but many cities in the US have been using these tools for a while. It’s challenging to digitize a city and a street network of our size but we will get there! This will start with us getting our head around our assets and that will allow us to better plan for the long term.
Let’s turn now to the Capital Planning Steering Committee called for in ED9.
We are currently in the process of meeting with every department and bureau that has a role within the public right-of-way. We are determining which entities should merge efforts. This is being done very deliberately and will take the rest of this month.
The Capital Planning Steering Committee will meet for the first time in December or January, and that meeting will have the leaders from all the entities with a role in the public right-of-way. The CLA will be there, and as the group gets going, we will invite other internal and external city players.
As is delineated in ED9, a charter and system of governance will also be established. That document will be created, and then the process will be more public and open to external input to form the Capital Plan. The Steering Committee will determine our priorities and where we need to invest. Over the next year, asset management systems and funding strategies, and funding priorities will all be discussed.
Randall, we do this interview very shortly after the state and national elections. When seeking the office, Mayor Bass was seen as having an advantage because of her strong relationship with Congress and the Biden White House. How might the changing of the guard in Washington likely change her relationship with the Federal Government?
As Mayor Bass has said, she has a long history of working in a bipartisan fashion and she will continue to work to do so during this administration. She has shown what an all of government approach can accomplish thus far and that is in her leadership style. She was in DC during the first Trump administration and saw how our federal agencies and bureaucracy changed. This change will likely not be different, though the scope and scale will be more rapid.
We have a host of federal grants we have won in the past that are still dispersing funds at a regular cadence. We will also be preparing for accessing federal funding in a new environment.
The Games are obviously top of mind, and these conversations, even as the transition takes place, will continue with increasing speed in the new year. LA is hosting global events where we will welcome the world, and it’s also a chance to really showcase the United States. That is the message that we'll want to ensure the level of federal support that we need.
Perhaps compounding the federal funding challenge, LA’s City Controller recently spoke to the deficit condition of LA’s budget. What’s the impact of the aforementioned on execution of ED9?
Mayor Bass has said directly that we are not going broke. While the budget will be tighter, it is nowhere near the budget of the early 2000s – it's much closer to the pre-COVID budget.
But it doesn't mean that we can’t, or ought not, be vigilant about how we spend. In practice, I think it means that the level of spending is not going to go up. Because it will likely remain the same, we need to decide how to be more efficient with our significant departmental budgets, staff and resources and reallocate resources to ensure work gets done in our core services. We will need to think innovatively about new partnerships.
For example, early next year, we will still be, pursuant to the executive directive that the Mayor signed almost a year ago, releasing a whole new 311 platform, which will change and streamline the way residents request basic services, like bulky item pickup, illegal dumping cleanup, or graffiti removal. Imagine our more advanced social media platforms – that is akin to what we are going for with our new 311 system. We’re going to have new and, for the first time, hard response times by which we will hold our departments accountable, as well as trying to reduce those response times. This is being launched in February.
We’re also launching new partnerships. Just over this past year, LA Sanitation formed a new partnership with Union Pacific to help pick up trash along their right of way. Illegal dumping is a horrible problem, particularly in areas of South LA. This new partnership also includes the state's transportation agency, because they can more rapidly pick up the dumped items on our freeways, and then be reimbursed. That program is going to ramp up and relies on a partnership with the state for dollars.
Probably early next year, we will be launching a city-wide cleaning initiative, where we will more rapidly clean our streets. There will be a constrained budget, but we can’t back down or roll back the services we offer. It’s also very important that we get the city clean and safe for our major upcoming events. I think we will continue to see this type of leadership from the Mayor.
Does the City have the resources and 21st century technology to handle the challenges that you've been tasked with addressing?
We're getting there, but we do need more. At a conference with other large and small jurisdictions about technology and tools and folks having what they need, it was clear, no, we do not have everything that we need. But we are getting there, and we are sharing lessons, and will adapt to the tools we have and continue to acquire more tools as we have the resources to do so. The change is not as fast as the mayor would like to see, but we are committed to disrupting systems and the status quo, technical and otherwise, and challenging how work gets done here.
Our 311 system that I previously mentioned, which we are working with our consultant Deloitte on, is a new platform that will bring the way our residents interface with city services up to world-class standards. I also mentioned Executive Directive 9 on Capital Planning. We are working with firms that offer the latest technology in asset management, using systems, including ones powered by AI, to make more informed and intelligent recommendations for budgeting, how we prioritize, and where we send our money in our public right of way.
These tools are being incorporated, but we still have to catch our staff up so they can learn to use them. That challenge is not unique to LA. It’s essential for cities to incorporate new technology and adapt, but it's difficult and can be slow sometimes, especially for larger cities. I think that with the Olympics and other major events coming to LA, we have a wonderful opportunity, excitement, and really a forcing function to bring LA’s people and systems to a level that we have not been at before. There is tremendous interest across the board, private, public, civic and nonprofit organizations and businesses, as well as City Hall, to showcase Los Angeles to the world stage. And we will certainly be looking to those folks for funding sources, outside of the City’s general fund.
To perhaps put in context this interview, many have observed that civic discourse in LA used to be centered on the need for better collaboration between planning and transportation; but now, seems mostly obsessed with housing production. Speak to the nexus between planning and transportation, and how the City might better integrate the two.
This subject is near and dear to my heart.
Before I was in this office I was in Sacramento helping run the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program (AHSC). This program was the first time that the state baked as one part of the application, transit-oriented development—you had to develop the housing and the transit-related investment components together. It was a part of lowering greenhouse gas emissions to get people closer to transit and out of their cars. This was all to increase access to mobility and housing at the same time.
The mayor has always thought about increasing transit access and housing as two sides of the same coin. A very direct way of realizing what you are describing is something Metro wants to do. Metro has a goal of building 10,000 units on unutilized Metro properties. The RFP, which may already be out now, is for those properties throughout the city of Los Angeles. Over this next year, this will be a prime vehicle for ensuring that we build our housing stock near transit.
We will be in Sacramento later this year and early next year advocating on behalf of AHSC projects in Southern California, to ensure that those dollars continue to flow.
But I'll acknowledge that we are in the midst of a housing crisis. We need to build more housing, faster, and preferably cheaper as well. The mayor has had a tremendous focus on cutting the red tape to get the housing built. It takes way too long to build the housing that we need. This is a huge component of our unhoused homelessness crisis throughout the city.
So, while I think transit access is integral, dealing with the red tape challenges and making opportunities easier to achieve, your audience is well-informed about the challenges we still face bringing housing to certain parts of the city, and there are folks who don't want to see it there for whatever reason. We need to continue to push to ensure that we have greater access to housing and opportunity in places that are close to transit. I think putting these all together is how we will address our housing goals, our unhoused crises, and our climate goals.
Clearly, there's political pressure today—reflected in the state’s increased intervention in local planning processes in response to the challenges you just articulated—to eliminate residential setbacks, reduce parking, and add more density in residential zones. More the decade ago, the City’s former planning director, Gail Goldberg, postulated that there had to be a win-win offered to those neighborhoods being compelled to densify. Is a win/win possible?
It is possible. Given the extent that this has been at the forefront at the state level, the conversations around our land use in concert with state elected officials is imperative.
Mayor Bass’ approach to every problem is to work with others, work across lines, and work with people who may not see eye to eye. It's how she entered office. She knows when to lock arms with the County and other partners to address our housing crisis. She pulls from her background of having started Community Coalition decades ago, which bridges racial divides in LA.
So, I think that whatever the land-use problem is, and how we organize ourselves and our neighborhoods, I know the mayor will continue to listen and work with others to find the best solution. That's a general response, but I do think it's an accurate one.
Lastly, Randall, who, given the above, is presently the “steward” of the built environment in Los Angeles?
Great question, I’m going to go ahead and say, Mayor Bass.