Streetsblog Los Angeles

The liquor store at the corner of State and First Street removed its storefront advertisements (shown in photo above) after an inspection by the Los Angeles Police Department and the California Alcohol Beverage Control of liquor vendors. Photo illustration by Erick Huerta.

(This is the first in a series of regular news updates on Boyle Heights Streetsblog will publish.  For those not familiar with this slice of the city, we hope this news round-up will help provide more flavor and background for our Boyle Heights writing.)

Last week, I was kicked out of my house for fumigation.  The past weekend, I was up north for a friend’s graduation (Congrats Cindy Chen on getting your bachelor’s degree). Just because I was away, doesn’t mean that the news slowed down in Boyle Heights.

In the past couple of weeks, there have been liquor store inspections, Roosevelt High School was called a teen pregnancy “Hot Spot” and White Memorial Hospital broke ground on a possible addition to its facility. To catch up on the lost of time, I made it into this post, with some additional information.

“Hundreds of Boyle Heights Liquor Stores Get Visit From the ABC” reported in EGP News

Forty California Alcohol Beverage Control and Los Angeles Police Department officers inspected nearly 200 liquor vendors two weeks ago in response to complaints from the public over the high availability of alcohol in the neighborhood. While there were no citations handed out, according to a report by Eastern Group Publications, one liquor store has changed its look after the inspections. Community Blogger Erick Huerta made a before and after photo of a liquor market on the corner of State Street and First Street and posted it on various social media outlets (photo is shown at the top of the post).

Sergeant Marc Archuleta, the head of  the LAPD Vice Department at Hollenbeck station , said that businesses can only have 50 percent of windows covered with advertisements. If a store has a violation, the officers warn the business and allow them to resolve the problem rather than fine the store for a first offense.

(Click here for the full story.)

The Congress of New Urbanism awards the master plan for the  New Wyvernwood – Boyle Heights Mixed-Use Community  Read more…

Do the math. "Constellation A" assumes a station entrance at the NE corner of Constellation and Ave. of the Stars on property owned by JMB Realty. "Constellation B" assumes a entrance at the SW corner in front of the Hyatt Regency. Note that the station on JMB property would actually cost $38.7 million less than the one in front of the Hyatt. Table from the Century City Station Report from the Westside Subway EIR.

The headline was breathless, as many headlines in the Beverly Hills Courier often are. “Courier Exclusive Report: Century City Subway Station $38.7 Million Payoff to JMB,” blared last week’s lead story. Even by the sensationalist standards of the Courier, this one seemed a big story.

The gist of the Courier’s big scoop: Metro is planning to spend $38.7 million dollars more to purchase property for a Constellation Avenue Station on property owned by JMB Realty than it would for property located literally across the street.  Of course, as is often the case, the story isn’t factually accurate.

From the Courier Exclusive:

Although the disclosure is difficult to read, it appears that Metro will pay $38.7 million more for JMB’s property at 10131 Constellation Blvd. than a comparable site underneath Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, 2025 Avenue of the Stars.

The story plays right into the Courier’s narrative about the Westside Subway alignment.  JMB Realty and its ties to Mayor Villaraigosa have long been the culprit when discussion of why the Subway will probably go under Beverly Hills High School to a station at Constellation Ave and Avenue of the Stars rather than Santa Monica Boulevard adjacent to a golf course.

We should note that either of the stations discussed in this story  would require tunneling under Beverly Hills High School.  The purpose of the article is not to demand a station re-route, just to smear Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Metro and JMB Realty by claiming that the realty company will receive nearly $40 million more than the Hyatt across the street would if the station were built on its property.

This “payoff” seems the perfect story to continue the narrative of a realty giant colluding with a big city mayor to blow up Beverly Hills High School.

Except, of course, the story isn’t actually true.  As a matter of fact, the station on JMB owned property is actually $38.7 million less expensive to build than the one in front of the Hyatt according to Metro’s environmental documents.

Confused by the difficult to read document as many people are when confronted by hundreds of pages of government-speak, the Courier makes some pretty large assumptions that there are no differences in the cost between the two stations other than the real estate costs.  Using advanced research techniques commonly known as “reading the next page after the chart” Streetsblog was able to get to the bottom of why the Subway will cost 4,241,525,000 with a station on one side of Constellation and another $4,280,252,000 on the other.  Hint: it has nothing to do with the funds Metro would have to spend to buy property from JMB Realty. Read more…

Source: RAND Corporation

The brilliant thing about car-sharing is that it leads people to drive less by providing access to cars. It allows people to give up their personal vehicles (along with the gas, maintenance, parking, and insurance costs they entail) without giving up the ability to use the car once in a while when necessary. It diminishes the need for parking spaces, since one vehicle can serve several households. And it makes people think harder about the trips they take, since each trip constitutes a higher cost than in a personal vehicle, which come with high upfront costs but low per-trip costs, encouraging more driving just to get your money’s worth out of your investment.

But only 0.27 percent of U.S. drivers participate in car-sharing programs.

A recent study from the RAND Corporation estimates that that number could rise to 4.5 percent if policies were put in place to support car-sharing. RAND’s outer estimate of the potential of car-sharing goes as high as 12.5 percent of the 21-and-older population of major cities. The potential for greenhouse gas emissions savings is significant.

The RAND authors cite a 2008 survey showing that for every shared vehicle in use, nine to 13 private vehicles are taken off the road, and that half of car-sharing participants either sold a car or didn’t buy a new car because of their membership. Another survey found that average vehicle ownership per household fell from an already-low 0.47 to 0.24 cars after adopting car-sharing. Average vehicle ownership per household is 1.87 in the United States.

RAND attributes the greenhouse gas reductions from car-sharing to a) fewer vehicle miles traveled, b) fewer cars being manufactured, and c) more efficient vehicles being used more of the time. After all, car-sharing can avoid SUV syndrome, where people buy a big, heavy car for the one time a year that they actually go into the mountains with it, and then spend the rest of the year driving alone on highways and trying to park it in small spaces. Also, intensively-used shared cars will be replaced more often than private vehicles, meaning that more of them will have the most modern fuel-efficiency ratings. The report doesn’t mention the GHG savings if car-sharing results in the building of fewer roads or parking spaces.

The estimates of car-sharing’s potential market penetration are among the most helpful elements of the RAND report.

Read more…

Photo by SKD's LA Street Scenes via LAist

(Dana Gabbard is a Board Member of the Southern California Transit Advocates and an occasional contributor to Streetsblog.  When he opines, he does so on behalf of himself as a long-standing transit watcher.  Gabbard has written about the fare gate issue several times since Metro first proposed putting up gates in 2008 after years of being one of the larger “honor system” rail systems in the world.  Advocates howled that the gates are a waste of time and money, but Metro sticks to its guns.  After several field tests, the agency is now moving to finally lock the gates.  Many, including Gabbard, are still skeptical.)

In February the Metro Board passed a motion (see item #26) made by County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky:

… that staff return in March with a plan that would implement gate locking within 5-6 month, phased in on an aggressive schedule. Work to resolve fare media issues with Metrolink and the Municipal Operators and fare inspection issues with the Sheriffs Department.

Staff in March made a presentation at the Metro Board Executive Management Committee meeting on the steps necessary to implement gate locking.

Now Metro staff have prepared for this month’s Committee meeting a report on actions needed to lock the subway station gates by the end of this year.

One would first point out it is interesting that the original motion seems to contemplate going forward with the gating of the entire Metro rail system (to the extent that is feasible.) With nary a word of explanation staff have quietly downsized what is being attempted; locking the light rail stations has been set aside for now as Metro wrestles with the daunting task of just locking the Red and Purple Line stations.

Next, I find interesting the numerous mentions of Sheriff assistants as station agents, and that coverage may require nearly 60 more deputies than currently assigned to all the rail lines. This will not be cheap. In February 2011, Matt Raymond, the Metro executive in charge of both fare gate and TAP card implementation, estimated such agents would cost $20 million dollars a year. Despite the assertion by agency staff that the recent fare gate locking tests proved gate closing results in revenue generation, I have to question any claims the gating makes fiscal sense given the enormous cost for agents. Plus relying on the results of gate tests that were done in a very limited manner (and with a platoon of folks to oversee it) as being a realistic basis for going forward with the locking seems foolhardy. Read more…

Publicly backed sports arenas are always a gamble. Sold as a way to attract investment and energy, they can become big public liabilities, draining money for more essential services.

The Nationals' new stadium has turned a dead urban zone into a hotspot. Photo: NRDC Switchboard

But that doesn’t stop too many cities, and there are examples of places that have gambled on sports facilities and won big.

There’s a new member of that club now: Washington, DC. It’s been nearly 10 years since the city green-lighted a package of 30-year bonds for a new home for the Nationals baseball franchise in a depressed southeastern section of the city. Kaid Benfield at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Switchboard blog reports that the investment is paying off:

According to developers in the area, building didn’t really become financially feasible there until the city committed to the ballpark. Today, the neighborhood’s new projects are about 30 percent built. In addition to the new commercial properties, the area’s residential population has increased from about 1,000 to more than 3,500 and should eventually reach 16,000.

It is especially heartening that even those originally opposed to the stadium like what they see. Neighborhood resident Naomi Monk was a prominent skeptic, arguing that the park would only be an eyesore benefiting millionaire players and businessmen, with nothing in it for low-income residents. But in March she told Fisher that “I have to say, it’s been for the betterment of the community. Our crime seems to be under control. The neighborhood looks 100 percent better. The new housing is a great improvement.”

I’m not going to make a broader point about the extent to which public investment in sports is a good thing. It’s likely situational and, though it has been enormously beneficial here in Washington twice (though in the case of Verizon Center the city paid only for infrastructure), and it also appears to have been beneficial in nearby Baltimore, the facts and circumstances vary.

Benfield reports that the tax issued on big businesses to support the stadium is bringing in twice what was expected. Plus additional property taxes related to new investment have added $13 million to the city’s coffers. Nice, for a change, to see a city enjoying a windfall at this moment in history.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Bike Delaware shares a League of American Bicyclists’ report showing that one in four collisions between cyclists and cars involve cyclists being hit from behind. Bike Portland reports the city’s first open streets event of the season attracted an astounding 28,000 people. And Transit in Utah says sustainable transportation advocates need to do a better job developing sales pitches and buzz words.

• Bike Nation Celebrates Bike to Work Week (KTLA/Gayle Anderson)
• Occupy Effect: City Council Votes on Banning Tents in Parks (LAT)
• Long Beach’s Bike Lanes Spread Into More Parts of the City (CC Times)
• Gov.’s Budget “Brutal” (Daily News)
• Pleads for Tax Increases (LAT)
• Gun Buyback, 1,673 Weapons Claimed by City (Daily News)
• Beverly Hills Screws Up Bike Plan (Biking In L.A.)
• HSR: CA vs. Northeast Corridor (Politico)
• ULI TOD Summit Set for June 7 (The Source)

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

There’s a change happening on Los Angeles’ streets.

Hawthorne quizes Jan Perry at the American Institute of Architects' mayoral forum earlier this year.

It’s hardly news to Streetsbloggers that Los Angeles’ transportation and development patterns have changed a lot in the past decades, or even just the past couple of years.  But when I looked down at the newspaper stand in a North Hollywood coffee shop yesterday, the Los Angeles Times top story caught me by surprise.  Written by Architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, “Atlantic on the Move” launched a new series examining Los Angeles’ Boulevards and how they’ve changed and are changing.

Hawthorne writes:

The boulevard, in fact, is where the Los Angeles of the immediate future is taking shape. No longer a mere corridor to move cars, it is where L.A. is trying on a fully post-suburban identity for the first time, building denser residential neighborhoods and adding new amenities for cyclists and pedestrians.

In the process, the city is beginning to shed its reputation as a place where the automobile is king — or at least where its reign goes unchallenged. Cities across the U.S. followed L.A.’s car-crazy lead in the postwar era. This time around we might provide a more enlightened example: how to retrofit a massive region for a future that is less auto-centric.

In addition to the written articles, available on both the website and print editions; the online edition features an interactive map of Atlantic Avenue with video features on Atlantic Avenue and several of the top attractions of the twenty five miles of Boulevard that connect Alhambra to Long Beach.  The map and videos are exclusive to the Times’ website.  This is the first time since the hey-day of the Bottleneck Blog in 2008 that the Times is embracing the Internet medium as a place to do something different than publish articles for the print edition and news that isn’t important enough for the print edition. Read more…

Customers assess César's wares at his place of business along Manchester Ave. photo: sahra

THIS PAST FINE AND SUNNY Saturday, I headed to South L.A. to see how the Anonymous Gun Buyback was going. In an effort to get firearms off the streets, the city had set up six sites around town where people could drop off their weapons — no questions asked — in return for gift cards. You could get up to $100 for handguns, shotguns, and rifles, and up to $200 for assault weapons.

Shooed away from the site manned by the LAPD’s 77th Division, I headed to the Watts site, where officers turned out to be very friendly and more open to chatting with me (once they ascertained I was not packing a weapon).

The day started off well, said the Lieutenant from the Southeast Area. People had been lined up down the street just before they opened. But things had slowed down considerably after that, he said, guessing that they had had about 100 people come through over the course of the day.

I asked about the value of doing a buyback, given that the guns turned in are not ones that were likely to be used in crimes. The people I saw turning in weapons leaned more towards the elderly end of the spectrum than that of the young criminal upstart, and they were handing over enormous rifles, not the assault weapons favored by some gangs.

“There is a law enforcement value,” said the Lieutenant. Beyond giving the police an opportunity to be a visible and positive presence in the community, taking the self-defense-type weapons out of circulation meant that grandchildren couldn’t accidentally shoot themselves and that the weapons couldn’t be stolen and used to commit crimes.

As far as gang members turning in weapons, the Lieutenant acknowledged that “the gangs need weapons to do their business” and that they could make a lot more money selling their assault weapons than trading them in for grocery cards. Meaning that it was highly improbable that any gang members would be stopping by that day to say hello and drop off their excess stock of Uzis.

I was thus not surprised to hear that, of the potentially millions of guns floating around L.A., the estimated number of “hot” weapons the Lieutenant got in that day totaled exactly one.

As such, it is unlikely that the handful of guns collected at the buybacks have contributed to the recent reduction in gun violence, contrary to Chief Beck’s claims. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the program is a failure. After all, someone turned in an anti-tank rocket-launcher last year. That’s a win, right? If the city genuinely wants to reduce the influx of weapons, however, it would be better advised to focus on addressing the activities in which guns play an integral role.

****

ON MY RIDE HOME from Watts, I decided to stop along Manchester Ave. and check out César’s extensive bike and tool collection. I have always wondered about the stories behind the folks that randomly set up the equivalent of a yard sale in a yard that is not their own. They proliferate on the weekends — there was another guy set up across the street from César selling many of the same things — and a number of them offer bikes. Read more…

Factoring in proximity to bike lanes, street connectivity, topography, and commuter cycling rates, the Bike Score algorithm rated Minneapolis America's most bikeable city. Image: Walk Score

The people behind Walk Score, the real estate rating service that goes by the slogan “Drive Less, Live More,” are out with a new rating system, based on hard data, that should prove useful to prospective city dwellers: Bike Score.

The company launched the Bike Score website today, using its new algorithm to rank the ten most bikeable cities in the country. (We covered their release of city rankings for transit last month.) Minneapolis ran away with the top prize with a 79 percent bikeability rating. San Francisco tied Portland for number two, despite the fact that hilliness was a factor. D.C. and New York also placed highly (while the NYC core rates very highly on Bike Score, the bike lane deserts outside the center city score quite low).

The staff of Walk Score is made up of a whole lot of bike commuters. No wonder they were excited to launch a new bikeability ranking. Photo courtesy of Walk Score

In other bikeability rating news, the League of American Bicyclists released its 2012 list of Bicycle Friendly Communities today. There’s a lot of overlap between the BFCs and the Bike Score winners, but they are compiled use vastly different methodologies. For one thing, you won’t find two of the League’s top three cycling cities on the Bike Score list because Bike Score, so far, only looks at cities with populations over 200,000. Sorry, Boulder and Davis.

Colorado and Montana did well in the League’s rankings this year. Missoula and Durango moved up to gold, and the Colorado towns of Gunnison and Aspen made it onto the list for the first year, rolling in at the silver level. Look for your city on their updated BFC list [PDF].

The League bases its BFC choices on somewhat subjective criteria. They look for the “five Es”: engineering, education, encouragement, evaluation & planning, and enforcement. Decisions are made by staff and external reviewers, in consultation with local stakeholders.

Bike Score, on the other hand, is based on pure numbers. Individual addresses are rated on a scale of 0-100 based on four factors:

Read more…

Let’s just jump right in, shall we?

Monday – Bike Week kicks off in L.A. in just a couple of minutes.  Join Metro and City executives and some of the city’s top bike advocates at Exposition Park at 10:00 A.M.  Get the details, right here.

Monday – When it comes to Bike Week, the City of Pasadena is second to none when it comes to programming great events, thanks in large part to our friends at CICLE.  Bike Week Pasadena kicks off tonight with the Tour de Pasadena.  Interested?  Get the event details here or visit the Bike Week Pasadena website on CICLE’s homepage.

Monday, Thursday, Saturday – Metro and Caltrans host another round of public meetings on the I-710 Big Dig project and other atlernatives to “close” the “710 Gap” in the SGV.  The meetings run through next week, so find the one closest to you at the official website.

Tuesday – It’s the bikiest non-denominational blessing event in Los Angeles.  Good Samaritan Hospital hosts the Blessing of the Bikes at 8:00 A.M. at 1225 Wilshire Blvd.

Tuesday – Oh Yes It’s Ladies Night.  Oh yes it’s on a bike.  Oh yes it’s Ladies Night.  It’s in Pasadena.  More details, here or visit the Bike Week Pasadena website on CICLE’s homepage.

Wednesday – Remember when Streetsblog panned the Expo Phase I bike lanes?  Half a year later, after some repaving, The Source talked the lanes up.  Here’s a chance to check the lanes out yourself in a group ride sponsored by Metro/LADOT/LACBC as part of Bike Week.  Let us know what you think.  Get the ride details, here.

Wednesday – In 2008, Pasadena close the Rose Bowl loop to motorized traffic for one evening.  It was awesome.  You can experience that awesomeness again with the Mayor’s Bike Ride as part of Bike Week Pasadena.  Get all the details here or visit the Bike Week Pasadena website on CICLE’s homepage

Thursday – You can find your “Bike to Work Day” pit stops at this interactive map created by Metro.  Long Beach has its own Bike to Work Day fun planned.  A handful of LACBC chapters host “bike from work day” as well.  We’ll have a place to post all your Bike to Work Day Media.

Thursday – Interrupting our Bike Week fun is the Public Hearing on the Westside Subway that Metro is required by law to hold at the request of the City of Beverly Hills.  I’m hoping they play the apocalypse video.  Get the details, here.

Friday – This one is easy.  It’s Bike to School Day.  Get on a bike.  Ride to your school.

Saturday – Bike Week Pasadena closes with a last ride and pedal party at Paseo Colorado.  Get all the details, here.

Sunday – Of course, Bike Week is a Monday-Sunday week, not the traditional Sunday-Saturday.  Bike Week’s unofficial end in Los Angeles comes when the AMGEN bike tour comes through Downtown Los Angeles.  This year, Amgen sponsors a Sunday “closed street” ride through five miles of Downtown streets.  It’s not quite CicLAvia, but it still sounds like a fun time.  Get the details, including registration, here.

Sunday – It’s Critical Mass for kids in Long Beach.  Enjoy Kidical Mass at 1:00 P.M. at Bixby Knolls.  Get all the details, here.

Sunday – At this point, your bike might be beat up after the long week.  Bikerowave sponsors a free class on how to fix your breaks.  Get all the details, here.

If we missed something, leave a note in the comments section and we’ll update.  If you want us to include a future event, email damien at streetsblog dot org.