Burbank Resident Warns BRT Will Reshape City's Future Design

Burbank residents are raising alarms about Metro’s Bus Rapid Transit plan, warning that BRT corridor development will reshape the city’s built environment in ways locals can’t yet see or stop.

The concern comes from Richard B. Cathcart, a Burbank resident whose letter published by myBurbank argues that Metro’s BRT project, tied to SB-79, will hand outside forces effective control over how Burbank grows. Cathcart doesn’t mince words. He calls it “economic overlordship of Burbank’s future design,” and that phrase has been circulating in local civic conversations since the letter ran.

Burbank’s character didn’t happen by accident. Cathcart points out that the city’s architectural identity formed through decades of labor-intensive planning, community assumptions, political back-and-forth, and plain historical accident going back to 1911. That slow, layered process gave Burbank its distinct look relative to the larger Los Angeles County metro area surrounding it. The argument is that BRT corridor zoning would bypass all of that.

It’s a real fear.

Cathcart writes that Metro’s BRT will shift development away from piecemeal infill projects toward something far more sweeping. Glendale and Pasadena face the same pressure, he argues, and the cumulative effect would be what he calls “urban illegibility,” a condition where one city bleeds into the next until no distinguishing character remains. Buildings carry urban identity. Their floor plans, their stories, their windows framing street views all encode who a place is and who it’s for. Tall, glass-tiered structures rising along a BRT corridor answer to a different master than neighborhood history.

The political process around the project hasn’t helped build trust. Cathcart describes the communication from Metro BRT representatives and Burbank City Council members alike as a “fabricated fog of vague political-speak.” He said the situation resembles trying to read Graham Rawle’s 2018 novel Overland in real time, referencing the book’s focus on a fictional city built above the old Lockheed Aircraft factory in 1942, the site now occupied by the Empire Shopping Mall, a city called “Overland” that existed as a kind of deliberate illusion. The parallel isn’t subtle.

For Burbank sports fans and outdoor regulars who pack Stough Canyon on weekends or ride the Chandler Bikeway on Tuesday mornings, this might feel distant from your usual Friday night score check. It isn’t.

The Verdugo Mountains trail access points sit within blocks of proposed BRT corridors. If dense transit-oriented development reshapes the neighborhoods around those trailheads, the character of getting to the trails changes too. Parking, street-level access, the mix of local businesses that make a pre-hike coffee stop worth the detour: all of it connects back to how zoning responds to transit investment. You can track the Metro BRT project details through Metro’s own project pages, and the picture there is still developing.

Cathcart’s frustration with political communication runs deeper than this one project. He argues that professional politicians are trained to obscure rather than clarify, and that the word “community” has been hollowed out by what he calls “deliberate PR blathering.” That’s a strong claim, but it’s one a lot of people sitting in council chambers or reading planning documents at midnight would recognize.

Clarity matters here. Burbank residents trying to understand what SB-79 actually means for their streets, their sight lines, their neighborhood density deserve straight answers. The California Legislative Information database carries the full text of SB-79 for anyone willing to work through it, though translating legislative language into what it means for a specific block on Magnolia Boulevard takes more than a casual read.

Cathcart isn’t opposed to transit on principle, at least not explicitly. His letter targets the opacity of the process and the scale of the power shift it represents. When outside agencies effectively determine a city’s development pattern through corridor zoning, local planning becomes reactive rather than proactive. Burbank’s identity as a distinct city within the county, something residents have cared about since well before any of today’s council members took office, depends on local voices having real weight in those decisions, not just comment periods that disappear into agency files.

The conversation around BRT and what it means for Burbank’s skyline, its streets, and its neighborhoods is just getting started, and the April 28 council calendar already has residents preparing to show up and push for specifics.