L.A. River bike path's price tag, California falling short on housing, and more

Here's what we're reading this week:

Too Big to Burn: L.A. Takes Harder Look at Megawarehouses After Cold Storage Fire "The Lineage blaze in Boyle Heights, and its $100 million cleanup, are fueling concerns over large, automated industrial facilities near homes and other sensitive sites" (Commercial Observer)

Almost nowhere in California is building enough, according to the state. Here’s why "Only five jurisdictions in the entire state are permitting at a pace to hit all four income targets. Four are the lightly populated unincorporated bits of small, mostly rural counties: Plumas, Napa, Yolo and Mono. The fifth is Placerville, a town of roughly 11,000 people in the Sierra foothills east of Sacramento." (LAist)

The YouTuber Who Exposed the LAX People Mover Fiasco "Why is the much-ballyhooed elevated train project so massively over budget and inexplicably delayed? A Hollywood editor and L.A. transit obsessive sought answers" (Hollywood Reporter)

LAX people mover is 99% done, but uncertainty mounts near deadline "Last year, a Los Angeles County civil grand jury investigated more than $880 million in change orders that LAWA paid to LINXS over delays and found that it was the contractor, not the airport, largely to blame. The report said that since the train was based on a design-build contract, it fell on the contractor to meet all necessary criteria." (LA Times)

Worried about Metrolink Cuts? Blame Metrolink ‘Joint Powers Agreement’ Governance Structure "Metrolink's JPA governance structure got multi-county So Cal commuter rail service up and running quickly, but was never intended to last for as long as it has" (Streetsblog LA)

The eight-mile gap in the L.A. River bike path downtown has a billion-dollar problem "The ambitious project remains mired in planning and bureaucratic complications, with groundbreaking still two years off and the cost nearly tripling to more than $1 billion — almost $24,000 per foot — documents reviewed by The Times show." (LA Times)

LA Mayor Bass wants public transit to be free. Metro puts that price tag at over $1 billion "Bass’ recent push for free transit comes just a few years after Metro executives said eliminating fares would cost more than $1 billion annually for the region. At the same time, the agency, which is facing mounting political pressure to strengthen fare enforcement, is pouring tens of millions of dollars into taller faregates that are designed to make it harder for riders to skip out on paying." (LAist)

Eyes on the Street: Transit and Bike Projects in the Valley "New bus bridge over Sepulveda, new hard plastic bike lane protection on Chandler, and new ThermoShade shelter being tested at NoHo Station" (Streetsblog LA)

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