The following is from the city manager’s weekly report.
On Friday, March 27, City staff and Councilmember Natalya Zernitskaya welcomed Yevgen Solodov from the Kyiv Traffic Management Center for a half-day planning discussion and walking tour, a small but meaningful act of city-to-city knowledge sharing at a moment when it matters deeply.
Yevgen, who was in the Los Angeles area visiting family, reached out to the City to learn about Santa Monica’s approach to transportation planning, urban development, and information systems as Kyiv – and all of Ukraine – looks ahead to the rebuilding period to come.
The context is staggering. A joint assessment released in February by the World Bank, the European Commission, and the United Nations estimates Ukraine’s total reconstruction and recovery costs at nearly $588 billion over the next decade, with the transport sector alone accounting for over $96 billion in needs (the single largest category). Transportation infrastructure needs have increased by approximately 24% in just the past year due to intensified attacks on rail and port systems.
For cities like Kyiv, which operates a complex multimodal network of metro, tram, trolleybus, and bus systems serving millions of daily riders, the challenge of not just repairing but modernizing transportation infrastructure will be central to the country’s recovery.
Staff from across multiple departments presented on Santa Monica’s core industries and land use planning, multimodal transportation strategy, the transition of Big Blue Bus to a fully electric fleet by 2032, how data is used to inform transportation planning initiatives, the technologies deployed across the City’s transportation landscape, and the City’s broadband network.
Following the presentations, a walking tour of the Downtown and Pier area gave Yevgen a firsthand look at how projects and policies translate from plans to the built environment. Massive thanks to the cross-departmental team who made this visit possible: Prasanna Joshi, Deputy Director of Digital Transformation; Jason Kligier, Chief Planning Officer; Sarkis Metspakyan, Infrastructure and Cloud Services Manager; Trevor Thomas, Senior Transportation Planner; Eric O’Connor, Assistant Director of Transportation; and Jing Yeo, Director of Community Development. And a special thank you to Councilmember Zernitskaya – who brought her dog Sadie along for the occasion! – for helping to facilitate this connection.
It was a proud day for Santa Monica, and a reminder that the expertise our team builds every day can have impact far beyond our city’s borders.
Author
About The Author
