I wonder if it's still too soon to criticize the concept of digging a tunnel to connect the 710 Tunnel to the I-210.

To the absolute surprise of nobody that's ever dealt with a freeway agency, a study completed by Caltrans gives the green light, at least scientifically speaking, for California to have its very own big dig.  A geological study of the area determined that digging the tunnel is scientifically possible, although it does not give a recommendation on what of the five routes studied would be the best place to bury our taxpayer dollars in the ground.

The Times gives an overview of the problems with each zone. For example:

Zone 4 (San Marino/Pasadena): Active faults that cross the zone are the Raymond and Alhambra Wash faults.

There is one Superfund site in the southwestern end of the zone.

There are also six other sites with various levels of soil contamination.

Add in some public opposition and you have a challenge!  There's nothing that transportation agencies like more than dealing with a challenge!  So the project is an unpopular, environmental disaster that's going to require tunneling around some fault lines and super fund sites.  That's why we employ traffic engineers who know how to move cars.

Public hearings will be held early next year before the report is finalized.  Hopefully we'll get the word from Caltrans that it's ok to start criticizing the project sometime before then.

I usually don't pull story ideas directly from The Metro Library's daily headlines page, but this one was just too good to pass up.

Urban Insights L.A. reports on Other New Urbanisms, a symposium held last week by the Southern California Institute's School of Architecture's (SCI-Arc) ”New Infrastructure: Innovative Transit Solutions for LA” design competition.  Urban Insights focuses on the second place winner in the contest, who proposed building agricultural villages along freeway embankmnets throughout Southern California.

The Fletcher Studio, which won second place, proposed urban agricultural villages that would convert freeway embankments into terraced hillsides. Affiliated bungalow housing would be built alongside. These developments would be a new source of “green” jobs, employing farmers on a rotating, seasonal basis. Fletcher calculated that along LA’s 527 miles of freeway, there are approximately 960 acres of largely unused land that could be reclaimed as a productive landscape.

Predictably, many on the panel scoffed at the thought of Caltrans giving up that much space.  Unspoken in the article, and perhaps in the panel, is that if freeway embankments became regional job centers it would be a lot harder, politically, for Caltrans to continue its destructive attempts to widen first and ask questions later.  But in the same way that cyclists are no longer focusing their reform efforts at LADOT and have moved on to elected leaders; perhaps the target audience for this idea shouldn't be bureaucrats at Caltrans but the supposedly Green Governor to whom they report.

Oh, and Urban Insights, welcome to our blogroll.

A coalition of activists for seniors and the disabled went to federal court to try and force Caltrans to meet federal safety standards for sidewalk, intersection and other pedestrian amenities.  The group charges that when doing road construction, our state DOT is ignoring the federally mandated fixes and upgrades that are required by the American with Disabilities Act (ADA). 

An attorney for the plaintiffs tells the Times that data from Caltrans from 2001 to 2006 shows that the agency failed to install about 1,000 required curb ramps during road improvements. The 1,000 missing improvements doesn't include curb ramps that were installed but don't comply with federal law.

Caltrans and urban officials from around the state seem aware of the problem.  The Times explains:

Government officials and powerful municipal organizations such as the League of California Cities have contended that access lawsuits will burden financially strapped state and local agencies that are already struggling to comply with the law. Caltrans estimates that it would cost about $2.5 billion to make improvements statewide...

...Caltrans has spent $10 million -- an amount that will be spent annually for the next several years -- to build and upgrade curb ramps as well as improve sidewalks.

I'm certainly not a math expert, but at this pace it will take Caltrans a mere 250 years to bring California into compliance with the ADA, assuming no conditions get worse over the next two and a half centuries.

While that $2.5 billion seems to be a huge amount of money, certainly thrown out by the League of California Cities to scare people away from supporting the safe streets and sidewalks that all Californians deserve, consider that LA County itself will be spending $8 billion of Measure R funds to increase highway capacity and encourage car-driving commutes over the life of the gas tax.

Locally, the City of Los Angeles has its own ADA problems.  Back in January Donald Shoup broke down the many issues that the City faces as it tries to come into compliance and the many ways its dropping the ball.

While environmentalists and smart growth advocates focus on the I-710 Tunnel Project, the one that would "complete" by closing the 4.5 mile gap between the current end of the freeway and the 210 Freeway; another massive expansion project for the I-170 is more quietly moving though environmental review.

A task force of agencies including California Air Resources Board, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, Caltrans, Gateway Cities Council of Governments, the Army Corp of Engineers, the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority and the City of Long Beach is sponsoring a project that seeks to expand the 710 from the Port to the I-60 Freeway. The City has been a part of an inter-agency task force with Caltrans that is seeking ways to alleviate congestion and improve air quality. Thanks to a report posted on Metro's website outlining the alternatives, we can see that unless they decide to go with the "no build" option, the 710 is going to be widened from eight lanes to at least 10, but probably 14 lanes. The four alternatives that will be evaluated in the environmental studies are:

• Alternative 1 - No Build
• Alternative 5a - Widen to 10 General Purpose Lanes
• Alternative 6a - Widen to 10 General Purpose Lanes Plus 4 Freight Movement Lanes (Conventional Trucks)
• Alternative 6b - Widen to 10 General Purpose Lanes Plus 4 Freight Movement Lanes (Zero Emission Trucks)

The task force states that their preference is Alternative 6a, which in the backwards world of California transportation planning is naturally the one that would increase traffic and air pollution the most and be the worst for the environment. The argument supporting such a massive widening is that congested highways cause more pollution than ones with traffic moving freely. While it's hard to argue against that point, this theory ignores the reality that wider highways attract more traffic and that new highway capacity on congested roads are filled to capacity within years of completion.

By increasing traffic lanes from 8 to 14, those supporting this plan are all-but assuring that those living near the 710 and connecting highways are going to be choking on fumes. Imagine the highway pictured above choked with traffic with four of those lanes packed with trucks. Then compare that image to the current I-710 pictured here.

It's hard to see how building such a highway meets the objectives of the City of Long Beach, who outlined their goals for improving the freeway in this 2004 document that lists as one of it's major goals finding an alternative to highway expansion.

Before the environmental studies can begin, the alternatives need to be approved by the I-710 Executive Committee which is tentatively scheduled to meet on July 23. More details on this meeting will be posted here as they become available.

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.

Unfortunately, legislative efforts to amend the laws that create the guides for organizations such as Caltrans; haven't gone very well.  When Valley Assemblyman Paul Krekorian introduced and pushed legislation that would have given communities more leeway; it was stalled in committee thanks to the lobbying efforts of the auto lobby and Transportation Committee Chair Mike Eng (D-Pasadena).  Eng promised that he was very concerned about speed limits going up and vowed to hold hearings to find the best way to ammend the law requiring the eighty-fifth percentile; but that was on May 11 and Eng has yet to act on his promise.

Last week, community forums were held in Glendale and La Cañada Flintridge on the proposed project that would construct a tunnel connecting the I-710 and I-210 freeways in Pasadena.  The Glendale News Press reported, in two separate stories, that opposition to the project is as strong as ever and that Caltrans isn't happy that the opposition is speaking up now.

Joining residents in voicing his displeasure was Glendale Councilman Ara Najarian, who claims that the project would cause "tremendous damage" to his constituent's quality of life.  Najarian also sits on the Metro Board and is scheduled to Chair the Metro Board for the 2010 Fiscal year, beginning in 29 days.  Nearly 250 people attended the two hearings, and most of those in who spoke raised questions about the project's impacts on their lives or opposed it altogether.

The main concern voiced was that completing a connection between the two highways will not only increase traffic on the roads, but also push some of that traffic onto local streets.  In other words, while it may temporarily provide some relief on the highway, it would do so by permanently congesting their local streets.

Caltrans wasn't impressed.  The next day a second article appeared in the News Press with District Director Doug Failing urging those in opposition to what Environmental Defense has called one of the worst highway projects in America, to hold their opposition until Caltrans can complete it's study that will tell it whether or not to proceed with an environmental study.  Basically, Caltrans wants those in opposition should trust Caltrans to do what's best for everyone.

Failings call for opponents to cease fire would carry a little more weight if he were calling it for both sides.  Oddly, while Najarian is urged to hold his fire while Caltrans does its studies, the same calls weren't made when speeding traffic advocate Asm. Mike Eng taunted Smart Growth advocates that the 710 would be extended "whether they liked it or not."  When government agencies are asking opponents to calm down and not doing the same for proponents, it creates the image that the decision has already been made.

Of course, once the decision's announced, then I'm sure opponents can voice whatever opinions they like.

With news out of Washington that the Obama administration's federal stimulus plan isn't going to be passed anytime in the next couple of weeks, our state and local political leaders now have the time to re-think their stimulus lists while the political drama unfolds in Washington, D.C.

At the state level, CALPIRG took its shot at Caltrans' project wish list in a report released just before the new year.  CALPIRG notes that while California's list of projects awaiting federal stimulus money is better than those in many other states, a clear one-third of the requested funds go towards road capacity enhancement projects compared to 37% for transit projects.  CALPIRG urges Caltrans to revise its list to be more like Massachusetts which is only requesting highway funds for fix-it-first projects.

To read the full Caltrans' stimulus list, click here.

The city's list of projects for the stimulus has come under similar fire from local advocates who note that most of the local dollars would be spent on road repaving and very little on alternative transportation projects. 

To read the city's list, click here.

Caltrans executives have stressed that any project lists that are made public should be taken with a grain of salt, because they are drafts and not final.  With the politics in Washington threatening to delay the stimulus package for another month, both Caltrans and city officials still have time to check their lists twice.

Of course, just because the city or state submit a project list, it doesn't mean those projects will ultimately be funded.  That's why it's important to focus advocacy efforts on local, state and federal politicians.

Photo: Barack Obama/Flickr

First, City Hall does have bike racks for regular citizens to use.  Their not as nice as the bike lockers Council President Eric Garcetti had installed in the parking garage for city employees,  but they do exist.  After a conversation with a helpful member of the LAPD pointed me the way, I found the racks across Main Street from the entrance underneath an overhang from City Hall East.  In short, it's good that they don't require cyclists to change their bikes to the fence, but not good that the racks are so far away from the entrance.

It's not just the distance that is a problem.  While the overhang may protect the bikes the few days a year it rains, combined with its location it helps mask the racks' existence.  I've been to City Hall literally dozens of times and didn't know these racks existed until I scoped them out last week.

 
The City Hall Bike Racks


A View of the City Hall Entrance from the Bike Racks

Just a couple of blocks from City Hall is the Caltrans building.  While the design of the building has produced equal parts scorn and praise in the architecture community, the bike racks certainly stand out.  Designed to actually look like a bike, the racks certainly do stick out.  While the racks are located on the same side of the street as building entrance, they're probably physically farther away from it because of Caltrans' huge plaza.  However, there's no mistaking what and where the racks are and I've never seen a bike chained to another structure near the building as I do with bikes and City Hall.

Last up for this week is Metro.  While they have lockers for regular bike commuters in the basement of their Taj Mahal headquarters, they also have bike racks in the basement.  A convenient walk from Union Station, the racks are almost always at or near capacity for the weekday.  Some better signage inside of Union Station directing people to the bike parking would be nice, but for those in the know their location between Union Station and the Taj's elevators make them a convenient place to park your bike.

Next week, we'll look at the bike parking at the County Administrative Building and the courthouse. 

Photos: Damien Newton

Despite concerns from residents living adjacent to the highway that a highway widening of Route 57 would ruin their quality of life, officials from the Orange County Transportation Authority and Caltrans will not change their plan to widen five miles of highway in Orange County.  The transportation officials pushing the project argue that reducing congestion will improve air quality by reducing the amount of cars sitting in traffic.

The theory that you can build your way out of highway congestion has been debunked by advocates and DOT's throughout the country.  When capacity is added to a highway, the traffic lanes actually are filled up by new traffic in a matter of years because new sprawl development will lead to more traffic which will lead to calls to widen the highway again.  This is called induced demand, and is proven everyday in Southern California.  How have past highway widenings helped car commutes near where you live?

That OCTA and Caltrans are promoting a project that will increase the amount of traffic on Route 57 isn't the only thing that has locals so concerned.  Residents are also concerned that the widening will remove a sound wall which keep carbon particulates off their windows.  One resident tells the register:

"At first, I think people just dismissed it as adding a lane. But look into it and you see that it's adding a merging lane, too, would take down our sound wall and it's a health hazard," said Kevin Campion, a resident in the Glenbrook neighborhood near the 57 and Birch Street.

Campion said many residents already have to clean windowsills of dust particles and bits of tire rubber that waft in from the nearby freeway. They are worried about recent studies that indicate "nano particles" could pose a more serious risk to respiratory health than previously thought.

"We're worried about our health, and we don't want the freeway any closer to make it worse," Campion said.

Is there any further proof that Southern California needs a true revolution in the way we think about transportation?  Caltrans and the OCTA are basically spending $140 million to widen a highway in the name of clean air, and at the same time advocate for alternative transportation are fighting just to get High Speed Rail or a sales tax increase partially dedicated to transit on the fall ballot?

Photo: Orange County Register

CALTRANS Is Considering Replacing the Share the Road Signs

Will new signage help make the road more safe for cyclists?  That's the question being pondered by state officials working to replace "Share the Road" signs with more clear signage.  Cyclists have long complained that "Share the Road" was a vague statement and was often misinterpreted by drivers who believed the signs were telling cyclists that they had to share the road with cars and should move out of driving lanes to allow cars to pass.

Don't expect to see the signs on our roads too soon.  Having been approved by several state advisory committees they now need approval from the Federal Highway Administration.  Once approved, this new signage will first be used in the City of Santa Cruz.

Images: CALTRANS

Fewer people are driving these days.  With gas prices continuing to rise with no end in site, fewer people are choosing to drive fewer miles on our roads and highways.  That less people are taking to the roads has had no impact on Southern California’s rush to build and expand our highway system.  From the press release announcing the passage of Metro’s FY 09 Annual Budget:

The budget earmarks $634 million or 18.8 percent for highway and other regional transportation programs such as construction of freeway carpool lanes, freeway sound walls, street widening, better traffic signal coordination, grade separations at railroad crossings, bikeways, ride-sharing incentives, shuttles, and other transportation programs. Funding also is included for the Metro Freeway Service Patrol to help stranded motorists.

Around the country, transportation advocates are noticing that with automobile VMT falling, many of the projections upon which road widening projects are based are faulty.  The assumption that traffic volume will continue to grow has been proven unsound.  So why doesn’t that mean anything for the speed with which we continue to pour concrete?

To make matters worse for road widening advocates, the cost of doing these projects is going up.  Part of the reason for the cost increase is due to the cost of buying land, but another is because so many of the things needed to widen a road are made with petroleum.

Even if we concede that there is an inherent value in increasing road capacity, which I surely do not, increasing highway capacity is costing more money than ever before even as the amount of cars on highways is decreasing.

We’ll have a chance to see if CALTRANS is paying attention to this trend.  The agency will decide whether or not to build a new connector between the 101 and the 405 by the end of the month.  The estimated cost of the project is $117 million to say nothing of the environmental impact the project will have.

Of course, we all know that the $117 million is a low estimate.

Photo:Gentlemen of Sophistication and Refinement/Flickr 

While the New York Times is discovering a growing livable streets movement in Los Angeles, our Paper of Record’s transportation columnist, Steve Hymon, is ready to throw a party for a road widening project in Eastern Sierra. The widening will double road capacity from two to four lanes for 14 miles between Independence and Big Pine. It should be completed in 2009.

According to the article car traffic is light on the now two-lane stretch of road but that the road’s duel use as a truck route makes it more perilous. Hyman goes into detail about some of the horrific crashes that have taken the lives of motorists and passengers along the route, but in every example given, the fault of the accident lies on drivers who were driving recklessly not road conditions.

For example:

Take, for example, the crash near Olancha last August. A 23-year-old woman from Cerritos was driving a Toyota SUV on the 395.

Stuck behind an SUV pulling a trailer, she tried going around and rammed into a Mazda traveling in the other direction. A 14-year-old girl in her SUV died, as did a female passenger in the Mazda.

Or:

At midnight on Aug. 30, 2003, on a two-lane stretch of 395 near a well-known jerky stand in Olancha, a vehicle carrying two drunk men veered across the road and rammed into Margaret Hart's vehicle. Hart, 43, was killed instantly.

Or:

One of the CHP officers who responded to Hart's crash was Paul Pino. Four months later, on Dec. 30, 2003, Pino was sitting in his patrol car writing a citation to a trucker he had just pulled over on a nearby stretch of 395.

An SUV driven by a 20-year-old woman, who later said she was tired, veered off the road and plowed into Pino's car, pushing it under the truck.

The causes of these deaths were not that the road was only two lanes; the cause of these deaths were drivers who chose to break the law by driving while exhausted and drunk or that were in too much of a rush to safely pass another vehicle.

Towards the middle of the article, Hymon makes a plea that people urge elected leaders to consider safety when handing out transportation funds.  Instead, how about urging safety when enforcing traffic laws? This fourteen mile stretch of road may indeed by a deathtrap, but it also sounds like an area where state police should be handing out tickets like candy at Halloween.

A former city politics reporter for the Times, Hymon clearly thinks this "safety" project should have been completed years ago and feels justified in slamming CALTRANS once a spokesperson reveals that the project has been on the books since the 1950's.  Hymon wonders what’s taken so long to get this road widened..

A better question would have been, why are we still using solutions dreamed up over half a century ago to solve problems that exist today?

Photo: Kellogg Photography/Flickr

Every year the state rolls out its "Safe Routes to School" award winners to the schools that have the best plans to make walking to their school a safe and attractive option. Last week Councilmembers Tom Labonge and Eric Garcetti celebrated a $900,000 CALTRANS' grant for Thomas Starr King Middle School at 4201 Fountain Avenue. As you can see from the above image, the pedestrian facilities along the Fountain Street entrance leave a lot to be desired.

The grant will cover both engineering efforts, such as the cost of wider sidewalks around the school, speed feedback signs to encourage drivers to slow down and lighting upgrades in a nearby underpass; but also an education program aimed to teach students the safest way to walk to school.

A statement from Garcetti's office tied together how safe streets also lead to a better educational experience:

The $900,000 Caltrans grant that we are receiving will help us make much needed improvements to our streets and sidewalks that will help us ensure that students at King Middle School can get to school safely. I strongly believe that student safety is directly related to student achievement. We want our kids to be more focused on learning, and less worried about whether they're going to be okay getting to and from school.

The Thomas Starr King Middle School plan is one of 25 Safe Streets to Schools grants funded this year by CALTRANS in LA County. Check back with Streetsblog for information on other projects.

From an article in Today's LA Times on the chronic congestion problems on the Costa Mesa Freeway in Orange County, an Orange County mayor comes so close to figuring out the problem with trying to widen your way out of congestion:

Tustin Mayor Jerry Amante said the traffic on the 55, which cuts through the western part of his city, "is one of the worst bottlenecks in the county."

"We've widened and widened and widened . . . over and over again," he said. "It has given us the most capacity we can get, and really, now we're just tinkering with the margins."

All those road widening projects and still congestion persists.  But don't worry people of the OC, the Times reports that CALTRANS has the answer:

The state is planning to build three auxiliary lanes in the bottleneck area -- a project scheduled to run from 2010 to 2014...

Can someone remind me, what's the definition of insanity again?

Photo:Bigmikelakers/flickr

(Image from The Los Angeles County Bike Coalition at labike.org)

For those that haven't heard, CALTRANS and LADOT have committed to replacing storm drains that are dangerous to bikes everywhere bikes are permitted throughout the city and all of CALTRANS' District 7 (Los Angeles and Ventura Counties.)

So far, CALTRANS's Office of Maintenance has identified 157 grates that need replacing on State Highways in CALTRANS' District 7. The next step for CALTRANS is to find the money to finish the project.

LADOT is still identifying grates off the state highway network that need replacing and is being aided bu the Los Angeles County Bike Coalition. If you're an LA area bike rider and know of a bad storm grate, email Monica@labike.org. Please list the street intersection of the offending grate, and which corner (SW, NE, etc).

If I see a bad grate while I'm biking around Fairfax, I'll make sure to post pictures of it here.