Earlier this week, the public records office of Metro refused a request by Los Angeles Streetsblog for a copy of the recording made by a Metro bus camera during the January 9th confrontation between a special needs woman and sheriff that led to the woman getting punched in the face.

A video caught by a “citizen journalist” shows the sheriff striking the woman with his fore arm while the woman is restrained by the sheriffs partners.  However, witnesses vary on what degree the woman instigated the incident.  Some claim the sheriff’s attack was unprovoked.  Others claim the woman was acting violently.  A copy of a tape that starts when the sheriffs enter the bus could tell a more complete story of what actually happened that day.

If the Sheriffs presence on Metro vehicles and stations is to keep us safe, Streetsblog believes the public has a right to know what happened in that incident and what actions are being taken to address that behavior.  Streetsblog will stay on top of this issue until we can report on the full story.

In the meantime, here’s the text of the legal code used to justify the rejection.  Sounds as though Metro and/or the sheriffs are facing a legal challenge.

6254. Except as provided in Sections 6254.7 and 6254.13, nothing in this chapter shall be construed to require disclosure of records that are any of the following:

(b) Records pertaining to pending litigation to which the public agency is a party, or to claims made pursuant to Division 3.6 (commencing with Section 810), until the pending litigation or claim has been finally adjudicated or otherwise settled.

(f) Records of complaints to, or investigations conducted by, or records of intelligence information or security procedures of, the office of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice, the California Emergency Management Agency, and any state or local police agency, or any investigatory or security files compiled by any other state or local police agency, or any investigatory or security files compiled by any other state or local agency for correctional, law enforcement, or licensing purposes. However, state and local law enforcement agencies shall disclose the names and addresses of persons involved in, or witnesses other than confidential informants to, the incident, the description of any property involved, the date, time, and location of the incident, all diagrams, statements of the parties involved in the incident, the statements of all witnesses, other than confidential informants, to the victims of an incident, or an authorized representative thereof, an insurance carrier against which a claim has been or might be made, and any person suffering bodily injury or property damage or loss, as the result of the incident caused by arson, burglary, fire, explosion, larceny, robbery, carjacking, vandalism, vehicle theft, or a crime as defined by subdivision

(k) Records, the disclosure of which is exempted or prohibited pursuant to federal or state law, including, but not limited to, provisions of the Evidence Code relating to privilege.

6255. (a) The agency shall justify withholding any record by demonstrating that the record in question is exempt under express provisions of this chapter or that on the facts of the particular case the public interest served by not disclosing the record clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure of the record.

What is the RTP?

To read the plan in its entirety, click on the image.

The SCAG 2012 to 2035 Regional Transportation Plan/ Sustainable Communities Strategy  is a $525 billion, 23 year transportation and land use blueprint for the six county, expected-to-grow-to 22 million person Southern California Associations of Governments region. The 230 page draft report, 446 page list of projects to fund, 642 page environmental impact report, and numerous appendixes lay out a vision for transportation and land use in the greater Los Angeles region along with a plan to raise and spend over $520 billion to maintain, operate and expand transportation infrastructure through 2035.

Comments on the draft plan are due by 5pm on Valentine’s day, February 14, 2012. I’d encourage everyone interested in the future of streets, transit, sustainability or the built environment in the region to submit comments by emailing RTP@scag.ca.gov While not everything in the draft plan will get implemented, the RTP is a strong indicator of how transportation agencies, counties and cities will prioritize investments in transportation. If there are harmful or wasteful projects slated to be funded, you should encourage SCAG to drop them. If you want local governments to prioritize different transportation investment, you should let SCAG know. If you have ideas for other ways to improve mobility, to raise funds to pay for transportation, to encourage more sustainable land uses (especially housing patterns and locations), or otherwise transform how we move people and products, let them know.

I hope that some Streetsblog readers will check out the project list to see and comment on what is planned – and what is left out- for your part of the region and/or for the transportation sector(s) that you know best. For my comments, which I summarize below, I’ve tried to focus on the improved mobility and more sustainable neighborhoods that I hope to see evolve over the next 25 years. If the draft plan moves us in that direction, I’ll acknowledge the positive elements of the plan. Where the draft plan falls short or moves in the wrong direction, I’ll suggest changes.

A Vision for the Future

So what are some compelling but achievable long term visions for transportation and land use in the region? Mine would include:

• Rapid implementation of more balanced transportation options. The region is still far from recovering from a frenzy of car-based development. The SCAG region has 21,638 center-line miles of road  (55,890 lane miles of roads), 4315 miles of bikeways of varied quality (almost zero of it protected lanes on streets), and 470 miles of passenger trains (only 80 miles of which is light rail/subway, the rest metrolink). Opportunities and infrastructure to walk, bike, and take transit should be rapidly expanded so residents have choices for how to get around.
• Transportation that doesn’t kill us, make us sick, or destroy the future. Moving people by cars and materials by trucks and diesel trains and separating where we live from where we work and shop produces fatal collisions,  cancer and heart disease, obesity and diabetes  and climate change, with a disparate impact on residents of low income neighborhoods bisected by highways and living near ports, warehouses, railyards and intermodal facilities. Shifting to active transportation and safer streets; insisting on zero emission technologies; promoting walkable land uses; and taxing polluting forms of transportation to pay for clean mobility options can help ensure we are not harmed by our transportation systems.
• Streets for people, not roads for cars. Streets are our most important public spaces so let’s reconfigure them to be vibrant, safe, healthy places rather than sewers for cars. Why can’t we get some world class street designs implemented in this region, like the models for South Figueroa showcased by myfigueroa last year? At the least we deserve slower speed limits, more cross walks, and better sidewalks, not to mention more murals and legal street food.
• A network of rapid buses as the primary way to travel Los Angeles in a vehicle. I like Jarrett Walker’s vision for Los Angeles streets in 2030  “Indeed, the Rapid has come to feel like a subway on the surface.  Nothing gets in its way, so it glides smoothly from one stop to the next past all the frustrations of other traffic.  In fact, the Rapid is the only reliable way to travel down most of the great boulevards of LA, if you’re going further than you can cycle.  And because it works, all kinds of people ride it.”
• Good places rather than more sprawl. People are drawn to diversity in the built environment,  so municipalities should legalize interesting, mixed-use neighborhoods by getting rid of zoning rules that restrict mixed use development to a small fraction of cities’ land area. Governments should also not be contributing a single cent towards more sprawl so I’d like to see an end to road building and the provision of public sewers or utilities ingreenfield, exurban areas of the region.
• An expansive network of protected bike lanes. The cycling rate in greater Los Angeles is pitifully low, although growing, with a severe gender imbalance. The main reason for this is likely that most people will not ride bicycles in traffic (or separated from traffic by a painted line). In the developed world, every nation with high rates of cycling has separated bike facilities while every nation with low cycling rates lacks this infrastructure. Let’s start creating a network of protected bike lanes/ cycletracks in all urbanized areas of Southern California, like the Dutch did beginning in the mid 1970s. I realize that protected lanes are frowned upon by state street engineering standards but this is a 23 year plan so we can assume that separated facilities will be legalized.
• Expanded passenger rail for mobility and as hubs of walkable neighborhoods. New light rail in Los Angeles County has been one of the main positive trends in transportation and land use in the region. Planned and new lines should be rapidly built to fill in gaps in the system. From light rail to high speed rail, new lines and stations should be designed to encourage walkable, mixed use development, more affordable housing, and last mile connections by bike and foot (rather than land-wasting parking lots).
• Less space for cars and trucks. Roads and parking currently take up too much of our land, which encourages car-based transportation and all the problems that accompany it. Driving increases when roads are constructed, lengthened or widened. Yes, it is that simple.  So we should not be building any new road space anywhere in the SCAG region. Instead we should remove space for cars by planning for freeway removal as smart cities are doing around the world;  implementing road diets to give car lanes to pedestrians, bikes and buses; barring cars from city centers either permanently or regularly as part of expanded ciclavias; and  ending all minimum parking requirements.

Comments on draft RTP

While I don’t think that the draft RTP moves far enough towards this improved transportation and land use end goal,  I would like to acknowledge some of the positive elements of the draft plan.

• The planning process took account of the relationship between transportation, land use,  sustainability, environmental justice and economic development.
• The draft plan calls for significant investments in transit construction, operations and maintenance.
• The draft plan increases investments in active transportation compared to previous RTPs.
• The draft plan anticipates that vehicle miles traveled will increase less than population growth.
• The sustainable communities strategy quantifies how different forms of growth will have very different impacts on sprawl, energy and water use and other sustainability indicators.
• The draft plan anticipates adoption of zero emission technologies towards the end of the plan time frame.
• The draft plan supports high speed rail.
• The draft plan anticipates a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from transportation in line with the goals of SB 375.
• The single largest anticipated funding source in the draft plan is implementation of a fee on driving or an increase in the gas tax, either of which would discourage driving.
• Much of the new highway space proposed in the draft plan is toll roads, HOV lanes, or HOT lanes (open to HOV or Tolls) and therefore may lead to less new, induced driving than the provision of free, multiuse lanes.

I think there are some major areas in which the RTP should be strengthened or modified

1. Increase investments in active transportation from the $6 billion budgeted to the approximately $40 billion recommended by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to fix sidewalks, implement jurisdictions’ bike plans; and invest in last mile infrastructure near transit stations.
2. Budget an additional $1 billion for the construction of 1000-2000 miles of protected bike lines to increase rates of cycling among non traditional cyclists  (protected lanes recently constructed in Long Beach cost approximately $580,000 per mile).
3. Expand and accelerate transit investments so all planned transit projects in the RTP are constructed by 2022. Existing and new transit services should be funded so as to be affordable with frequent service.
4. Do not add any lane miles of highways or major arterials,  because as Duranton and Turner have shown, “For interstate highways in the densest parts of metropolitan areas we find that vkt increases in exact proportion to highways, confirming the ‘fundamental law of highway congestion’ suggested by Downs(1962, 1992). This relationship also approximately holds for other important roads in dense areas and for interstate highways in less dense parts of metropolitan areas.”  The SCAG region currently (base year 2008) has 21,638 miles of road and 55,890 lane miles of roads. The draft RTP anticipates adding 948 centerline miles/ 7419 lanes miles which would be a 4.4%/ 11.1% increase.  Converting mixed flow lanes to toll, HOV or HOT lanes or converting HOV lanes to toll or HOT lanes would be acceptable.
5. Pay for additional active transportation and transit investments by cancelling highway expansion projects and by increasing fees on driving. I believe that the dozen most expensive road expansion projects in the RTP are: east west freight corridor ($15.2 billion),  Riverside to Orange County CETAP ($13 billion), high desert corridor ($6.9 billion), 710 corridor expansion ($6.1 billion), 710 gap closure ($5.6 billion), 5 north capacity enhancements ($5.3 billion), 241 expansion ($2.7 billion), mid county parkway ($2.3 billion), 15 widening ($ 1.7 billion), 405 widening in Orange County ($1.7 billion), 5 widening ($1.6 billion), and 79 expansion ($1.4 billion). Building these highways projects will expand driving, while cancelling them will allow $63.5 billion to be spent on active transportation and transit.
6. Adopt alternative 3 (the envision 2 alternative) smart growth land use and housing patterns) rather than the planned project.  This alternative version of the plan relies on smart growth land use and housing patterns to achieve superior environmental results in air quality, aesthetics, open space and farmland preservation, water conservation, greenhouse gas emissions reductions, mobility, and land use.
7. Encourage sensitive densification of existing single family zoned areas by encouraging municipalities to allow cottage housing, duplexes, accessory dwellings, and small lot subdivisions in R-1 zones.
8. Encourage all jurisdictions to eliminate mandatory parking minimums for existing and new buildings.
9. Set a goal to reduce rather than expand vehicle miles travelled within the region. Vehicle Miles travelled in the baseline year 2008 was 445,844 daily, approximately half on freeways, half on arterial roads. SCAG calculates that this number will rise to 546,806 daily by 2035 without any changes to roads (a 22.6 % increase). Under their plan, VMT will still rise, to 516,990 (16% increase). They also anticipate that VMT for trucks will grow even faster, expanding from 30,201 to 53,431 under their 2035 plan (a 76.9% increase).
10. Plan for highway removal or modification. Learning from cities removing highways http://www.cnu.org/highways/freewayswithoutfutures2012 , agencies and municipalities should plan to remove, cover or alter and reclassify as arterials highways that divide communities, negatively impact valuable natural resources such as rivers and coasts, or channel excessive traffic into neighborhoods. Freeway stubs such as the 710 N above the 10 or the 2 as it approaches Silverlake are ripe for removal or conversion and the 101 through downtown Los Angeles has been the subject of advocacy for capping for a park.
11. Do not invest in goods movement roads and rail expansion in the hopes that zero emission technologies will emerge decades later. Invest more in zero emissions trucks and locomotives now as a precondition before expanding freight infrastructure. Otherwise impacted communities will continue to suffer disproportionately from pollution from good movement.
12. Price driving and parking to reflect the externalities of car and truck use. There are a variety of methods for increasing the price of driving, some of which are contemplated in the RTP’s financial plan.  Higher gas taxes, carbon taxes, charges based on miles driven, appropriately and dynamically priced parking, and congestion charges aimed at commuters entering central city areas are all useful policies.

Over one hundred tenth graders from Esteban Torres High School’s Renaissance Academy had a chance to redesign the Gold Line Eastside Extension Station areas as part of a series of interactive modeling sessions designed to introduce them to urban planning.  Rather than introducing them to our modeling process through a presentation, we took the students to visit and take notes at three Gold Line Stations: Mission/Meridian, Lake and Del Mar Stations.

Photo: Latino Urban Forum/Flickr

Next, we had them examine the stations from a different perspective.  They participated in  a series of interactive workshops to help the students articulate their needs. We had them read maps of the station areas and create models from them using found objects.

The students presented their ideas through models of the Gold-Line Metro station areas and and explained how their proposed developments around the stations may increase ridership and attract people into East Los Angeles. They created three trains in their models; one, the newly christened Butterscotch Line, is made completely from candy (just in time for Valentine’s Day.)

The students designed these light rail station areas as neighborhood destinations to draw the community to the station and draw riders off the trains. They located services, and amenities lacking in today’s Eastside community such as parks, stores, housing, and offices within site of the stations.  The students were proud of their community and designed stations that welcomed people to the Eastside with “welcome” signs and decorative gateways.

Best of all, their stations and their Gold Line fit the community.  Before the workshops they investigated the physical form of the actual community.  The examined architecture and design that creates identity of place. They used that map of their community to create beautiful streetscapes designs that capture the artistic power of the community.

The candy Gold Line Train model is incredible. It’s a wedding cake of rich colors, shapes, textures that draws you in.  The candy model captures the vibrancy and sensual quality of East Los Angeles. The Gold line is created by a butterscotch candies while an Aztec Temple made of sugar cubes creates a canopy over the station.  There’s never been a  model quite like this one.

But most impressively were the students themselves.  They took ownership of the planning process. They were articulate and had conviction and passion for the transformation of East Los Angeles.   Just as the students of the Renaissance Academy learned a lot about planning from this process, there is a lot the professional planning community can learn from these students.

Beverly Hills Civic Center

(Note, the Beverly Hills Courier points out that they had the story first on Thursday evening despite my call that Patch broke the news. You can read their coverage, here. – DN)

Last Friday, word broke on Patch that a review of the geological studies on the Westside Subway commissioned by the city government of Beverly Hills came to different conclusions than the conclusions authored by Metro’s team of experts.  Exponent-Failure Analysis Associates concludes in the executive summary that:

Streetsblog will feature ads for the Regional Connector Final EIS/EIR throughout the public comment period.

In summary, it is Exponent’s opinion that additional effort is needed to accurately identify,  quantify, rank and mitigate the potential hazards posed by the proposed Westside Subway  Extension Project before one of the two presented alternatives, or a third alternative, are selected  for implementation.

A more detailed analysis of the 70 page study (available here) can be heard at tomorrow’s “Study Session” of the Beverly Hills City Council.  Those that don’t want to wait for tomorrow’s presentation can seemingly engage with City Councilman John Mirisch on the validity of the study by commenting on the Patch article.

Predictably, any action by either side in the on-going grudge match between advocates of the Westside Subway and government representatives in Beverly Hills was met with praise from one side and scorn from the other.  As both sides attempt to work through the other sides’ writings here are a few suggestions.

First: Let’s Agree That Neither Metro’s Experts nor Exponent Consulting Are on the Take

Somehow, it seems to have become a slur for expert geologists, seismologists and engineers to get paid to do studies or give opinions.  First, the NUMBY’s slurred Metro’s experts as being on the take, a charge that went all the way to the pages of L.A. Weekly.  But in return, subway-friendly publications made the exact same charge against Exponent.

Let’s say this, it’s highly unlikely that Metro’s distinguished review panel, which includes Dr. Lucy Jones, a federal employee not compensated for her work, or a publicly traded company that relies on a reputation as non-biased evaluators would risk their reputations for one project.

I’ll admit, that when I read the Patch article on Friday, my first reaction was “of course it says that the Metro report is flawed,” but fortunately I took the weekend to take a beat.  My assumption that the report is flawed because of who paid for it is just as uninformed as the comment from the Unified School District’s Board Chair article assuming the Metro study is based on bad data.

It’s certainly not unheard of for experts to disagree.  Saying “our experts are unbiased researchers; but their experts are bought and paid for” doesn’t really say anything.

Second: Beverly Hills Has the Right to Put Metro Studies Under Thorough Review

Whether they’re concerned about the impacts during construction, the rattling that could be caused by an active subway or whether it “just doesn’t feel right to dig under our school,” as one columnist offered; the City of Beverly Hills can and should submit every study to rigorous review.  At the same time, opponents of digging a tunnel under the school should wait until Metro has a chance to review the review before deciding that Metro’s studies are flawed.

Exponent had three months to review Metro’s documents, it’s only fair to give Metro a chance to review what Exponent wrote.

Third: The Back and Forth Is Going to Get Worse Before It Goes to Court

This is just speculation on my part, but I would posit that whenever the environmental reports are released by Metro that the public relations spin on both sides won’t deviate from what’s already been said.  I’ll also speculate that this whole thing is going to be determined by a court, not by geologic experts or Metro itself.  Judges tend to look down on super-heated rhetoric so it behooves everyone to remain calm.

If there aren't changes to SCAG's plans, will there be another lawsuit? Time will tell.

When Attorney General Kamala Harris announced her office was supporing a lawsuit against the allegedly progressive long-term transportation plan passed by the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), it sent ripples through the transportation advocacy community.  Harris bluntly claimed that SANDAG can’t meet Greenhouse Gas goals set by state law by building highways now and other transportation options later.  She also noted the low amount of funding going towards walking and bicycling in the plan.

Locally, activists hope that the Attorney General’s decision influences long range planning at the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG.)  The numbers and planning strategies between the SCAG draft plan and the embattled “final” plan at SANDAG are similar enough that the threat of another lawsuit looms large unless the SCAG plan undergoes some changes.

The SANDAG plan sets aside $2.5 billion for active transportation over the next thirty eight years out of a $214 billion dollar plan for the region.  That’s roughly 1.2% of the program for bicycle and pedestrian projects combined.  But SCAG’s number is even lower.  The local Long Range Plan allocates allocates $6 billion dollars for active transportation, 1.1% of the total $524.7 billion.

Safe Routes to School California leads the charge to increase the amount of funding for active transportation in the SCAG plan.  A recent post on their website encourages people and organizations to sign-on to a letter urging SCAG to increase the active transportation portion of the budget to five to eight percent of the budget, not 1.1%.

L.A. County Public Health Department explains how it came up with the $40 billion need estimate for the SCAG region. Basically, they took the bicycle and pedestrian need based on local bicycle and pedestrian master plans and funded Safe Routes to Schools plans to calculate a "per person" need estimate. Next, they combined that number with an estimated amount to create safe access to transit stations based on an estimate by the Center for Transit Oriented Development. You can see their presentation by clicking on the image. Safe Routes CA also has a detailed explanation

The SRTSCA ask isn’t just a random number.  The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health estimates that the funding need to create an adequate bicycle and pedestrian network in the six-county SCAG area is actually $40 billion, or 7.6% of the SCAG Long Range budget.

SCAG and SANDAG both wrote plans that allocated an impressive amount of resources towards transit expansion.  But each plan has a catch, the funds for transit are allocated at the end of the plan with highway funding coming at the start of the plans.

In the press release announcing her action supporting local lawsuits against the SANDAG plan, Harris notes that the SANDAG plan actually leads to an increase in greenhouse gases, the very thing these plans are supposed to battle, after 2020.  She then lays the blame for that increase at the feet of SANDAG’s addiction to more highway projects.

While greenhouse gases initially decrease in the plan, the EIR shows that after 2020, driving miles will increase and overall greenhouse gas emissions from driving will continue to increase at least until 2050.

The transit plan also prioritizes expanding or extending freeways and highways in its early years, largely deferring investment in public transit projects, such as transit, bicycle and foot paths, when funds may not be available.

The news is similar for the SCAG draft plan.  From the Safe Routes to Schools California blog (emphasis mine):

 The SCAG RTP allocates $6 billion for active transportation.  However, $4.8 billion or 80 percent of this funding is not available until after 2026.  In addition, for the years 2016-2025 the funding for active transportation will be half of what it is currently on an annual basis.

If you want to be involved in changing the SCAG plan, you could sign-up with the Safe Routes to School California’s letter campaign, or submit comments on your own or email comments by February 14 to RTP@scag.ca.gov.

Eddie Solis leaves the Metro Red Line, which serves as one part of his hour-long commute from his day job in Hollywood to his home in Boyle Heights. Much of the inspiration for his band It's Casual comes from his observations from being car-free, a bus and subway rider, and a skateboarder. Photo courtesy of Eddie Solis.

A few weeks ago, the hardcore band It’s Casual posted “The Red Line” music video on Youtube and quickly caught the attention of local and national blogs for it’s simple yet creative critique of Los Angeles freeways. A current resident of Boyle Heights, guitarist and vocalist Eddie Solis sat down with Eastside Streetsblog to talk about how his car-free lifestyle inspires his music and how he encounters on his morning walks the smell of Boyle Heights tortilla factories.

You do a lot of music that’s very transit oriented; can you explain why you went that route?

Sometimes I think there’s a lot of content out there that’s too, I want to say, too fiction. Kind of make believe. And I notice all my favorite music that hits home to me in my heart and that I kind of step back and see these bands still going  . . . are bands that write timeless music with timeless contact that basically come from the truth of actual events and someone’s perspective. So I said I really want to find an avenue and report on it. And I go, wait you know what, my daily commute. I see LA different because  . . . I take the bus and subway everywhere. And the freeways are just sitting there, and people are in their cars just frustrated about it, but I’m just like sightseeing everyday. So I took that concept and said, “You know what, I’m basically going to report on what I see and interpret it.”

What kind of message were you trying to evoke when you were making “The Red Line” and then making the video?

For one thing, the lyrics explain the feeling I had. I remember one particular summer I would maybe catch a ride with a friend to go places, and I always noticed we were always stuck in traffic. And it was always to get from Hollywood to Downtown or in between. And I was like, “ Man, you have to ride the Red Line with me.” I validated my opinion by taking him on there and I remember seeing the 101 being a parking lot, and another freeway would be a parking lot. And I’m like “I’m able to get from downtown to Hollywood in 17 minutes, and it would take an hour for some people (or) 45 minutes.” My intent or my message was from real life experiences, and if I name check all the freeways, I’m going to identify the region within LA and people will get it.

So when we made the video, Rick Kosick, he’s the director, he scouted the locations, he had the vision, the video is all him. He really wanted to create visually what I’m saying vocally, verbally. The whole video took six months. I mean, keep in mind though he has a job, I have a job, and he went out and scouted locations and said here are the way we are going to do things. Rick wanted to create exactly what I’m saying but with full energy and movement.

Did you have any trouble shooting on the subway? What were the kind of reactions you got?

It’s funny you say that. We went in there, we were kind and courteous to everybody, and we didn’t have no problems. There was times on Saturdays at Union Station, where you know, the sheriffs were patrolling, and they talked to us: “So what are you guys doing?” And we told them the truth. He’s like, “Ok, well, do your thing.” Really I don’t know if that’s good or bad I’m saying that after letting us off. Cuz I don’t know.

As a resident of Boyle Heights, what kind of opportunities and challenges do you see for public transit users in Boyle Heights?

I would say from experience, and being hands on with public transportation, the opportunities first would be the (Metro bus) line 18 runs on the main artery in Boyle Heights, which is Whittier Boulevard. And to me that’s amazing because it’s 24 hours. And not only that, it runs so often and I believe like between the hours of (6 am – 12pm), they’re like every 10 minutes, 12 minutes. So you don’t need a schedule. You just get to a stop and they come.

As far as the challenges, the fact that after a certain time the 18 runs very infrequent. It runs once an hour. And that’s kind of rough. And I think the MTA should be a little more mindful because there are a lot of working class people out there that need to get form point A to point B. You need to serve them a little better because these people are using it to earn a living and keep themselves above water. Some of these people have to work over night, so make it every 30 minutes.

Take us through a walkthrough of a day in Boyle Heights for you. What do you see, smell, or hear?

On a regular weekday I get up and do a morning walk. And I grab my cup of coffee at the La Mascota Bakery which is like an institution for their tamales and pan dulce and stuff like that. And I’ll walk to Soto (Street) and, I gotta say that not only what I see but what I smell, is a key component, because there are so many tortilla factories and bakeries and it’s just like this, the aroma is just like an epic for your taste buds. I’ll walk back down Whittier Boulevard past east of Camulos (Street) toward Indiana and Lorena and I see a lot of exciting things. Independent businesses, I see different things coming in, skateboard shops which I think is very cool.

Claire Bowin

As you’ll see below, she also has some strong feelings on car parking minimums.

Read the first part of the interview by clicking here, and the second part by reading on.

A lot of planning and development decisions hinge on parking regulations, set by the Planning Department. Critics, including UCLA’s Donald Shoup, have shown these parking minimums to be inconsistent, unhelpful, and biased toward suburban auto-centric development. What’s in store for the future of parking in Los Angeles?

Ah, parking, one of my favorite topics. If you build it they will come- this has certainly been true with parking and cars. Communities, fearful of density and an influx of people and cars, are often the first to demand more parking- not realizing, of course, the self- fulfilling prophecy they’ve put in motion. But, now that we’ve got all these cars and parking lots how can we wean people off of them?

Fortunately, there’s a healthy number of Angelenos who have already reduced their driving habits and car addiction- 55.3% of households here own one or no cars! I love that statistic. It defies every assumption we have about ourselves. And it’s statistics like this that help us make the case to communities and politicians that perhaps we can reduce the amount of parking – especially in areas with high concentrations of land uses, transit, and low car ownership.

To further bolster the argument, we hope, we’re currently evaluating the parking utilization rates around six transit stations around the city. We don’t have the report back yet from the consultant but we know, from similar studies that were completed in recent years for the Downtown and Little Tokyo areas, that there is typically more than ample parking. There is often the perception that there is not enough parking because information about the location of public parking may not be easily visible, or people prefer to find on-street parking that is less plentiful but often cheaper. Too there may be plentiful parking available in private lots that are not available to the public. One strategy might be to work with property owners to make private spaces available to the public during the hours when demand for the private parking is light.

Once the parking research is completed this spring it should help us re-define parking standards in many of our TOD areas. Just as all TOD areas are not the same we don’t imagine that we’ll adopt a singular TOD parking policy.  Instead, we expect that we’ll establish standards that are tailored to each TOD and reflect the unique mix and intensity of its land uses as well as the frequency and density of transit and other modal options.

Does the city ever look at how much it costs to maintain all the streets, sewers, lighting, sidewalks, and other pieces of public property when making planning decisions? Do we try to plan city blocks that pay for themselves or are we dependent on outside funding, and let future generations deal with maintenance obligations?

I can’t admit that I’m well versed in all the intricacies of public works maintenance practices but given the much publicized deferred maintenance of our city streets, not to mention the number of street tree stumps that languish in our parkways (I’ve heard sometimes upward of 20 years!) that we have a funding problem. As I mentioned earlier I think identifying and implementing a capital and maintenance fund is critical in order for the city to fully implement the Mobility Plan. If you have ideas on how and/or where we should obtain the funding (increased gas taxes, property taxes, developer fees etc.) and what types of things we should spend the funding on, please visit ideas.la2b.org and/or attend the next Think Labs on February 25^th and March 3^rd.

LA has had it’s civic plaza and squares, and it’s quaint shopping streets of the 1890′s and early 20th century ruined by an overemphasis on moving cars. What is being done to give back the civic space that was taken? Is this a priority with anyone in City Hall? Do we measure, or even care, about the types of free interactions people have on the streets of LA – if not, why not?

Public space is most definitely a priority and it’s, as I highlighted in a previous answer, something that we’re definitely looking to facilitate as we develop and then implement the Mobility Element. In the meanwhile our Planning Commission President , Bill Roschen, and Simon Pastucha with our Urban Design Studio have been working with Streets for People to look at potential pocket parks that can be carved out of underutilized or remnant street width (similar to what was done in NYC).

How hard would it be to have noise from traffic become a major cause worth caring about in the Planning Department (or any department) in LA?

Traffic noise is certainly an unfortunate by-product of traffic. I was reminded of the impact of traffic noise when visiting NYC last spring. There was still plenty of traffic noise but the city was noticeably quieter thanks to a recent ordinance that banned non-emergency use of vehicle horns. And I can’t tell you how much nicer it was! Even the New Yorkers seemed happier than we typically give them credit for. But I digress, while I agree that walking or bicycling alongside of traffic, is far from pleasant I’d suggest that we focus our energies on providing safe and efficient alternatives to the automobile, which will them translate into less cars and less noise – well, that and perhaps we should also hope electric cars get cheaper and thus more prevalent so that whatever traffic does remain in our “Los Angeles of the Future” at least it will be quiet and won’t produce emissions. Then we’ll have clean air and quiet streets to boot!

Readers: Tell us about your background before coming to City Planning. You worked for Livable Places – you were once one of us – what was your proudest accomplishment there?

Bowin: While at Livable Places I had the wonderful opportunity of working on Olive Court, a 50+ unit affordable homeownership community located one block from the Pacific Coast Highway/Long Beach Boulevard Blue Line Station. The 1.5 acre site which is located directly on Long Beach Boulevard was not, at the time we purchased the property, zoned for housing. The community immediately behind the property was low-density residential and while I often argue that all development around a transit station doesn’t need to be housing it was a good solution here. I am pleased by many aspects of the project, particularly the outdoor community spaces that were designed as key features in the project. The architecture and landscape design teams, which were led by Eric Naslund and Walter Hood respectively, did a beautiful job creating a series of interlocking community spaces. Instead of allocating separate play areas and traditional climbing equipment for young children, the landscape was designed to encourage creative play, gardening, reading, and conversation.

Claire Bowin

Because Bowin wrote such detailed answers, we decided to split her question and answer into two parts.  Today’s question and answer covers the public outreach for the Mobility Plan that are underway, Transit Oriented Development and Affordable Housing.  The last question, on affordable housing, is almost literally a dissertation on the issue and a must read for anyone that cares about housing, equality, development and TOD.  The second part of the series will run tomorrow.

Readers: The city’s General Plan 1999 Transportation element has all sorts of great language about livability, walkability, transit – but this plan language didn’t really end up with much in the way of results on the ground. How can the Mobility Element update underway do better?

Bowin: It’s amazing how much has changed in the past 13 years- LA is such a different place now than it was in 1999 and I think we’re finally moving towards a community that is truly multi-modal. Measure R’s passage, in 2008, demonstrated again how much Los Angelenos truly support a regional transit system. Measure R is also a good example of how important local leadership and dedicated funding are in ensuring that physical improvements actually get done.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out how important a strong implementation plan (read $$) is going to be if we really want to see the ideas in the Mobility Plan carried out. Without it we can have lots of lofty policies and goals but we won’t get the traction to actually make the many on-the-ground changes that are going to be needed to really attract Los Angelenos to try out new ways of getting around.

 How will the mobility plan assure that we are planning our streets as ‘places’ as well as mobility corridors for pedestrians, cyclists transit riders and drivers?

he mobility plan provides us a real opportunity to re-imagine and repurpose our cities streets. What we’re learning and hearing through the ideas.la2b.org website is that there is a tremendous interest in revitalizing our streets not only for pedestrians and bicyclists and transit, but as an integral part of our public realm. We’ve heard a lot from folks asking us to open some streets once a week, much like we do now for big events like Ciclavia or weekly farmers, and we hope that the plan can set the table for more frequent street openings.

We also want to redesign our streets so that we create permanent public gathering places. Our “main” streets or streets around transit are natural places for this. By widening sidewalks, creating plazas with active uses at the ground floor with concentrations of employment , educational institutions or residential uses nearby we’ll hopefully induce people to naturally spend more time outside, on the street, and not just during “events”. To do this we want to hear from the Los Angeles community about which streets they’d like to see transformed.

We’ve created all kinds of maps that tell us a lot about our city and we’re hoping that folks will come out to our Mobility Think Lab events on February 25th and March 3rd and give us feedback as to where they’d like to see more formal public places encouraged or established. Details about the Think Lab events can be found at our website at: la2b.org.

What flexibility does the City of LA have with regards to the incorporation of Complete Street standards in LA’s Mobility Plan? Can it enhance the standards, is there a minimum framework of Complete Streets standards that serve as a starting point? Is there a Statewide default Complete Streets standard? Can community advocates participate in enhancing LA’s Complete Streets standards?

The City has a lot of flexibility in terms of how we interpret and adapt the California Complete Street Act to our streets. As a complement to the Mobility Element we plan to develop new, Complete Street standards. A big problem today is that the street standards we have were adopted over 50 years ago when the car was truly king. Those standards have proved to be a huge impediment as we try to incorporate wider sidewalks and bicycle facilities into our rights-of-way.

While the state doesn’t establish specific street standards it does direct municipalities, when they update their transportation plans, to accommodate all modes and there’s certainly good examples of “complete streets” that have been implemented in communities around the country that we can look to for guidance.

We expect that many of your readers have lots of great suggestions as to what these new street cross-sections should look like and we certainly hope that we’ll be hearing from them over the next few months. At our first round of workshops coming up on February 25^th and March 3^rd we’ll be asking people to define for us what should be included in the new street standards. More specifically we’ll be asking folks to define for us what should be included in a street where we want to emphasize transit usage, or where we want to give priority for the bicycle.  We’ll also soon be using our ideas.la2b.org website as a place for people to give us ideas for the street sections.

 There’s often a buzz around Transit-Oriented Development, but TOD has happened minimally in the city of Los Angeles, and has often been hampered by L.A.’s car-centric planning codes. How can L.A. do more and better TOD?

The new Citywide Design Guidelines are a step in the right direction towards creating communities that are more supportive of pedestrian and bicycle activities. There are other TOD planning efforts that are currently underway in Warner Center, the Cornfield Arroyo Seco Specific Plan and along the Exposition, Green, and Blue lines that include new development standards that will facilitate a greater range and density of land uses, require projects to build to the property line, prohibit parking in front of buildings, establish active ground floor uses, and require that all buildings have pedestrian entrances that face the street and utilize transparent materials for a large portion of their ground level, street facing facades.

These new land use and design strategies are expected, once the economy begins to recover, to play a large part in stimulating robust growth around transit stations. We’ve also recently been awarded a grant from Metro to develop ten TOD plans around the Crenshaw and Exposition Phase 2 Stations and we’ll be underway with these this Spring. Stay tuned! Our suburban parking standards have certainly been an impediment to good TODs and I’ll tackle that topic in question seven below.

What can Los Angeles’s Planning Department do to ensure adequate supplies of affordable housing? How can affordability be part of future TOD planning?

In order to be a successful, vibrant City in the 21^st Century we need to facilitate the development of quality, affordable housing options for all of our residents. And, locating affordable housing near transit stations does make a lot of sense. But, how we accomplish this is often the subject of much contentious debate.

In the first part of the 20^th Century, government, with mixed results, took the lead in developing housing projects to house many lower income households. During the latter part of the 20^th Century a variety of strategies, including rent control, Section 8 subsidies, and tax increment financing have been established to increase the supply of affordable housing. More recently, market rate developers have been asked to shoulder some of the affordable housing burden by providing a percentage of their units to lower income households in exchange for a variety of incentives that have ranged from increased density and height to reduced parking, open space, and yard requirements.

Before I discuss the various strategies that we can employ to ensure an adequate supply of affordable housing at transit stations, let’s first define what is meant by “affordable housing,” who typically builds affordable housing, identify who affordable housing is for, and evaluate what factors influence the cost of housing.

For the purposes of this conversation let’s divide affordable housing into two categories. The first is Affordable housing with a capital “A” which is housing that is rent restricted for at least 30 years. The other is affordable housing with a small “a” which is any housing that is available to a particular income group where the rent does not exceed 30% of their gross income. The advantage of Affordable housing is that its rent levels are restricted and therefore the low (80% Area Median Income-AMI), very low (50% AMI), and very, very, very low (35% AMI) income families who Affordable housing developments are typically oriented towards can be confident that their rent will not increase beyond what they can reasonably afford. Inflation and an increase in market demand can spur the rent of affordable units to increase the rent to the point where it is no longer affordable. (Note: Median income in Los Angeles for a family of four is roughly $68,000.)

Who is affordable housing for?  Well, everyone really. Regardless of their income (I’m talking about the 99% here) most households can’t afford to spend more than 30% of their income on rent. Even median, moderate (100-120% AMI) and workforce (up to 150% AMI) households often struggle to find decent, affordable housing but its truly the most vulnerable members of our society who are most at risk when there isn’t an adequate supply of affordable or Affordable housing targeted for their income levels. This vulnerable population can include a wide range of family and household types from the student, to the part-time worker, to the low-wage earner, to the self-employed, to those with circumstances that may impair their ability to work at all.

Who builds and/or owns Affordable and affordable housing? Affordable housing is mostly built by developers (both non-profit and for-profit) who have decided that they want to be in the business of building Affordable housing, have learned to navigate the complex rules of local, State and Federal housing programs to obtain the necessary financing to provide Affordable units, and have implemented good, sound management practices to ensure that their developments provide a safe, clean, and quality housing option. A smaller number of Affordable units are developed by market rate developers who elect to pursue an increase in their allowable floor area ratio (FAR) in exchange for setting aside a proscribed number of units for low or very low income households.

On the other hand, affordable housing occurs largely by happenstance, an older building with few or minimal amenities may have rents that are lower than, and thus more affordable, than newer-built housing, or a new building may be built with modest amenities in a part of town where the land prices are a bit cheaper. In these cases the rents may be actually equivalent to the prevailing “market rate” for that area but still within reach of a low or median income household.

Why is housing so expensive and what can be done to control the cost of housing? There are several factors that influence the cost of housing.  One major factor is the cost of land. Land prices are influenced by a variety of factors including location, the permitted land uses and floor area ratio (FAR). Another related feature is the amount of supply relative to the demand. An area with little supply and high demand (Westside) will typically have higher rents than an area with abundant supply and less demand (Riverside).

The number of units that can be built on a given parcel also influences the cost of housing. A developer needs to pay back his investors and/or the lenders who provided him/her the financing to purchase the land and design and construct the building and therefore the developer is typically going to build as many units as he is allowed. Because many communities are adverse to increases in density they often lobby to limit the number of units that can be built on a particular site.

For example, if the FAR of a particular site allows a developer to build a building of 100,000 square feet but the density cap limits the number of units he can build to 100 he’s going to build 1,000 square feet units. And let’s say that each unit is going to rent for $2.00/square foot. That’s $2,000 per month. But, if the developer wasn’t limited in the number of units he could build and instead he builds 133 units that are 750 square feet each at the same $2.00 per square feet those units would rent for $1,500.  The amount of parking required by a jurisdiction also dramatically influences the cost of housing. Parking, especially underground parking, can run as high as $45,000 per parking space and the cost of constructing this parking needs to recovered somehow and is typically passed on to the tenant or new owner which increases the rental or purchase price of a unit. Even surface parking isn’t free – it takes up land area that the developer paid for but can’t develop on.

So, what are our options and how do we facilitate the development of both Affordable and affordable units, especially in TOD areas where land prices are expected to increase?

To help encourage the development of more Affordable units we’re working with the Los Angeles Housing Department to see how we might further increase the amount of funding in the City’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Unfortunately, due to the reductions in the State budget, funding for Affordable Housing continues to dwindle and of course the recent elimination of redevelopment agencies has put a huge dent in the Affordable funding pot.

Affordable units can also be realized at TODs through the use of the Density Bonus Ordinance which provides up to a 35% density increase for projects that set-aside a percentage of their units as Affordable. The majority of projects that utilize the density bonus are completed by developers who obtain public funding but some Affordable units are also achieved by market rate developers who elect to include Affordable units in exchange for the increased density.

Because limited funding continues to constrain the number of Affordable units that can be built we’re also pursuing strategies that would expand the number of affordable units that could get built in TOD areas. Unfortunately, much of the housing that is getting built today is luxury housing that is outside the affordability of not only low-income households, but often stretches the resources of moderate and workforce households.

So, what strategies can we use to facilitate the development of affordable housing around TODs? Because we are talking about TODs we have the opportunity to try some things that most likely would not be welcome in other parts of the City. One way to keep rents lower would be to eliminate the density cap so that developers’ would be encouraged to build more, smaller units within their allowable FAR. To protect against units getting too small we could establish minimum unit sizes for each bedroom type. For example, we could limit a two-bedroom unit to no less than 750 square feet. We could eliminate or dramatically reduce the parking requirement. We could also require that parking be unbundled from the cost of the unit so that a household only needs to absorb the cost of renting the parking that they need. What better incentive is there to give up the car?

One change at Metro can impact everything else. Photo:wn.com

The first is a new shuttle between East L.A. College and the Metro Gold Line Indiana Station along Atlantic Boulevard and 1st Street which began January 11th. This new line is in response to concerns expressed by eastside residents that I wrote about previously. John McCready in comments on The Source asks “Of ALL changes that have ever been made to MTA bus lines, how many were ever made by ACTUAL RIDERS that GOT IMPLEMENTED?” (capitalization in the original). Well, Mr. McCready here is an example of rider input resulting in new service.

Meanwhile it was political influence that led line 201 to be re-extended to serve Glenoaks Park as of January 9th. The whole history can be viewed on the Kymbereligh Richards’ Transit Insider website.  The ridership to Glenoaks Park was and continues to be pitiful. Richards notes the 201 when it served the Park through 2006 had a ridership of “9 per day to/from the final Glenoaks Park stop.”

Glendale Beeline started a replacement service (Route 13) when Metro cut back the 201 in Dec. 2006. By the following August, Beeline had reduced this to two round trips in morning and afternoon peak hours and one round trip at the noon hour, weekdays only.  Ridership continued to be so poor they sought to discontinue the route.

Maybe the 9 Glenoaks Park riders threw a snit to their local electeds. Nothing else explains why political pressure was applied to have the 201 re-extension occur, even though by every measure the segment has virtually no ridership demand. Metro’s service change hold forced the Beeline to continue operating its route 13 after they had announced it was cancelled and replaced with the 201. But now that Metro has extended the route 201 Beeline have not only discontinued Route 13 but posted a link to the 201 schedule on their website as the explicit replacement.

All in all a sorry state of affairs.

Did no one speak up against this, you wonder? Well, actually Kymberleigh Richards did at the November meeting of the Westside/Central Service Council.

S*I*G*H

Borja Leon. Photo: Mayor's Office

Now, on the eve of announcement of a new federal transportation bill from leadership in the House of Representatives, the Mayor’s office is pursuing three different options to leverage the expected $40 billion in sales tax revenue over the 30 years between 2009 and 2039.  Besides the pursuit of federal dollars, there is also the possibility of asking L.A. County voters to tax themselves again and working with equity firms in China to finance the projects.

Last week, Streetsblog talked to Deputy Mayor for Transportation Borja Leon about the different options being pursued and where the city is in the process.

Plan A: America Fast Forward Née 30/10

Streetsblog will feature ads for the Regional Connector Final EIS/EIR throughout the next 30 days.

“Plan A” is still the 30/10 or America Fast Forward plan to change federal law to reward communities that choose to tax themsleves to expand transit.  If enacted, the Mayor’s proposal would create interest free loan programs that would allow projects to get started earlier and would re-prioritize federal grant programs.  When Republican leadership in the House of Representatives and Democratic leadership in the Senate announced proposals last year, both included major increases in the TIFIA loan program which is a major provision of America Fast Forward.

The Mayor’s Office appears confident that this increase will remain.  ”We have been working with the Federal Government and have a great partnership,” explains Leon.  ”A lot of things have been moving in the last week with America Fast Forward.”

We should find out if the confidence, and Mayor’s lobbying efforts, have paid off this week.

When considering the prospects for Measure R+, it's important to remember the role that highway expansion planed in selling the "transit tax" in 2008.

Plan B: Measure R+

Earlier this month Assemblyman Mike Feuer, a close ally of the Mayor when it comes to transportation expansion in Los Angeles, announced new legislation that would allow L.A. County voters to vote on extending the Measure R transit tax, creating opportunities to speed up the construction time of projects through bonding and perhaps add to or improve existing projects.  Supporters of transit expansion have dubbed the proposal “Measure R+.”  But it could also be dubbed, “Plan B.”

Getting “Measure R+” from legislative proposal to passage by L.A. County voters is a tall bill.  First, AB 1446 must be approved by a pair of committees in the State Assembly before moving to final passage on the Assembly floor.  Then the process has to repeat itself in the Senate.

On this front, Leon is confident that Feuer can shepherd the bill through the process. “Assemblymember Feuer has been a great partner; he helped the Mayor with Measure R at the State Legislature. If its the Extension or anything else to accelerate Measure R, the Mayor will fight hard to get it done,” Leon says.

From there, passage of a sales tax still has a long road to go.  The bill has to be signed into law by the Governor, the same Governor that hopes to have a statewide tax to balance the state budget on the ballot.  Some tax experts believe that the more tax initiatives on the ballot, the less the chance that they will pass.  It’s also possible that funding for High Speed Rail could be on the ballot.  Will Jerry Brown want to risk one his statewide projects to allow a local sales tax proposal?  With this governor, it’s hard to predict.

Even if the Governor signs the bill into law, then the Metro Board of Directors and L.A. County Board of Supervisors has to act to put a measure on the fall ballot.  Even then, it would take a two-thirds vote of L.A. County voters to pass the measure.

The stars were in alignment to pass Measure R in 2008.  Are they similarly aligned in 2012?

Many were surprised when L.A. Times transportation writer Ari Bloomekatz reported that Mayor Villaraigosa was talking to Chinese investors about financing a front-load of Measure R transit projects a mere ten days ago.  Leon writes that negotiations began in the fall of last year and are ongoing, but are still in the early phases.

“In Ocotober 2011, the MTA was approached by several parties concerning unsolicited offers of low-interest financing. Soon after, the CEO released a memo to the Board explaining the interest from Sovereign Wealth Funds. If there are parties that offer financing terms that are below current U.S. market rates, we should be willing to explore them. If the Chinese and/or any Sovereign Wealth Fund is willing to provide such terms we shouldn’t automatically discount it,” he explains.

There are several barriers to bringing this proposal to reality as well.  Working with investors in a foreign country is never easy, even if the investors have experience working in other countries.  Even if the county, Metro and the investors are all in agreement, there’s always the chance that such a deal could become politically problematic.

The other question is whether there will be other “add-ons” to a proposal with the Chinese that could make the loan less valuable than one from a more local equity firm.  Will L.A. have to buy passenger cars or other technologies from Chinese manufacturers?  Will L.A. County actually get a better deal by getting a higher interest loan from an American firm that has less strings attached?  All those details remain to be worked out.

Going Forward

Denny Zane, the executive director of Move L.A., the organization most known for pushing the original Measure R believes there is merit in all three proposals, but sees “Measure R+” as the key to getting the eight transit projects that aren’t under construction, under construction.

As the clock is ticking on Villaraigosa’s term, which ends in June of next year, there’s clearly a lot of work to do to see the Mayor’s transit vision become reality in a near-term timeline.  And as if these three ideas weren’t enough to pursue, Leon hints that there could be another surprise proposal come our way.

“We’re always looking for our next Plan B,” the Deputy Mayor concludes.

Kamala Harris

The agency declared victory, but many local advocates weren’t convinced.

“If this is a national and regional model, we’re in bad shape,” Dough McFetridge of the Cleveland National Forest Foundation grumbled to Streetsblog last November.  ”We have a need — a tremendous need — for transit right now, today. This proposal puts funding transit off into so far in to the future that many of us won’t be around anymore.”

McFetridge and other environmental groups pressed forward with a lawsuit claiming that the EIR for the plan was flawed because it didn’t take into account the impact new highway construction would have on vehicles miles traveled.  This week their lawsuit received a major boost when California Attorney General Kamala Harris joined their efforts.

“The 3.2 million residents of the San Diego region already suffer from the seventh worst ozone pollution in the country,” said Harris in a press release. “Spending our transit dollars in the right way today will improve the economy, create sustainable jobs and ensure that future generations do not continue to suffer from heavily polluted air.”

The lawsuit argues that the environmental review of the transit plan did not adequately analyze the public health impacts of the increased air pollution. The San Diego region already has a very high risk of cancer from particulate matter emitted by diesel engines and vehicles and there is no analysis as to whether this risk will increase.  By prioritizing highway expansion in the first years of the plan, SANDAG claims more pedestrian, bicycle and transit expansion in the plan even though those plans may never happen.  The bulk of the investment in transit and active transportation begins decades from now.

“The attorney general’s intervention in this case supports our argument that SANDAG’s plan is deeply flawed,” said Kathryn Phillips of the Sierra Club.  ”We’re encouraged that the State of California is serious about limiting air pollution and climate change pollution created by transportation in the region.”

While greenhouse gases initially decrease in the plan to the levels required by state law, the EIR shows that after 2020, driving miles will increase and overall greenhouse gas emissions from driving will continue to increase at least until 2050.  SANDAG claims that many of the miles of new highway projects should count as transit projects because many of the new lanes will be “managed” lanes similar to the Express Lanes coming to Los Angeles or HOT Lanes such as SR 91 in Orange County.  Because buses will have “congestion free” access to these lanes, SANDAG argues these are really transit projects.

The plaintiffs didn’t buy this argument.

“If we hope to avoid the worst of climate change, we must act aggressively to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and encourage compact, transit-oriented development,” writes Kevin Bundy, Center for Biological Diversity. “The Attorney General’s office recognizes that SANDAG’s approach to transportation and land use development will do just the opposite. We can’t wait any longer to address these issues.”

Even those that offered tepid support for the plan last year see hope for a better plan in the lawsuit.

“The lawsuit should serve as a reality check for our region’s leaders to take smart growth planning more seriously,” writes Elyse Lowe with Move San Diego.  “Even in auto-centric, sprawled out San Diego, quality, location-efficient jobs and housing growth  must be served by quality transportation options to meet California’s legislated climate emission goals.  Hopefully the gut check from the (attorney general) will result in more sustainable land uses, and more funding toward transportation options.”

For its part, SANDAG hasn’t commented on the lawsuit other than brief comments from Encinitas Mayor and SANDAG Chair Jerome Stocks who tells Voice of San Diego that he is dissapointed in Harris’ decision to join the lawsuit but wouldn’t comment beyond that.

How will this lawsuit impact transportation at Los Angeles’ regional planning organization?  Streetsblog will examine that question on Monday.

Fearless prediction: April. I'll bet Mitt Romney $10,000 Expo Phase I opens in April without Culver City Station. That will open in August. Note, these are just predictions!

Earlier this morning at the Metro Board Meeting, CEO Art Leahy announced that pre-revenue operation of the Expo Line Phase I will begin on Monday.  ”Pre-revenue operation” is usually the last phase of tests a new fixed rail transit line undergoes before the line opens to the public.  The agency will run trains on the line as though service has begun although there won’t be any passengers on the train other than the crew and any special guests.

The beginning of pre-revenue while construction of the station in Culver City is ongoing means that if no other problems pop up, Phase I will open sometime this Spring but end at the station located at La Cienega and Jefferson Blvd.  An opening for the completed line will come a couple of months after the station is completed in Culver City.

While this is good news for supporters of the Expo Line, the question most people still have is, “when will Phase I open?”  Pre-revenue operations usually run somewhere between six and eight weeks, so an opening in April isn’t out of the question.  According to The Source, the agency is playing it close to the vest and hasn’t announced an opening date yet.

Consent Agenda (most items approved in a block vote at start of meeting):

Advertisement: click on the image to visit the Regional Connector EIS/EIR website.

• Agenda Item 5 – Planning for stations that aren’t funding, it’s not just for Crenshaw anymore.  A motion by City Councilman Jose Huizar allocates $500,000 for a station design for the Regional Connector’s Broadway Station that has entrances on both Broadway and Spring St.  Funding for the larger station has not been allocated.
• Agenda Item 7 – Metro finally seems ready to move on the Expo Phase II Bike Path.  The agency is ready to accept over $11 million of federal and local dollars to take the lead on the project and is authorizing engineering work to begin.
• Agenda Item 14 – Apparently there’s no such thing as too much money to spend on a highway project that is reviled around the country as one of the biggest environmental catastrophes in the country.  Metro is authorizing $4 million to a public relations firm and allocating another $125,000 internally to manage the public affairs for the I-710 Big Dig Project.
• Agenda Item 17 – Bike Share!
• Agenda Item 55 – Metro wants to buy 100 clean fuel buses to upgrade its fleet in the 2013 fiscal year.

Non-Consent (there is guaranteed to be some debate):

• Amendment to Agenda Item 10 – Would require Metro to develop the technical travel demand modeling capability to estimate travel demand by bicycle and, if possible, in conjunction with other active transportation travel such as walking in areas around transit stops and areas where new development will occur on Metro property.  This could be an important motion because it would give Metro’s planners a boost in doing planning for transit users (and all residents) that aren’t reliant on their car.
• Agenda Item 40 – Is the Construction Careers Policy we discussed yesterday.
• Agenda Item 70 – Metro would take an official position in favor of Asm. Mike Feuer’s legislation to give the same expedited legal review under CEQA lawsuits to transit projects as stadium projects and other mega-projects.

Robert Zardaneta, executive director of La Causa Youth Build. discusses how Metro's Construction Careers program would change the lives of thousands of youth workers who don't currently have access to middle class jobs. Photo: Sahra Sulaiman

In September of last year, the Metro Board of Directors ordered staff to create a program to insure that Los Angeles’ most disadvantaged workers and disadvantaged communities benefit economically from the Measure R construction projects.  In response, Metro negotiated an agreement with the Building Trades Council that will apply to all Metro construction projects.

The agreement sounds simple.  Forty percent of all workers on the projects have to be from areas where the median household income is below $27,500 and another 10% from communities where the median household income is below $40,000.

The motion, championed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas was partially the result of community pressure brought by communities surrounding the future Crenshaw Light Rail project.

The motion will be heard at Thursday’s meeting of the Metro Board of Directors.

A coalition of community and labor organizations have thrown their support behind the proposed Construction Careers Policy including the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, Transportation for America (T4A), La Causa Youth Build, and Strategic Concepts in Organizing Policy & Education.  Last week at a press conference in front of Metro Headquarters organized by LAANE, a parade of workers testified how the program could change their lives by offering them an opportunity for a middle class job that might otherwise be impossible.

According to LAANE’s analysis of similar policies at other agencies such as the Port of Long Beach, the Expo Construction Authority (for Phase II) and the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA), this program could provide job access for 27,000 Los Angeles County residents of lesser means.

Supporters of Measure R and other transit project have made the argument that  job creation is one of the major reasons that L.A. County residents support the transit sales tax and transit expansion in general.  Supporters of the Construction Careers Policy that Metro is proposing point to this program as a needed step to make sure that the created jobs have the biggest impact in a county with a 13% unemployment rate.

“For our national economic recovery to take hold and lead to sustainable economic growth we have to look beyond simple unemployment numbers,” writes Ryan Wiggins,  Southern California Field Organizer for T4A. “We must create good jobs that provide career pathways for those hardest hit by the recession. As we work to establish similar programs on the federal level we will once again look to Los Angeles, and this program, for inspiration.”

(Kris Fortin and Sahra Sulaiman contributed research to this story.)

The car in question looks like this. The license plate is 6EGY041

Streetsblog received the following email from LAPD Sgt. David Krumer:

The victim of a hit and run (car vs bicycle) on December 13, 2011 (case #110 718 955) as riding southbound on Curson crossing Pico with a fully green light. He was hit by a car traveling westbound on Pico at 40 to 50 miles an hour. He was thrown across the intersection and suffered broken bones in the hand and wrist as well as a fractured tibia and a torn PCL in the knee. The driver never braked or turned away. The injuries sustained are life changing and have confined the victim to a wheelchair for at least a few more months.

SUSPECT VEHICLE: 2007 Mercedes CL 550, 2Dr, CP
LICENSE PLATE: 6EGY041
SUSPECT: Male Black, Short Black Hair, late 20′s

Anyone having information about the driver of suspect vehicle, or was a witness to the accident is asked to contact the Los Angeles Police Department West Traffic Division, Investigator Fischer at:
4849 W. Venice Blvd. LA 90019, Phone number (213) 473-0229 or
West Traffic Division Watch Commander, Phone No. (213) 473-0222

You’re probably wondering how the LAPD can have the license plate and not have the owner already in custody. Streetsblog has been assured that there are a lot of possible reasons, but that revealing which one could hamper the investigation.

The scene at Beverly Hills High School. Photo: Joel Epstein

Local news outlets in Beverly Hills reported last week that with 80% of the trenching completed on the Beverly Hills Campus that thus far the trenching has found no active faults anywhere on the Beverly Hills campus. The remaining trenching will be completed on the northern part of campus along Heath Avenue.

Before a final report can be read and analyzed it’s too soon to say anything definitive about the current study, but that hasn’t stopped supporters and opponents of the Westside Subway alignment under the high school from weighing in.

For proponents of the route under the high school, they see victory in the preliminary findings. After all, if there are no faults under ground surrounding the high school, and there are faults along the alternate route on Santa Monica Boulevard, then there’s only one sensible place to put the subway…right under the high school.

But the Beverly Hills Unified School District has smartly abandoned the argument that the train should run under Santa Monica Boulevard, recognizing that Metro’s report on faults along the Boulevard have insured that Metro won’t be tunneling in that area. Rather than arguing for a route away from the High School, the plan is now to either kill the subway or get Metro to pay the school richly for the tunnel.

Because Metro’s geologic report found faults inside the Beverly Hills School property the School District is assuming that the value of the property would be appraised lower than what the BHUSD feels it should be and concluded the school would not be able to do any future expansion. Thus, the compensation Metro would owe the school for building the tunnel would be relatively small. However, if Metro was incorrect in assessing the faults, than the compensation to Beverly Hills would be quite a bit larger.

Metro’s initial reports actually claim that the tunnel for the subway won’t impact the school’s expansion plans, but the school district’s fears about the tunnel’s impacts on their ability to expand has been at the core of their opposition to a route under the high school.

The Beverly Hills Courier, the public relations arm of subway opponents the most read newspaper in Beverly Hills, explains:

The new trenching shows no evidence that the site is impaired for future building. However, if the tunnel is built new construction will be prohibited. The MTA would not only have to pay BHUSD for the impairment, but if the tunnel renders the school site unusable for the future that alone could prohibit MTA from building the tunnel.

When more detailed results are available, Streetsblog will be sure to cover it all. In the meantime, it’s become clear that the battle over the subway has reached a new level. It’s no longer about routing, but about the survival of the project.

Today begins the public comment period on the Regional Corridor Environmental Impact Statement.  You can read the final environmental documents, by clicking here.

Streetsblog will feature ads for the Regional Connector Final EIS/EIR throughout the next 30 days.

Wait a second, I thought the environmental documents were released last week?

They were. The documents were released last Friday, but the public comment period didn’t begin until today. They didn’t want to begin the comment period right before a three day weekend, so the extra week gave people interested in commenting a little more time.

Comments may be submitted via email to regionalconnector@metro.net. Alternately, comments can be sent by U.S. mail to: Dolores Roybal-Saltarelli, Project Manager, One Gateway Plaza, 99-22-2 Los Angeles, CA, 90012. The public may also comment on Metro’s website by clicking on “Contact us.”  Comments are due by February 20.

What does this mean for the project timeline?

Once public comment on the document is completed, staff will have a chance to respond to comments before the Metro Board of Directors certifies the documents.  Assuming there is no legal challenge, Metro could be ready to start hiring design contractors by the spring of this year.  The Board is expected to vote on the documents at their February 23rd Board Meeting, but could easily delay the final decision.

What does the documents say about routing and stations?

The route is entirely underground and will have five stations, three of them are new.  The route begins in the Little Tokyo Arts District, runs down to second street and heads west.  It cuts south on Flower Street before ending at Metro Center.  There is still some talk of adding a station at 5th and Flower, but no funding has been identified for this station.

I Don’t Live Near the Downtown or Little Tokyo.  Why should I care?

As its name implies, the connector will connect all of Metro’s rail lines.  The connector is the difference between having a lot of rail lines and having a rail system.

Is there any opposition to the Regional Connector?

It’s a rail project in Los Angeles.  Of course there’s opposition!  In this case, the opposition comes from businesses in the Little Tokyo area that are worried that construction will cause too much noise and chaos for the businesses to remain open.  Metro created a committee to work with impacted businesses and provide some sort of compensation for business lost.

This is one long document, I need help finding what I want to read!

Email your questions to regionalconnector@metro.net

If you have another question, leave it in the comments section.  We’ll do our best to get you an answer, so check back throughout the day.

New bike lanes on Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood - among the 12 new miles of bike lanes implemented in late 2011.

The good news: the city of Los Angeles is implementing more bike lanes than ever before. From July 2011 through December 2011, the city of Los Angeles has implemented 12.5 miles of new bike lanes. This is by far the highest total for any six-month period since at least 1996, and probably the most ever. For the past decade or so, the city has averaged roughly two-to-three miles of new bike lanes every six months.

The bad news: according to Streetsblog’s accounting, despite the stepped-up efforts, the city is not quite on track to fulfill Mayor Villaraigosa’s directive “to build 40 miles of bikeways a year” beginning with Fiscal Year 2011-2012.

After the jump, this article will enumerate just what new bikeway mileage has been done, and how the city may be able to get the 40 new bikeways pledged.

First some background.

Where does that “40 miles a year” come from?

Included with the March 2011 approval of the city’s “2010″ Bike Plan was a supplemental document called the Five-Year Implementation Strategy. That document was initially called the Five-Year Implementation Plan, later renamed the 200 Mile Implementation Strategy, then approved as the Five-Year Implementation Strategy (abbreviated hereafter as the “5-Year Plan.”) In August 2010, L.A. Streetsblog reviewed the initial draft of the 5-Year Plan calling it “ambitious” and “a big improvement compared to past performance.”

The 5-Year Plan includes 253 miles of bikeways that the city will implement over 6 years. Even though it’s called “5-Year” there was a year zero through year five, which, in initial drafts, corresponded to years 2010 through 2015… though this was removed when the 2010 Bike Plan approval dragged out into 2011. Still, the 5-Year Plan includes 250 miles to be implemented in 6 years, so, doing the division, this means 40 miles per year.

When the bike plan was approved in March2011, the 5-Year Plan’s “40 miles a year” number was announced by city staff and elected officials. Mayor Villaraigosa put the forty-mile figure in writing in a July 1st 2011 Mayoral Directive which states the city’s “commitment to build 40 miles of bikeways a year.”

Though the 40 mile number appears to be taken from the 5-Year Plan, but there’s no explicit connection between mileage and plan in the mayor’s pledge. The pledge is to build 40 miles. Note also that the pledge is “bikeways” – a catch-all term that can include all the various types of bike facilities from bike paths to bike lanes to bike routes to bike boulevards, etc.

In July 2011, L.A. Streetsblog reviewed city bikeway implementation under the assumption that the 40 miles pledged pertained to calendar year 2011. Upon publication of that article, mayoral and City Planning Department staff contacted Streetsblog and clarified that the 40 miles pledge clock didn’t start until Fiscal Year 2011-2012: July 1st 2011 to June 30th 2012.

Photo of the new Sharrows on Arden: Joe Anthony/Bike Commute News

In August 2011, LADOT announced it would implement 20 miles of sharrows - shared lane markings. The LADOT’s list of sharrow streets did not correspond to the city’s 5-Year Plan nor the city’s Bike Plan, both approved only 6 months prior. LADOT implemented the sharrows in October 2011.

Do the sharrows count toward building “40 miles a year” pledged?

Streetsblog queried LADOT about the sharrows and whether they count toward the 40 mile pledge. LADOT responded that “it is the City’s intent to include sharrows as a part of the Mayor’s commitment to implement 40 miles of bikeways this fiscal year.”

There are a number of reasons why sharrows wouldn’t count.

First, by doing sharrow projects not in the city’s 5-Year Plan, the city falls behind on the 5-Year Plan implementation. If the city does only half (20 miles instead of 40) of its 5-Year Plan’s annual mileage, then the very notion of calling it a 5-Year document is ludicrous. At the rate the city is implementing it right now, the 5-Year Plan is looking like at least a 12-year plan.

Another problem with the sharrows is the sheer annual mileage compared to what was approved last March. Sharrows are worthwhile, less so than bike lanes, but worthwhile. Sharrows are so worthwhile that the Mayor and Council approved 7.7 miles of them in the 5-Year Plan… that’s 1-2 miles of sharrows each year (7.7 miles divided by 6 years.) In the initial year, instead of implementing 1-2 miles of sharrows, the city has instead done 20 miles.  If LADOT can get away with 20 miles in the first year of plan implementation, what’s to keep them from doing all 40 miles sharrows the second year? If LADOT consistently downgrades what’s already been approved, it looks like a cynical bait and switch, disrespectful of the nearly six years of public process that went into coming up with the Bike Plan.

Why is the city ignoring the 5-Year Plan so soon, and relying so heavily on sharrows? It’s not clear. Only LADOT knows the real answer. Sharrows are cheap and quick, so it appears that instead of implementing what was approved, and instead of actually analyzing what treatments make sense for the bicycle network, LADOT is eager to fulfill the easiest quickest 40 miles they can do to fulfill the letter of the “build 40 miles a year” pledge, without actually paying heed to its intent of building out a network of safe comfortable places to ride.

But do the sharrows actually fulfill the letter of the pledge? The pledge includes the word “build” not the word “re-build.” If the city has a mile of existing bike route and it adds a mile of sharrows on that existing bike route, it still only has a mile of bike route. No new mileage has been added.

Re-doing existing mileage should not be counted toward the 40-mile pledge. If the city re-does the Westholme sharrows, or re-paints the Venice Boulevard bike lanes after a developer erases them, it doesn’t add any mileage to the bikeway network, hence it shouldn’t count toward a pledge to “build 40 miles a year.” The mayor’s pledge to “build” implies new mileage.

How much mileage did those October sharrows add to the city’s bike network? The city implemented 20 miles of sharrows in October 2011. According to the mileage listed in the city’s Bike Plan, 12 of these miles were already existing bike routes (see this spreadsheet for totals.) So the city’s ill-considered sharrows binge “built” only 8 miles of new bikeways (routes), and re-did 12 existing miles.

For this article, L.A. Streetsblog  acknowledges 8 new miles of bike routes, and does this begrudgingly (because, as explained above, based on the 5-Year Plan, the city approved implementing only 7.7 miles in 6 years, so 8 miles in 1 year still disrespects the approved plan and the process that lead to it.)

What has LADOT built since July 1st 2011?

As mentioned at the top of the article, the city has had a very productive six months for the start of FY2011-2012. With 12.46 new miles of bike lane built, it’s the most productive six months in at least 15 years, probably the most ever.

LADOT has completed their first bike lanes in Boyle Heights, Downtown L.A., Hollywood, Koreatown, and Westlake. While the majority of the projects have been straightforward, with no reduction in car lanes, a few have successfully reduced car lanes, and, in one instance, removed two blocks of San Fernando Valley curb parking. Inspired by Dutch ThinkBike sessions, the city has implemented its first significant buffered bike lane, and its first two pilot green-colored pavement projects.

While the process hasn’t been perfect, more than ever before for bike projects, LADOT has worked with Council Offices, Neighborhood Councils, the city Bicycle Advisory Committee, bike non-profit organizations including the L.A. County Bicycle Coalition, businesses, adjacent cities, and others – all resulting in new facilities being implemented with a minimum of backlash to date.

Since July 1st 2011, LADOT has completed the following bike lane projects, listed roughly in the order in which they were installed:

• Wentworth Street - Wheatland to Foothill 1.3miles (Shadow Hills)
• Woodley Avenue - Saticoy to Sherman 0.28 mile (Van Nuys)
• Jefferson Blvd - La Brea to La Cienega 0.99mile (South L.A.)
• 7th Street - Catalina to Figueroa 2.2miles (Westlake-Koreatown)
• 1st Street - Boyle to Lorena 1.6miles (Boyle Heights)
• Cahuenga Blvd - Odin to Yucca 0.6mile (Hollywood)
• Reseda Blvd - Roscoe to Parthenia 0.5mile (Reseda)
• Tuxford Street - Lankershim to Glenoaks 1.3miles (Sunland)
• Vermont Avenue  – Del Amo to Knox 0.54mile (Harbor Gateway)
• Spring Street - Chavez to 9th 1.5miles (Downtown)
• Washington Place - Albright to Grand View 0.77mile (Mar Vista)
• Chandler Blvd - Leghorn to Woodman 0.88 mile (Van Nuys)
• TOTAL 12.46miles COMPLETED BIKE LANES

According to LADOT reports, the following additional new bike lane projects are slated for implementation in the very near future, likely within the current fiscal year:

• Aviation Blvd – Imperial Hwy to Century 0.98mile (LAX – per Bike Plan Qrtly Report)
• Devonshire Street – Reseda to Hayvenhurst 2.49miles (Northridge source – per Bike Plan Qrtly Report)
• Foothill Blvd – Wheatland to Wentworth 1.5miles (Lake View Terrace – per Bike Plan Qrtly Report)
• Main Street – Grand Blvd to city of Santa Monica 0.9mile (Venice - per Bike Plan Qrtly Report)
• Main Street – 9th to 16th 0.7mile (Downtown – per DLANC website)
• Porter Ranch Drive – Rinaldi to Corbin 0.5mile (Porter Ranch – per LADOT website)
• Rose Avenue – Lincoln to 4th 0.47mile (Venice - per Bike Plan Qrtly Report)
• Vermont Avenue – I105 to 88th Street 2.1miles (South L.A. – per Bike Plan Qrtly Report)
• York Blvd – Avenue 55 to Figueroa 0.9mile (Highland Park - per Bike Plan Qrtly Report)
• TOTAL 10.54miles NEAR-FUTURE NEW BIKE LANES

All in all, based on what’s complete and what’s projected, the city of Los Angeles appears to be on track to reach a grand total of 31 new miles in its bikeway network in FY 2011-2012.

• Completed new bike lane mileage: 12. 46 miles
• Completed new bike route (sharrow) mileage: 8.04 miles
• Near-furure new bike lane mileage: 10.54 miles
• FY2011-2012 PROJECTED TOTAL BIKEWAYS BUILT:  31.04 miles

It’s a bit short of “build[ing] 40 miles a year,” but it’s a big improvement on past performance; and it’s making a significant difference in the commutes of Angelenos. While L.A. isn’t biketopia yet, bicyclists and drivers are seeing more new bike lanes and routes. The lanes make bicycling safer, and, overall, the infrastructure cues all road users to the fact that bicycling is legitimate and growing mode of transportation in Los Angeles.

Lastly, a gentle plea to Mayor Villaraigosa: if 31 new miles a year isn’t enough, and you really want to get to 40 new miles built this fiscal year, there are still quite a few relatively easy low-hanging-fruit bike lane projects out there awaiting implementation. Some are listed here. There’s still nearly six months left in the fiscal year.

Coming soon to a street near you? B-Cycle (pictured), Bixi and Bike Nation present in front of Metro headquarters. Photo: Dave Sotero/Metro

Will Los Angeles County have an integrated bike share system in the next five years?  Metro is taking the first steps to become a coordinator for bike share efforts already underway so that L.A. County could have one integrated bike share program instead of many local bike share systems.

Earlier today, Metro’s Planning and Programming Committee approved a bike share strategy for the agency that would create a mechanism for municipalities and cities to work together and create a county-wide bike share plan.   Metro’s bike share strategy needs to be approved by the full board before it becomes policy.

Cities that have bike share programs funded and on the way, such as Santa Monica, and that are hopeful to bring bike share at some date in the future, such as South Pasadena, attended the hearing to voice support for the motion.

Before the hearing, B-Cycle, Bixi, and Bike Nation put on a demonstration of what bike share is and how it works.  Through a bike share program, people can rent bikes at a docking station and ride it to another station located somewhere else.  Systems can be publicly or privately owned and sometimes require renters to be members of the bike share program.

Bike sharing systems have been installed in many of the most progressive cities around the country.  Modeled after Velib in Paris, France Washington D.C. is widely credited for having the first bike share program in America.  New York City will launch a large bike share program of its own later this year including a GPS program that will be used to inform transportation planning decisions.

Locally, Long Beach, Los Angeles and Santa Monica all have plans and funds set aside for bike share programs.  Los Angeles’ is mainly planned for the Downtown sometime in the next two years.  Long Beach has two phases planned, 160 bikes and 16 statsions within the next two and a half years with another 500 bikes and 50 stations coming in the next five years.  Santa Monica plans for 250 bikes and 25 stations in 2016 or 2017.

Above chart from handouts from today's committee meeting.

Los Angeles has larger plans for bike share, but the funds for that plan were won by the Community Redevelopment Agency, the embattled agency that will fold either by the end of the month or April 15.

Los Angeles has been discussing bringing bike share to Downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood since then Transportation Committee Chair Wendy Greuel attended the 2008 Democratic National Convention where Bikes Belong had created a temporary demonstration project to show delegates and elected officials what a bike share program could look like.  In July 2011, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky penned a motion for Metro to consider creating its own bike share program that led directly to today’s demonstration and committee vote.

Devin Petelski

Petelski’s death enraged communities in Venice, where she lived and worked, and Brentwood, where she grew up.  Residents marched on the Venice District Headquarters and distributed news and rumors via social media.  The LAPD has consistently caused the crash an “accident” and Elridge has faced no public discipline despite a $5 million settlement reached between the LAPD and Petelski’s family.

Why such a large settlement if Eldridge did nothing worthy of even a disciplinary action by the LAPD, then why the large settlement?  Times writer Joel Rubin, who sounds painfully even handed in his review of the case, gives two reasons.

1) Two witnesses who were behind Eldridge’s car claim he was going between 60-80 miles  per hour when the BMW pulled in front of the squad car.  The LAPD reports claim that the two gave different testimony at the crash site, clouding the LAPD’s crash report.

2) Every LAPD car has a “black box” that shows LAPD vehicle speeds in the 25 seconds before collisions.  LAPD claimed that they couldn’t get the black box to work after the crash.  But an independent contractor was able to get the box to work.  Unsurprisingly, it showed that Eldridge’s driving wasn’t quite what the LAPD was claiming.

According to the numbers retrieved from the on-board computer, Eldridge slowed nearly to a stop and then rapidly accelerated about 17 seconds before colliding with Petelski. With the gas pedal pressed to the floor and the engine throttle fully open, his speed climbed from 30 to 50 to 75 mph in a span of 10 seconds. About three seconds before impact — and a fraction of a second before Eldridge hit the brake — the car’s speed topped out at 78 mph.

The entire story tells a tale of a police agency that is sticking to its guns and defending one of its own. The entire story is worth a read, and a hat tip to Rubin and the Times for telling the tale.