Streetsblog Los Angeles

Happy Fourth of July everyone! Streetsblog will be taking tomorrow off and returning on Monday.

Have fun with the cookouts and fireworks, rest your eyes and we'll come back next week ready for the Tom LaBonge era as he steps in as Acting Chair for the Transportation Committee. Try not to panic, LaBonge will be acting as chair until the committee assignments are shuffled after the election of the Council President later this month.

Oh, and for those two readers who link to Streetsblog through a Toronto bike blog, a belated Happy Canada Day to you.

(editor's note: This is the fourth part of our ongoing series where residents defend the "alternative transportation friendliness" of their community.  While I'm still taking submissions at damien@streetsblog.org; I thought I'd share my thoughts on my community.  You can read previous posts on Claremont, Downtown LA and Mid-Wilshire for inspiration.)

When my wife and I first discussed moving to Los Angeles, we had a lot of the concerns that East Coasters, scared by the daunting image of Los Angeles as a Car Culture Capital.  To counter our fears, we used the Walk Score website to pick a community that would at least be walkable.  Thus, we ended up in the border area between the Orthodox Community and West Hollywood, the neutral zone between Beverly and Melrose.

However, this area turned out to be a great place for non-auto transportation.  I now live two blocks away from two bus stops, and have a somewhat longer although easily manageable walk to the Beverly Rapid Lines.  In about twenty minutes, these buses can take me to the Red Line stop at Beverly and Vermont where I can take a train that connects me anywhere.  A three seat ride isn't a perfect trip, but I can get pretty much anywhere I need to go via transit with a minimum of walking.

But the ability to walk to get pretty much anything one wants or needs is the real attraction of the area.  The open-seven-day-a-week Third Street Farmer's Market at Third and Fairfax is the anchor of walkability; but the wide sidewalks and crossings needed by the Orthodox community provides as complete a pedestrian network as you're going to find anywhere in the city.

Food, entertainment, shopping is all a half mile walk away.  For someone like me, that loves to cook, to have access to an organic market, a Ralph's, a Trader Joe's, a Whole Foods and the Farmer's Market all within a mile trip; well, that's a piece of heaven.  And I still haven't even mentioned the Pan Pacific Park right in the heart of the area for anyone looking for some open space.

While nobody is going to mistake Fairfax for Silverlake anytime soon, you have easy access to 4th Street for a relatively easy ride most of the way Downtown and can take local streets to the attractions along Melrose or Hollywood Boulevard.

Fairfax may not be the first place that comes to mind when Angelenos think of car-free, or in my place car-reduced, living; but there is something for users of every mode of transportation.

Meet Gabe Klein who was appointed new director of Washington D.C.'s Department of Transportation (DDOT) in December 2008.  With an interesting background which includes four years working for Zipcar, Mr. Klein was brought in with the idea of looking at the job from a fresh perspective (check out: Potholepalooza!) and innovating solutions to many mobility problems D.C. faces.  Right off the bat, you'll love a lot of what he has to say:

"Cars are a part of our daily life here in D.C. ...but what we want to do is try to equalize the playing field.  Encourage people to walk, to bike, to bike share; or instead of owning a car - car share."

Washington D.C. already has one of the lowest household car-ownership percentages of any major U.S. city, so actively promoting these modes is essential to helping its citizens move about with - as Mr Klein points out - "freedom".

All too often, transit blogs tend to focus on the negative of riding the bus or taking the train.  Experienced riders come off as jaded and veteran activists are just ornery because of the splitting headache earned from years of banging your head into the concrete divider known as the Metro Board of Directors.  I admit to being as guilty of this trap as anyone.  But if you're looking to read something completely different than the griping and moaning, try reading Booking It Bus Style.

Booking It Bus Style isn't a policy blog.  You won't see Rosemary complaining about the Mayor; and complaints about other riders are infrequent compared to more easy-to-read posts about life on the bus and what book is taking up her commute.  You see, Rosemary went from veteran driver, to car-free as quick as one can take keys off a key chain and has devoted her commute to reading and busing.  As a former NYC rail commuter who has abandoned transit for his bike, I had actually forgotten the simple joy of sitting down for a good read after a long day at work.

So if you're looking for some light reading about the joys one discovers when riding the bus when the policy blogs are wearing you down, click on over to Booking it Bus Style and see what new adventure, or new book, Rosemary wants to tell us about.

If you're a person who is accustomed to getting around the place you live without a car, you've probably spent at least some time trying to sell your auto-dependent friends on the concept. Maybe you've even gone so far as to map out a route for them so that they wouldn't get frustrated. And sometimes you've succeeded in getting another person onto a bike, bus, train or trolley to make a trip across town. It's a good feeling, right?

In Chicago's Southland, Streetsblog Network member Active Transportation Alliance has created a program called Footprints that makes this kind of friendly advice available on a wider basis. Footprints pairs anyone who asks with a "coach" who will "create with you a personalized program of biking, walking, and transit options that meets your needs where you live."

In a recent blog post, Footprints coach Mary Lynn Wilson talked about the work she does:

For most of the people we sign up, using a bike for transportation is a novel experience. Using the recommended streets on the Chicagoland bike maps and having the fledgling go at it would bring their noble experiment to a quick halt. So, we coaches poke through maps, Google and Bing only to be faced with a myriad of cul-de-sacs, canals, railroad tracks and streets where a speed limit is merely a suggestion. Persevere we do and manage to come up with a decent route with minimal fast-moving cars, sometimes connecting the rider with a train or bus. We sweeten the pot by offering to make the ride with them. Never give someone a route you wouldn’t ride yourself.…

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• An In-Depth Look at Last Weekend's Fatal Bike Crash on the CPH (Soapbox)
  
• He Might Not Be Board Chair, but Villaraigosa's Back as Mayor of L.A. (Times, Daily News)
• Trutanich, Greuel Promise Transparency in City Attorney, Comptroller's Offices (Daily News)
  
• House Dem on Gas Tax Increase: "The Votes Aren't There" (Streetsblog Cap Hill)
• SF Streetsblog Looks at Bike Parking and Meterless Parking around the U.S.
• Metro Rider Brings Back "Open Source Transit" Series
  
• Intermodal Bike Parking Construction Porn (DC Bike Examiner via Streetsblog.net)

Every year on July 1, the Chairmanship of the Metro Board of Directors changes hands.  This year, Glendale City Councilman, and former Mayor, Ara Najarian takes the helm.  While outgoing Chair Villaraigosa is rightly proud of his steering of the Board during the Metro debate, he often seemed bored at meetings and liked to skip "open comment" and just show up to vote.

Najarian's ascension could be good news for bicycle and pedestrian advocates.  Recently, the City of Glendale has forged a partnership with the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition to make Glendale streets more safe for everyone and Coalition staff has nothing but good things to say of the Councilman.  Also, Najarian is one of the few Metro Board members to take time out for events such as "Bike to Work" week kickoffs.

Regionally, Najarian isn't one to make waves; but recently he did earn headlines for his opposition to the I-710 Tunnel Project.  As a matter of fact, a search of the Streetsblog archives only reveals three stories that mention him by name.

With Najarian officially in the Chairman's seat, it will be interesting to see what, if any, changes occur at the policy level or in the way Board meetings are run.  If anyone has any more information on Najarian or wants to give the new Board Chair some advice, feel free to use the comments section as a forum.  Since it wasn't available online at the moment of publication, you can find Metro's press release after the jump.

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Things may have gotten a little more difficult for Governor Schwarzengger, who is already wrestling with the titanic task of trying to pass a balanced budget for the fiscal year starting today, when a California court of appeals ruled that the state needs to stop taking funds dedicated by voters towards transit projects and use it to try and close the gaping funding hole.

The California Transit Association, that called the winter budget deal that zeroed out the state's operations assistance program "Armageddon," were the plaintiffs in the case that resulted in yesterday's big win for transit.  They celebrated and explained the court decision yesterday.

While the Court claims no authority to order repayment of funds re-routed in past budget deals, the decision means that continued diversion of voter-mandated transit funding is illegal going forward. And that means that approximately $1 billion earmarked for the General Fund as part of current negotiations must be restored to transit.

“The ruling clearly states that the rip-offs are illegal,” said Joshua Shaw, Executive Director of the California Transit Association and lead plaintiff in the suit that was originally filed over $1.19 billion taken from the Public Transportation Account (PTA) as part of the 2007-08 budget agreement. “It says they’ve been illegal since before 2007, and it says that the definition of mass transportation that lawmakers have adopted since then to mask these diversions is illegal.”

Unsurprisingly, the Schwarzenegger Administration is already promising an appeal and is asking the appeals court to stay its decision pending the outcome.

Update: Dana Gabbard of So.CA.TA. sends the text of the decision.  It can be viewed here.

Yes, this film is more "New York Centric" than I would usually cross post here, but I thought the simple illustration of the value of bus-only lanes was a good one and one we could use again. 

The film tracks the growth of New York City, and the number of people taking the bus into the Big Apple from New Jersey over the decades but notes that the bus access to the Lincoln Tunnel and other crossings has remained static.  As more and more people commute into the city from New Jersey; the Port Authority who controls the bridges and tunnels, New Jersey who controls the roads leading into crossings and New York are going to have to figure out more ways to get more people into the city.  Sometimes the most obvious answers are the best ones.  Just increase bus capacity and this particular congestion problem is solved.

Full disclosure: in addition to the obvious ties between LA Streetsblog and Streetfilms, this film's narrator was my boss when I worked at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.

In the winter of 2008, Metro released the Draft Long Range Transportation Plan, outlining the agency's funding priorities for the next twenty years.  The plan divided every funding category into two amounts, "constrained" and "strategic."  The Metro Board, hoping to get more funds through Measure R, put off passing the plan until after last fall's election, hoping that Measure R would pass.  They wanted to pass a "strategic," i.e. well funded, plan instead of a "constrained" one.

Eight months after Measure R has passed, the Metro Board is finally ready to pass its Long Range Transportation Plan at its meeting on July 23.  Instead of 2008, the LRTP will be passed in the 2010 fiscal year.  Instead of a gloomy "constrained" plan, the Board will be passing a much more robust plan because of the half cent sales tax dedicated towards transportation.

Of course, not everyone was a winner in Measure R.  Despite pressure from 200 people that signed a letter asking the Metro Board for a bicycle and pedestrian set-aside in Measure R funds, so while the rest of the plan is "strategic" funding for non-motorized transportation remains restrained.  Metro staff is quick to point out that municipalities are free to use their part of the 15% of Measure R funds that go back to communities for whatever they want including bicycle and pedestrian projects; but it's still sad to think that whenever the Metro Board releases copy for the final LRTP they are expecting to vote on later this month, the official website hasn't been updated since March 2008, all categories will see larger numbers than originally forecast except the bicycle and pedestrian projects.

But there is some good news.  While the 2008 LRTP said there was $241 million set aside for bicycle and another $241 million set aside for pedestrians; Metro staff is now saying there is actually $324 million each for the bicycle and pedestrian budget line.  Metro staff explains where Metro currently stands in relation to bike and pedestrian funding:

The $324 million identified each for bicycle and pedestrian modes represents a revenue stream reserved for each mode in escalated dollars from 2005 - 2030.  In today's dollars, this would be equivalent to receiving an average of $11.7 million per year each for the life of the LRTP from 2005 - 2030.  That this is a substantial, dedicated long-term investment for bike and pedestrian improvements within our agency’s transportation plan. 

The Measure R Local Return funds are above and beyond what is identified in Metro’s Long Range Transportation Plan.  In other words, the 15 percent return is a separate amount of funding that the region’s 88 individual cities have the opportunity to utilize for, among others, bike and pedestrian projects they feel are important. 

That's a pretty big math error, especially since the "strategic" amounts listed for bicycle and pedestrian projects were $368 million per mode in the 2008 LRTP.  We've already made up most of the difference between "constrained" and "strategic" by just fixing a math error.  It doesn't seem like too big a lift for Metro to come with with another $84 million to help non-motorized transportation jump from "constrained" to "strategic" too.

The Census Bureau has just released new data showing a resurgence of the nation's cities, with New York leading the way and Chicago reversing five years of population decline.

The urban growth is being attributed to a combination of demographic re-arrangement -- younger families are embracing cities as well as close-in suburbs with transit access -- and the unsustainability, both economic and environmental, of living in sprawl.

It's a pattern that nicely underscores the importance of expanding transportation options beyond the automobile. But will the nation's rising cities see a corresponding increase in the political influence that's necessary to move national policy in a new direction? That's a big question.

The 2010 Census will help determine which states gain or lose seats in the House, the lower congressional chamber where proportional representation rules the roost.

And even if urban populations continue to swell over the next two years, it's still highly likely that western and southern states -- where the housing bubble was largest and sprawl remains the norm -- will gain seats in Congress.

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Yesterday's New York Times blog item about why New York women are underrepresented among the city's bike commuters didn't sit well with the authors of Streetsblog Network member Let's Go Ride a Bike. Trisha, one of the blog's authors and a bike commuter herself in Nashville, sees the piece as part of a trend (epitomized by a recent Treehugger post called "6 Reasons the World Needs More Girls on Bikes"). Too often, she says, people looking at female cyclists take a cosmetic approach to a complex subject: 

This is how mothers roll in Japan: on a "mamachari." Photo by anthonygrimley via Flickr.

I certainly don’t want to discount concerns about safety and fashion, which were issues for me when starting out and two things Dottie and I are trying to help others overcome.

What annoys me is that none of the articles I’ve read on this topic lately go any deeper into why those things present serious obstacles for women but not men, even though men have the same concerns (no one wants to show up for work disheveled and stinky after all). Why bother, when it’s so obvious that men are just much less self-absorbed and a million times braver? It couldn’t be that there are higher expectations for women’s appearances in the workplace, or that the burden of transporting children or household errands like grocery shopping more often falls to them—the first reasons that came to my mind. These are not insurmountable, of course (just ask these cycling superparents, both moms and dads, or the other stylish women bike commuters we know), but they require some thought, negotiation and planning that your average male might not have to overcome in his quest to bicycle commute.

But instead of giving weight to these concerns, or looking into others, these articles stay on the surface. Women are dismissed as frivolous and their absence is mourned not because of the missed opportunity to allow them to discover an activity that can improve their quality of life, but because their presence would improve the scenery. As a girl who likes to look good on her bike, I can’t argue with that statement, but I can argue with it being the number one reason we should get women on bikes -- sorry, Treehugger.

Network member Fifty Car Pileup, who has written about the gender gap before, also had a thoughtful response to the Times piece.

What makes me sad about this whole debate is that in the United States, we tend to think of ourselves as being especially enlightened when it comes to women's issues. Yet women here are still confronted every day with the idea that being sweaty, or even physically active outside of a gym, isn't feminine. If you're not worried about it yourself, you're constantly being reminded by the media that other, "average" women are. Transporting children by bike is almost unheard of.

Meanwhile, Dutch parents have the Bakfiets, of course. And in Japan, women ride their kids on cycles called "mamacharis," or mama chariots. Maybe we'll get there someday.

Other good things from around the network: imagineNATIVEamerica writes about the debate between New Urbanists and the proponents of sprawl; the Hard Drive reports some Oregon drivers don't see why they should have to put down their cellphones; and The MinusCar Project expects "green business" initiatives to be more than business as usual.

• 11th Hour Vote on State Budget Fails (Times)
• Times Loves Printing the List of Most Expensive-Taxpayer Funded Legislator's Cars
  
• In-Depth Ride Report on the "Gold Line Bus" (Metro Rider)
• Where Are the New "Meter Hitches" for Bikes? (LAist)
• LADOT Wants More Metered Parking (LAist)
• How to Talk Up Transit to a Conservative (Infrastructurist)
• Texting While Driving: See Just How Much It Slows Reaction Time (How We Drive)
• Bike Mode Share in Vancouver Is Up to Four Percent (Planetizen)
  
• Portland on an On-Street Bike Parking Binge (BikePortland via Streetsblog.net)

Tomorrow, new rules governing how municipalities evaluate speed limits on local roads will go into effect.  Unfortunately, these rules allow municipalities even less room than before to resist speed limit changes.  The new rules maintain the backbone of the bad law, speed limits are set based on how fast the "eighty-fifth" percentile of drivers are speeding but still manage to make it harder for municipalities to resist faster streets for pesky reasons like pedestrians or cyclists want to use the street.

Why does Caltrans continue to push rules that sacrifice the safety and livability of communities to speeding cars?  In short, state law directs them to encourage roads efficient only when they are moving as many cars as possible.  A road with a slower than "necessary" speed limit is considered inefficient.  Those people walking or biking aren't considered at all in these engineering surveys, mistakenly referred to as science by car-loving politicians.

The new language requires that speed limits be set at the closest five mile interval to the "eighty-fifth percentile."  Thus, if fifteen percent of all drivers are speeding by 6 miles per hour over the speed limit, the new limit would be ten miles per hour higher than the current one.  Thus, unsafe driving is it's own reward.  The faster and more unsafe people drive, the higher the speed limit will be on their local streets. 

When the "eighty-fifth percentile" rule was first put in place in the 1996 Manual, the rule asked municipalities to set the limit at the first speed limit below the "eighty-fifth percentile."  Thus, even if a driver were going thirty-nine miles per hour, they could set the limit at thirty-five.  Today, that would not be the case.

There is still flexibility for local DOT's to repress the speed limit by five miles per hour off the new speed; but under the new rules there is a new series of hoops that local officials will have to jump through to keep the speed limits lower.  So if the LADOT is willing to do the work, these new rules will have little impact on our streets as speed limit raises roll through the city in the coming years.

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