Streetsblog Los Angeles

Now that the Obama administration has awarded $8 billion in high-speed rail grants to more than two dozen states, with $2.5 billion more coming soon, why not keep thinking big when it comes to bullet-train expansion?

That's the ethos of a new report released today by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) calling for a New Deal-like public works juggernaut that would eventually connect all major cities located within 100 and 500 miles of each other. For a look at how such a system would remake the American rail map, check out the image above.

"The first step in building the network is to set a national goal with an ambitious time frame, just like we did for the Interstate Highway System or getting to the moon," U.S. PIRG senior analyst Phineas Baxandall wrote in a blog post unveiling the report. "We can link all our major cities by 2050, if we set our minds to it."

Given the political wrangling over the deficit that continues to paralyze Washington, however, it's worth asking how an ambitious rail program would be funded. The U.S. PIRG answers that question in several ways: First, the group calls for a dedicated revenue stream for inter-city passenger rail in the next long-term transportation bill, with local investments matched by the federal government in the same 80:20 ratio that highway plans receive.

"By financing transportation projects equitably," the report's authors write, "states will be able to make rational transportation decisions based on the needs of their residents, rather than on the chances of securing a lucrative federal match."

Secondly, the U.S. PIRG aims to put government support for Amtrak -- often derided by conservatives for its reliance on federal subsidies that also benefit road projects -- in perspective. When evaluated as a share of U.S. GDP, government investment of passenger rail looks stunningly low compared with other industrialized nations. The imbalance is visible in the chart below:

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Picture a future where a smiling multi-racial police force, who apparently answers to nobody, moves unchecked through society arresting and detaining people for offenses to the environment.  Use plastic bags at the grocers?  You're arrested, frisked, and handcuffed before being frog marched from the store.  Set your hot tub at too high a temperature?  You're chased, early naked, through your back yard by a hoard of police officers.  Sound like a nightmare scenario dreamed up by a conservative talk radio host?  Nope, it's just another greenwashing attempt from the same car company that mocks cyclists, bus riders, pedestrians and people who drive cars run on vegetable oil.

Audi's offering for the Super Bowl, "The Green Police" is really something to behold.  From the admittedly catchy theme song parodying "The Dream Police," performed by eighties Super-Cover Band Cheap Trick, to the celebration of gestapo tactics against environmental offenders; Green Police has something for everyone.  The Huffington Post calls the advertisement "hilarious," while Grist beams that "The ad only makes sense if it’s aimed at people who acknowledge the moral authority of the green police."  Of course, the only way to avoid the unchecked power of the Green Police is to but an Audi that is powered by "clean diesel."

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As I noted in my previous commentary "Metro In Transition", while the Sectors are being disbanded the Governance Councils continue in their role of providing oversight of Metro bus operations.

In the past the Councils had an annual joint meeting where they had an opportunity to have a dialogue with agency management. Art Leahy when attending the 2009 meeting last Oct. for the first time in his role as Metro CEO announced he would like to hold the meetings more quarterly to allow more frequent consultation on regional issues that cross sector boundaries.

On Tuesday Feb. 16th at 3 p.m. the first quarterly Sector Governance Council Meet and Confer will be held in the Metro Board Room, on the 3rd floor of the headquarters building adjacent to the Gateway Transit Plaza just east of Union Station.

The meeting will include an opportunity to present public comment. This is a chance in one setting to address Metro management/operations staff and Sector Governance Council members regarding any bus service issues you may feel worthy of airing. I'll be attending and besides making a few comments will be interested to hear any other public comments and also what the Governance Council members have to say and what kind of presentations Metro staff make. Hopefully it will be somewhat educational.

Pensacola, Florida. Springfield, Missouri. Fort Wayne, Indiana. All three of those metropolitan areas have populations between 350,000 and 500,000, and all three would have been required to install nitrogen dioxide monitoring stations near major roadways under a new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule cracking down on the pollutant.

But as the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) noted soon after the EPA unveiled its rule, an initial draft setting the minimum population for local air-quality monitoring at 350,000 was changed to 500,000, leaving out cities such as Fort Wayne and effectively weakening the nitrogen dioxide rule's accountability.

Another watchdog group traced the change to the White House Office of Management and Budget, which evaluates new agency regulations through a smaller arm called OIRA (short for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs). The president's nominee to lead OIRA, Cass Sunstein, has taken heat from green groups for his past criticism of government's role in the rule-making process.

What's the significance of the OMB's change to the EPA rule? "The fewer the monitors, the more likely it is that many metropolitan areas will be able to exceed EPA’s limits without detection or correction," CPR president and law professor Rena Steinzor wrote on the group's blog in late January.

Steinzor's post also addressed the significance of the new nitrogen dioxide rule, noting that the pollutant tends to be especially common, and dangerous, in lower-income neighborhoods located near busy roads:

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• Times Livid with Attempts to Charge Drivers for Infraction...
• ...But Labels Local Revenue Created by Bus Advertising "Money for Pet Projects"
  
• Despite Budget Crisis, State Spent Lavishly on Cars (Times)
  
• An Ongoing Affair with the LAPD (LACBC Blog)
• Biking in L.A. Responds to Some of the Dumber Comments in Yesterday's Times' Comments Section
• How About BRT for the Sepulveda Pass? (HuffPo)
  
• Metro Will Tweet Service Interruptions (The Source)
• USC Students Support Expo Phase II (Daily Trojan)
  
• Gov Upset About CEQA Stalling Clean Tech Projects, But Not SF Bike Plan (Sac Bee)
• The History of Policing Critical Mass in SF (SF Streetsblog)
  
• With 100 U.S. Traffic Deaths Per Day, Sticky Gas Pedals Are the Least of It (AOL)

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

UC Berkeley professor Michael Jerrett strongly suggests in a new study that reducing the traffic near people's homes could have a dramatic impact on the health of the children living near public streets.

The bad news?  Obesity rates for children in Los Angeles is high.  For example, a recent study by the California Food Policy Advocates showed that just over thirty-five percent of seventh graders in Los Angeles have an "unhealthy weight" and forty-two percent have an unhealthy aerobic capacity.  As you might expect, unhealthy kids are an indicator of unhealthy adults.  The CAFPA study shows that over fifty percent of L.A. County adults fall into the "unhealthy weight" and "unhealthy aerobic capacity" categories.  All of these statistics are well above the national average.

Both NYC Streetsblog and SF Streetsblog have taken a look at the report, and broken it down.

In NYC, Noah Kazis reports on the study, which links traffic volumes to youth obesity:

Jerrett shows that not only does the built environment matter, but traffic volumes matter too. His team's long-term study tracked children from across Southern California, starting from ages 9-10 and continuing through high school. Controlling for a wide variety of factors, they compared the children's body mass indexes (BMI) to the density of traffic near their homes.

Children living within 150 meters of high-traffic areas were found to have, on average, BMIs five percent higher than those living near low-traffic areas. Only the immediate surroundings seem to matter: Traffic levels within 300 or 500 meters didn't affect BMI.

Michael Rhodes, in San Francisco, continues, 

The researchers put forward two reasons for why traffic volumes contribute to obesity. High asthma rates could be part of the equation, making kids less likely to engage in physical activity. Kids - and their parents - also seem to be especially sensitive to the real or perceived danger from cars, much more so than adults.

So what can be done?  Jerret sees the ultimate solution to be less cars in sensitive areas, i.e. places where people should be open to walking or biking for transportation and places where children live.  He uses the example of London's congestion charging, which reduced traffic by 18% in the central city. 

Unfortunately for Angelenos, he takes a somewhat dim view that mixed use neighborhoods are a complete solution if traffic persists.

Moreover, solutions posited in existing literature on built environments suggest that connected, mixed land use neighborhoods with good “walkability” to destinations in proximity to the home may provide some protection against obesity and physical inactivity. If traffic is an independent risk factor, however, improving the physical structure of the city may be ineffective if high levels of traffic persist in residential neighborhoods.

That means that we can do all the planning and encouraging of cleaner lifestyles that we want, but if we're unsuccessful in reducing the number of cars on our streets, than we're going to be fighting a losing battle against obesity.  That's just one thing to consider the next time a traffic engineer proposes widening a street for "safety and efficiency" reasons.  They may be encouraging more cars to drive on the street, but any perceived safety benefits should be weighed against the damage being done to the health and fitness of our children.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are making significant progress on their joint effort, with the U.S. DOT, to connect cleaner transportation options with affordable  housing and denser urban development.

The latest moves came as Obama administration officials gathered in Seattle for the annual New Partners for Smart Growth conference, where HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan officially tapped Shelley Poticha and Ron Sims as leaders of his agency's sustainable communities office.

On the HUD website, Donovan's aides are seeking input and suggestions from local planners as they prepare to award an initial $100 million in grants to cities with plans for transportation and land use reform.

Not to be outdone, EPA took the opportunity to launch two pilot grant programs aimed at using clean water funds to boost community development and rebuilding brownfield communities around transit access.

The water-funding pilot will focus on New York, California, and Maryland, while the brownfields -- former industrial sites where hazardous materials may impede environmental cleanup -- selected for transit-oriented development aid are located in Indianapolis, Iowa City, Denver, Boston, and the San Diego area.

The three federal agencies involved in green development work are also beefing up their message, connecting a number of recent policy shifts on their respective fronts into a larger narrative of progress towards a more harmonious approach to transportation and housing. For a recap of the recent steps taken by the EPA, HUD, and U.S. DOT -- many of which were covered by Streetsblog Capitol Hill, and syndicated here -- check out the agencies' January bulletin [PDF].

A couple of interesting things on the agenda this week, and the events are spread around the city so there's something for everyone.

Tuesday - CICLE hosts a meeting at Cafe de Leche at 5000 York Blvd. to discuss what kind of improvements the community in Northeast L.A. wants to see on their streets.  Besides Sharrows, of course.  The meeting begins at 7:00 P.M.

Wednesday - Wednesday sees one of the more interesting events to appear on the calendar, as the Eco-Village hosts a talk byEric Romann, BusRiders Union organizer and producer of KPFK's Voices form the Frontlines at 7:30 P.M. at 110 Bimini Place.  The  interactive presentation is entitled, "

Re-Envisioning Urban Transportation &⁞ Building A Mass Movement for Civil Rights & Environmental Justice" which is so descriptive, I don't think i need to add anything else.

Thursday - Move LA sponsors its "We Love L.A." party at Catherdral Plaza, 555 Temple Street in Down Town Los Angeles.  The invitation avoids the word "fundraiser" but when you have a lot of heavy hitters, such as Mayor Villaraigosa, Assemblyman Mike Feuer, and Supervisor Yaroslavsky being honored, and tickets packages range up to $35,000, you can bet that some funds are going to help the Measure R advocacy group move forward.  The party starts at 6:00 P.M.

Saturday - The outreach continues for the plan to beautify Rosa Parks Station in South Los Angeles.  This meeting begins at Ronald McNair Elementary School Cafeteria 1450 W El Segundo Blvd. at 10:00 A.M.  For more information, or directions, visit the L.A. Streetsblog calendar section.

Saturday - The Southern California Transit advocates host their monthly meeting, which is open to the public, from 1:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M. at Angelus Plaza. 255 South Hill Street.  This week's featured speaker is Kim Turner of Torrance Transit.

I was waiting to write about "L.A.'s Best Bike Plan's" Bike Backbone Network that's was slowly rolled out over the last week until all three maps were public.  In the meantime, the Los Angeles Times and KPCC have picked up on part of the story, getting some of the major details wrong.  The Bike Backbone Network was never about building a lot of new bike infrastructure, it was about declaring the streets that make up the Backbone as the main thorofares for cyclists to commute and move around town.  But much more on that tomorrow...

For today, we have an LA Now Column by Ari Bloomekatz which is bound to stoke the flames of the "bike versus car" culture wars that often heat up on websites and the streets when a simple question is posed such as "Should L.A. give cyclists more space on the road? "  Right?

Well, less than two hours into the article, the comments section is overwhelmingly positive towards cyclists.  At the time of writing this article there are fifty two comments answering the question and over forty five of them are positive.  Only two are negative and the rest are somewhat off topic.  I'll be monitoring the Times article throughout the day to see if the mood changes, but if not, I propose a mass tweeting of the article @villaraigosa and @MobilityMaven tonight to make the point that it's not just bicycle blogs, and Streetsblog where people make the case that cyclists deserve more and safer space on Los Angeles' streets.

Update: 11:10 - Over 100 comments, and it's still mostly positive.  A few motor heads are speaking up, but we're still running at least two-to-one foe positive comments in the last fifty comments.

Today on the Streetsblog Network, Connecticut Smart Growth asks for a reconsideration of the cul-de-sac. As the post notes, a couple of important studies in recent years have highlighted how this iconic type of suburban development causes unsafe and costly traffic problems. Now governments in several parts of the country are discouraging such dead-end developments:

The cul-de-sac's glory days may be past. (Photo: piermario via Flickr)

Early last year the state of Virginia became the first state to severely limit cul-de-sacs from future development.  Similar actions have been taken in Portland Oregon, Austin, Texas, and Charlotte, North Carolina.  What they are beginning to realize is that the cul-de-sac street grid uses land inefficiently, discourages walking and biking, and causes an almost complete dependence on driving, with attendant pollution and energy use. Furthermore, town officials are beginning to realize that unconnected streets cost more money to provide services to and force traffic onto increasingly crowded arterial roads, which then, in many cases, need to be widened (more tax money)...

With municipal and state budgets at the breaking point, why aren't CT officials looking at land use patterns and their accompanying expenditures and begin the process of growing smarter? I don't know about you, but I am willing to live without the cul-de-sac if it would save me some tax money. 

More from around the network: Beat Bike Blog has a great little item about an older gentleman who rides his bike in Hartford, Connecticut:

In this bike's owner, we have personified the nullification of every excuse anyone has ever given for not riding. You think you're too old? Unless you are well into your 70's or older, this man has you beat. Too cold? Temps were in the low 20s this particular afternoon. Are you too tired, too sore, too out of shape? I invite you to check out the custom cane mount. This man walks with a cane, hooks it on to the rack and frame of his heavy single-speed bike and rides on.

And Tucson Bike Lawyer has the story of a good Samaritan who chased down a drunk driver after she hit and dragged a bicyclist -- and took her keys away from her so she couldn't flee the scene. 

• Update on State Transit Funding (The Source)
• Rural Newspaper Enjoying LB Post Taking with Them Over Lowenthal Over Free Parking (Redding Searchlight)
  
• Freudian Slip?  Link off LA Times Local Page About Parking Privatization Takes You to Article on Turkey Preparation...
• Same Thing off the "Search Page"...This is the Best Technical Glitch Ever
• LAPD Cracks Down on Drunks During/After Super Bowl (Daily News)
  
• Deputy Mayor De La Vega, on a Train, Beats Times Columnist, in De la Vega's Hummer in a Race to City Hall
• Gas Prices Fall Again (Daily News)
• Pedestrian Leg Severed in Hollywood Crash (My Fox LA)
  
• Tale of DC Blogger Hit by G-Man Less About Street Safety Than Partisan Sniping (via GGW) 

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

A new presentation on the causes and severity of bicycle crashes, available here after being hand-scanned by Enci Box, has been made available and analyzed at Westside Bikeside by Dr Alex Thompson. Amongst the results is the above chart showing that nearly one quarter of the reported bicycle crashes in the City of Los Angeles in 2008 were also "hit and runs." While this number is high, the news gets worse; these are just the ones that are reported and recorded. We've already seen that sometimes hit and run crashes involving cyclists aren't taken seriously, and other times the police report is just poorly done. However, as Thomspon notes, just getting our hands on these statistics is a step forward in the relationship between cyclists and the LAPD.

While having this data is a step forward, it can be somewhat confusing in its current form.  For example, while it breaks down that roughly ten percent of collisions were caused by someone running a red light or ignoring a stop sign, it doesn't differentiate between crashes caused by aggressive cyclists or aggressive motorists.  Hopefully that information is made more clear in an update promised in a couple of weeks.

Looking at the presentation, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition noted in an email that 25% of bicycle related collisions are due to wrong way riding. Considering that their own bike counts showed that fewer than ten percent of all riders are going in the wrong direction, this act is a major safety concern. While the LAPD claims to be working to better educate cyclists about this, which is surely music to Councilman Tom LaBonge's ears, the LACBC wants those outreach materials to be in English and Spanish to build off the success of the City of Lights Program. A sound idea.

It seems that since last December, when the Coalition was surprised to find out at a City Council hearing that it was working with the LAPD on their bicycle related educational materials to officers, that relations between the Department and the Coalition have improved.  In a post at the Coalition's blog, Aurisha Smolarski reports on their collaborative efforts with the LAPD to crack down on bike thefts and improve the training of police when it comes to cycling.  Currently, the Bike Coalition is working with the LAPD to help identify the most dangerous intersections in Los Angeles.  You can help the LACBC help the LAPD through a variety of online tools: via Twitter @lacbc, Facebook, or through an interactive Google Map the LACBC has set up.  In its first day online, the map got 600 views and thirty intersections tagged, so the Bike Coalition is now asking that people narrow their suggestions to places where there were actual collisions, not just places where it seems dangerous to drive.

I've already tweeted them that, "The intersection of Third and Fairfax, where the Farmer's Market is located, is a death trap waiting to happen."  If for some reason it's easier for you to leave your nightmare intersection in the comments section, I'll make sure to forward your thoughts and experiences on to the LACBC.

After years of debates, threats of lawsuits, contentious community meetings and even heated discussion on Streetsblog message boards; there was a feeling that yesterday's meeting of the Expo Board to debate the certification of the environmental documents for Phase II would be a momentous meeting.  Predictions of a 4-3 vote either for or against certification seemed a safe bet; with the exception of the Transit Coalition's Bart Reed who predicted a "blowout," everyone I talked to thought it would be close.

After nearly five hours of public comment and debate, the Board voted and the final tally was six in favor, zero against, and one abstention.  The abstention wasn't even made by a fully-vested Board Member, but a staff member from the office of Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas who was empowered to vote in place of the Supervisor.  There was a vote on a Ridley-Thomas motion to delay, not reject, certification for three months that failed by the somewhat closer vote of 2-5, with Rosendahl joining Ridley-Thomas in support.

Instead of a close vote, the most controversial thing that occurred was a procedural move by Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks who blocked fellow Councilman Paul Koretz from voting on the measure.  Technically, until Phase I is completed, Parks and Council Woman Jan Perry sit on the Expo Board.  However it was widely believed that Parks and Perry would yield to their successors, Councilmen Koretz and Bill Rosendahl who's districts would be most directly impacted by the construction and operation of Phase II. 

While Perry yielded to Rosendahl, Parks decided to hold on to his seat for the meeting to, in his words, defend the grade crossing policy at Metro that was under attack from opponents to Phase II and Ridley-Thomas.  Whether that was the real reason for Parks' maneuver, or  a more political one such as wanting to prevent the expected "no" vote from Koretz or even to spite his formal rival Ridley-Thomas is unknown.  What is known is that Koretz was one unhappy Councilman.

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