(editor's note: The section with area specific data for Southern California isn't done yet.  When it is, we'll have a post specific to our region.  In the meantime, this statewide article prepared by Matthew Roth in San Francisco is a great read.)

California residents living in sprawling suburban developments could save billions of dollars every year if they lived in denser, urban zones and along transit corridors, according to a study released today by smart growth and transit advocates TransForm. Analyzing four metropolitan areas--Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, and Sacramento--Windfall for All found that shifting populations in those regions to denser development along transit corridors would save save $31 billion per year, or $3,850 on average per household [Report Summary PDF].

In the Bay Area, where annual car ownership costs on average over $8,000 per person, individuals spend roughly $34 billion every year on personal transportation costs, compared to only $4.6 billion spent by public agencies on transit and roads combined. Households with poor access to public transit not only spend double the amount per year on transportation when compared to those with good access to transit, they produce more than double the amount of CO2, a greenhouse gas.

"The most astounding thing is that agencies pinch their pennies on transit and cut back and we feel like we can't afford not to save that service," said Stuart Cohen, Executive Director of TransForm. "We're already spending more than seven times as much as our agencies spend on public transit and roads just on buying and operating our vehicles."

What's more, the report points out that fuel costs represent a small minority of the cost of owning a car, so the craze for electric and other low-emission vehicles will not dramatically reduce the transportation costs for those living far from their jobs and far from transit. The best solution to combating climate change, the report notes, is to build walkable, vibrant communities where residences are situated close to job centers. 

Click to enlarge: household CO2 from transportation in the Bay Area.

"By reducing public and private transportation costs and increasing revenues to local governments, SB 375 can help put dollars back in the pockets of consumers and local governments," said Cohen.

Windfall for All counters the claim that SB 375 will be too costly to implement during the current economic crisis with several examples of how planning denser cities and offering alternatives to private car travel can save money.

First, in Sacramento, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) created a 2050 development blueprint that forecasts current development patterns and compared them to smart growth patterns. SACOG found that Sacramento would save $9.4 billion in public infrastructure costs (transportation, utilities, water, etc), $655 million in annual residents' fuel costs and $8.4 billion less for land purchases to offset environmental degradation from sprawl. The city would also see a 300 percent increase in public transit use if the city clustered development around transit within an urban growth boundary.

Benefits of public transportation for household costs and pollution. Image: TransForm.

In the Bay Area, parking regulations are a significant impediment to dense development. In San Leandro, parking minimums of more than two parking spaces for each new home made dense development a planning impossibility. When San Leandro re-wrote its downtown plan, it rezoned to allow 3,400 new homes, more than seven times the limit under the old zoning laws. The first development in the new Downtown Transit-Oriented Development Strategy, The Alameda, designed by San Francisco Architect David Baker, saves $3.9 million by eliminating a level of parking and produces 30 more affordable units, according to the report.

Based on these and other case studies, Cohen suggested California should consider levying a climate impact fee on gasoline to generate enough money to expand public transit options and expand walkable communities while improving the economy and meeting ambitious greenhouse gas targets.

"Building our communities with the expectation that every driver in a family is going to have to own their own car is part of what is part of what is bankrupting families," said Cohen. "The infrastructure for the... roads and those patterns of growth is part of what is bankrupting our public agencies."

Windfall for All Critical Recommendations

• Integrate full economic analysis into planning. The huge dividends from efficient land use become evident once personal costs, not just public budgets, are considered. Without such analysis, we will continue to promote plans and policies that cost too much for families, businesses, and local governments.
• Provide cities and counties with an infusion of funds to engage the community in planning. The state should make funds available for updating zoning codes and parking policies to make more efficient use of land and resources. Identifying strategies to maintain and expand the number of affordable homes is also critical.
• Fund cost-effective public transportation. The state needs to provide leadership and restore funds for public transit, as well as make it easier for regions to raise new revenues with climate-impact fees. Economic analysis could determine whether such fees, if spent in ways that promote more efficient communities, can reduce our overall costs.
• Innovate, evaluate and replicate. There are dozens of innovative strategies – whether an individual program such as car-sharing, or a comprehensive rewards approach such as UC San Diego’s. MTC, the Bay Area’s transportation agency, will soon launch the first “Transportation Climate Action Program.” This program will seed, evaluate and replicate innovative programs. Other regions should follow suit.
• New development should minimize pollution from new residents – or pay to mitigate it. The San Joaquin Valley is encouraging efficient development from the start. New developments that don’t provide walkable communities with convenient transportation choices must mitigate the costs of the air pollution that will be generated by future residents. The state and regional air districts should encourage this same system for mitigating the costs of greenhouse gases.

When Chrysler asked the government for a second round of bailout money in February, it submitted a 177-page restructuring plan that vowed to usher in a new era of fuel-efficient vehicles at the famously gas-chugging automaker.

The chart above, taken from that restructuring plan, shows six models of electric and hybrid cars labeled "ENVI," the name of the company's cleaner-car unit. Chrysler told the White House it would apply "electric-drive technology ... across all three brands (Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep)," and touted its goal of putting 500,000 cleaner vehicles on the road by 2013. Some environmentalists invoked the news to suggest Chrysler should receive more taxpayer aid.

The Obama administration ultimately rejected Chrysler's plan as too weak, setting the stage for a bankruptcy filing and a new marriage with Fiat. But the government still holds a 10 percent stake in Chrysler and has little chance of recouping its billion-dollar bailout of the automaker -- which makes the company's decision to disband its "ENVI" unit all the more alarming to fuel-efficiency advocates.

"It's certainly a bad sign for Chrysler that they emerge from bankruptcy and immediately shift into reverse on clean cars," Dan Becker, founder of the Safe Climate Campaign, said in an interview. "It doesn't bode well for their future, and it's a terrible way to thank the American people for investing billions of dollars in their future."

Chrysler's about-face on cleaner cars was first reported by Reuters, which noted that Fiat chief Sergio Marchionne was knocking down Chrysler's 2013 cleaner-vehicles projections from 500,000 to 60,000. A company spokesman noted that electric vehicle development was not canceled outright but "absorbed into the normal vehicle development program."

Still, Chrysler's restructuring plan was not the only rosy prediction turned on its head. The company received $70 million in Department of Energy grants in August to produce hybrid pickup trucks and minivans, only to cancel that project this month.

"It's a sign of Chrysler being tremendously out of touch with where the market is going," Lena Pons, transportation policy analyst at Public Citizen, said in an interview. "They're going to find it difficult to compete without having at least the engineering capacity [to produce EVs]."

As we mentioned last week, there is reason for concern about the way the traditional media is covering the "bike v car" controversy in the wake of the verdict in the trial of Dr. Christopher Thompson.  Sometimes there is a soft bias, such as in the wording of the question in  today's "Question of the Day" by KABC and sometimes it is more pronounced on radio shows or other two-way communications.

The wording of ABC's question, "As a driver, do you feel safe when sharing the road with cyclists" implies both that cyclists are guests on the car's road and that cyclists pose a danger to people surrounded by several hundred pounds of metal.  In the wake of a jury trial where a driver was convicted of intentionally causing a crash that hospitalized two cyclists, this implication is especially insulting.  Considering that two of ABC 7's top six stories for today are of a driver killing a pedestrian in a crosswalk in Long Beach and of a driver crashing into a store front in Woodland Hills maiming a five year old girl; the question must come from someone who doesn't even watch ABC 7 to witness the devastation that out-of-control drivers, not cyclists, wreck on our streets.  Or maybe those crashes were just "accidents" unlike the intentionally unsafe conditions that cyclists bring every time they pedal onto car's streets?

Meanwhile, KPCC is giving cyclists a second chance to air our views on Larry Mantle's AirTalk show this Wednesday at 10:20.  Last week, Mantle tackled the Mandeville Canyon Crash, Trial and Verdict with a distinct pro-car bias.  You can read KPCC's announcement to their cyclists list after the jump.

Due to the intense interest in this topic and response to this week’s bicycle show, AirTalk with Larry Mantle will revisit the issue, this time with some expert guests. It’s set for 10:20 to 11 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 11. You can listen live on the air at 89.3 FM or online at  kpcc.org. We’ll have an archive of the broadcast available online after the show, and places on the show website for simultaneous comments, and to continue the discussion afterward.

Please feel free to pass the word. I’ll be e-mailing cyclists who are in the Insight Network an alert to the follow-up show. Also, anybody who wants to add their bicycle story and photo to our Insight Network of news sources is welcome to do so at this link: www.scpr.org/in/questions/bike

Thanks very much for making your voice heard on this issue.

Yesterday, cyclists concerned with the safety on their streets got a boost.  For many of us who have been harassed or threatened by uncaring and dangerous motorists, it was a relief to see that the system is capable of convicting one of the more outwardly-psychotic drivers out there.

But while the streets are safer without Dr. Thompson behind the wheel, they're far from safe.  Stephen Box noted in an article last month that Thompson's trial is far from the only one worth watching, and Box's article only touched on deaths involving cyclists.  There are dozens of other cases involving assaults on law-abiding pedestrians for every bike-related case.  Even with these cases moving, it's still more common for police to throw up their hands and say they can't do anything unless they witnessed the crash.  Or in some cases, they write a report without even looking at the physical evidence blaming the cyclist.

So even if these other court cases turn out well, there's still some education of law enforcement that is needed.

The other people that still need to be educated are the general public.  Scroll through any discussion of Christopher Thompson's assault on cyclists and you'll see a "blame the victim mentality."  They deserved it for shouting at the driver.  They deserved it for riding abreast.  They deserved it for being on a street built for cars.  These are all messages you'll read, even here, from Thompson's defenders.  That it's not illegal to shout, ride two abreast, take the lane or "bike on a street built for cars," doesn't seem to matter to these car-culture warriors.  All that matters is the couple of minutes of inconvenience these drivers have to suffer because of the cycling scourge.

Of course, this also needs to change.

So while we can relax a little that the deranged doctor is sitting behind bars, at least for now; there's still a lot of work to be done to educate law enforcement and drivers alike as to our rights and responsibilities on the road.  Yesterday was a good day, and not just because of the verdict. Tomorrow it's back to work.

Anyone that reads Streetsblog knows that one issue that makes this blog different than your run of the mill news source is that we have opinions on how a transportation system should and shouldn't be built.  Some people charge that this bias taints our writing.  Other times, it's clear that bias helps us ask questions that traditional journalists don't ask.  That is especially true when it comes to the dubious value of highway widenings.

For some reason journalists, even ones we enjoy reading because they challenge government officials more often than not, tend to believe government officials when it comes to the alleged "benefits" of widening a highway to relieve congestion.  One might think that in a region that has tried to widen itself out of congestion and failed miserably; that at some point the press would start asking, "Hey, does any of this make sense?"

If the coverage of the nearly $48 million widening of Route-91 from Route-241 to Route-71 in Orange and Riverside Counties is any indication, we haven't reached that point yet.

Today's Times features an article by the usually tough Ari Bloomekatz that reads more like a Caltrans press release than a story in the local paper of record.  The article begins by celebrating that some people's commutes are about to get easier and ends with some ideas for the next great place to widen.  Nowhere in the article is there any mention of "induced demand," "sprawl," or even an analysis of how much traffic and congestion will be created during the construction phase.

Here in the "biased" Livable Streets Blogosphere, we would take the time to point out that for some reason widening Southern California's freeways hasn't led to reduced commuting time and a sustainable transportation system.  We might also note that the theory of "induced demand," which is embraced by urban and state DOT's across the country, posits that new travel lanes will be filled by new traffic within a couple of years of being built.  In other words, the "improved commutes" for those traveling the I-91 won't be long-lived.  In fact, considering the congestion that will be created by a year of construction, OCTA planners can't even prove that there will be a "net gain" in congestion reduction.

Just in case you thought I was just picking on Bloomekatz, the Orange County Register had a similarly themed story last week.

When Vice President Joe Biden visited Minnesota's New Flyer bus company to tout the economic stimulus law's $8.4 billion investment in transit, hopes were high for a boom in cleaner-burning vehicle production -- which made for some bad press when the nationwide transit funding crunch forced New Flyer to lay off 13 percent of its workers.

But the recession hasn't dampened the economic potential of hybrid bus production, as the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) laid out today in a new report [PDF] on the industry. In fact, EDF found, transit bus companies share enough skills and regional foothold with the auto industry -- the map of bus makers pictured above could be mistaken for a map of automakers -- to pave the way for fuel-efficiency advances that would ultimately benefit all vehicles.

After noting that 32 percent of American transit buses do not rely on gas or diesel to run, today's report continues:

The bus industry serves as an important entry point for advanced vehicle technologies, especially in new vehicles that require refueling infrastructure and other major changes. For instance, since transit agencies have a well-defined base of centrally managed fleets, they are ideal for testing and proving plug-in hybrid and all-electric buses — thus leading the way for the passenger car industry.

While U.S. bus companies are well-positioned proving grounds for cleaner-burning vehicles, their export potential remains low, according to the EDF report. That's largely because the largest market for transit buses is China, where demand is expected to grow by 12 percent annually over the next decade -- double the projected growth rate in North America -- and where production standards are markedly lower.

"Emerging countries’ lower technology levels and standards appear to prevent them from competing in industrial country bus markets, while industrial countries’ higher production costs and standards appear to prevent them from competing in emerging country markets," EDF concluded.

Even so, there is a limited opening for bus supply companies to prosper on a global level. About 12,000 of Indianapolis-based Allison Transmission's 14,000 sales have come in China, and Firestone, which produces bus suspensions, has operations in China and India.

The passage of Metro's Long Range Transportation Plan last week has helped heat up a national conversation about Los Angeles, how it grows, how it moves and the future of our Metropolis.  Of course, Diane Meyer's "World Without a Car" exhibit has people locally thinking outside the auto; but others are picking up the conversation such as the Transport Politic and Think Progress' Matt Yglessias. However, that debate shows us one critical missing link in our transportation planning.

We still don't know how Angelenos move from place to place.  For the most part, we're still reliant on census figures that only ask about commuting trends, traditionally under-count people of lesser means and definately under-count immigrants.  Recently, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, in their most recent report on how the city is going to spend its Measure R funds, reported that combined, 3.6% of Angelenos commute by bicycle or by walking in Los Angeles based on figures provided by the Southern California Association of Governments.  Outside of major projects or reports that require them, the city does not do bicycle or pedestrian counts leaving planners reliant on bad statistics or guesswork based on personal observations and biases.

When commenting to the Council on the report, I wondered how 96.4% of people commute without walking at all; but of course I realize that they are referring to the dominant mode in the commute.  However, that number shouldn't be used as an excuse to under-fund pedestrian improvements.  After all, the city worker that drives from the Valley to the large parking lot to the West of City Hall is reliant on safe crossings to get from his car to the office, just as the dedicated pedestrian is reliant on a series of safe crossings to get from place to place.

But if the city is reliant on census figures that over-count the number of car-reliant transportation trips, then advocates for car alternatives are always going to be behind the game.  For example, my wife is a car commuter when she's not on maternity leave, but I would estimate that less than half of her total trips involve getting in her car.  Trips to the store, park, Farmer's Market, gym, and around the neighborhood are done on foot or on bike.  The census, the data source relied on by the city, completely discounts those trips because it only measures commuter trips.

What do you see? A city transportation study would see one van. Photo: aisipos/Flickr

The situation has become so dire that the Los Angeles County Bike Coalition has begun measuring its own bike counts, and news organizations have begun running their own polls to try and get a picture of what's actually happening on the street.  While a recent poll by the LA Downtown News' results were similar to those completed by City Planning, the unscientific method of asking one's readers how they commute, will certainly lead to those results being dismissed.

Speaking of City Planning, the process that created the new Downtown Street Standards included bicycle and pedestrian counts and those standards are amongst the most progressive ones in the county.  The standards promote bike lanes, sidewalk widenings and open space.  When an agency bothers to actually check what's happening, the results are planning documents that favor "non-motorized transportation."  For more on the street standards, listen to Streetsblog interview the Urban Design Studio's Emily Gabel-Luddy.

As the city moves forward with it's Bike Plan and other community plans, it's past time that it begins gathering data on it's own about the effected areas.  Relying on the census and the guesswork of engineers who have looked at their job as finding the best way to move cars is only going to lead to wider roads, unhealthy communities and a rising Car Culture, even as that way of planning wanes in the major cities around the United States.

(Photo: MetroDCLiving.com)

In its report today on the "unpriced consequences of energy production and use," the NRC was acting under a congressional mandate to map the health impacts of various energy sources. Climate change was not factored into the NRC's conclusions, but the report nonetheless had a grim tale to tell about transportation fuel consumption.

The NRC found that the manufacture and burning of fuel for U.S. cars and trucks produced $56 billion in external costs in 2005, the year that the report was requested. That hidden cost averaged between 1.2 and 1.7 cents per vehicle mile traveled, depending on the type of fuel used.

In discussing the relatively small difference between the external costs of conventional gas-burning autos and the costs of hybrids or electric vehicles, the NRC wrote:

Although operation of the [electric vehicles and grid-dependent hybrid vehicles] produces few or no emissions, electricity production at present relies mainly on fossil fuels and, based on current emission control requirements, emissions from this stage of the life cycle are expected to still rely primarily on those fuels by 2030, albeit at significantly lower emission rates.

In other words, hybrids and electric vehicles are still likely to consume serious amounts of coal -- at least until the nation adopts an effective renewable electricity standard. The NRC notes that "further legislative and economic initiatives to reduce emissions from the electricity grid could be expected to improve the relative damages from electric vehicles substantially."

At last week's meeting of the City Council Transportation Committee, LADOT's Alan Willis presented on the status that the DOT has made with the owners of the Greek Theatre, Hollywood Bowl, Coliseum, Sports Arena, former Olympic Auditorium and Dodger Stadium in getting these traffic attractors to pay for their own traffic officers. In response to the budget crisis, the city has cut the budget to pay for special event traffic and parking officers for their events from $6 million to $2 million.

While the reasons for this cut have less to do with transportation policy and more to do with budgetary reasons; it's good and overdue to see the city ending what is basically a subsidy for drivers. After all, now that these agencies are going to pay their own way on traffic control, they'll probably pass the real transportation costs of the event on to the people that drive to the venue. 

Naturally, the response from the media is that Carmageddon may be upon us.

The Times ran the understated headline "Los Angeles budget crisis' main event: gridlock" for an article that actually took pains to explain that the change would lead to a very small decrease in the number of traffic officers on the street.  KPCC called the effort to force private corporations to pay for their own traffic control a "bailout," before a detailed article on the loans and other moves made by the Council to support the LADOT.

As a matter of fact, only the Sports Arena is going to opt out of paying for city traffic control officers so fans of sports, theater and music won't see much of a change on the street, but may eventually see a change in the parking costs as agencies seek the easiest way to recoup the costs of the parking control officers.

Signaled out for special praise both at the Council meeting by Willis and in the Times article was the Los Angeles Dodgers who quickly struck a deal with the city that removed only one person from one intersection leaving three traffic control officers at that place.  Howard Suskin, speaking on behalf of the Dodgers, explains.

"We believe that working cooperatively with the department of transportation that we have a deployment plan that will have no interruptions," said Howard Sunkin, senior vice president of the McCourt Group, which owns the Dodgers. "The level of service at those intersections for our fans and our neighborhoods will continue."

It's too bad that commitment to their fans doesn't extend to transit users.  You may remember that the Dodgers refused to lift a finger to continue last season's free Dodger Shuttle bus service and even sneered at the city's efforts at a public event.

Photo: Duncan Rawlinson via The Last Minute Blog

(editor's note: Dr. Michael Cahn is a lecturer in book history at UCLA. There is also someone with the same name affiliated with some bike group in town, but that is another chapter.  This story has received very light editing on my part and is re-printed with no change in content to give you an honest feel for the author's view.  Streetsblog remains excited about the changes occurring in Long Beach and cautiously optimistic about the value of bike-sharing programs in L.A.'s future.)

In 2001, the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition released A Blueprint for a Bike-Friendly Los Angeles County. One specific demand outlined in this document was for Metro (MTA) to fund Bike Education and Promotion projects at five million dollars per Call For Projects (CFP) cycle. CFP is a competitive process through which METRO awards money for Transport Demand Management projects to cities and other agencies in the county.

The bicycle coalition realized ten years ago that the bicycle needs a firm place in the Transportation Demand Management (TDM) process which aims at reducing the number of Single Occupancy Vehicles on the road. Metro apparently saw this differently, and in the last few years, the Call for Projects process, despite some inspiring presentations by Todd Litman and Michael Woo, remains an arcane and bureaucratic process, from which the bicycle programs has been effectively excluded. The money is awarded only to a cities, and other agencies or non-profits are not admitted to the process. As it happens, this process puts bicycle work at a most serious disadvantage.

With the new SB 375 (editor's note: for more Streetsblog's coverage of SB 375 click here, here or here.) regulations around the corner, new expectations are being created that the elite of TDM experts can somehow reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions by a mighty 40% per a presentation by Metro's Michael Turner. But as long as the CFP process remains the same, the results are likely to remain the same, - small, little steps that actually get more people into one car; while Metro's Robin Blair sitting at the helm and encouraging us to be innovative, and start something new. I have seen him in this mode for two years now, and I am not happy with it. If you do not change the process, you will not change the results.

Which brings us to this year's Multi-Mobility Forum, a Metro-sponsored, invitation-only, event billed as a chance to work together in an effort to develop and implement effective multi-mobility strategies  in Los Angeles County. Calstart's Fred Silver delivered a compendium of Sustainable Community Transportation Strategies, in which the plain vanilla encouragement of cycling is suspiciously absent. We read about Ciclovia as a TDM strategy, and the old red herring called bike sharing.  Yeah, people don't bike because someone has forgotten to put in a bike sharing program? Exactly!

His list of 10 options flexible and easily inflateable and on one of his slides he brags about "20 to 30" options available. I don't care how the numbers go up, but if you don't fund simple bicycle encouragement programs, driven by cyclists, using cyclists, rewarding cyclists, then you are swimming with one arm only. Feels like drowning in cars?

William McCarthy from the School of Public Health has his affiliation misspelled on the program, but delivers a powerful reminder of the limited agenda of those TDM experts who work the transformation of Single Occupancy Vehicles to High Occupancy Vehicles and forget the body. He reminds us of the solid health benefits of the non-car friendly city. This public health expert is still stunned by the success of the anti-smoking movement, which became unstoppable when it focused on passive smoking. He exhorts the audience to lead the TDM work into a similar area: Stop focusing on the "sacrifice" of the driver, and start talking about damage created by car, and how to protect the whole community from it.

Then follow a few presentations by recipients of last years program. Jane Choi speaks for City of LA and Jay Kim for LADOT, both offering a compelling proof of how broken the Call For Projects process is. Both projects pretend to be studies of some kind, but not exactly by academic standards. Some strange and costly exercises which raise many questions and pretend to be useful for someone. Oh dear. Oh dear. I probably failed to get the point, but to me these "studies" seemed a sheer and utter waste of money. Painful, very painful, if you ever wondered how much it would cost you to get one friendly cyclist to convince and assist his colleague to try the bike on the way to work. Sterling work, just get it done, and don't waste my time with more studies which wait in vain in some drawers. Sitting in the 15^th floor, looking down on the broken landscape of what could be Los Angeles, tears come to my eyes as I see Jay Kim burning precious MTA dollars, compiling a list of difficult questions, instead of engaging cycling commuters, rewarding them for the encouragement work they all would love to do.

Then comes the City of Long Beach, dancing around some assumed and probably fraudulent attributes involving words like "most" and "bikefriendly". No doubt good things are happening there. But is this TDM money that is spent on encouraging cyclists? I am not sure. This matters, because we are here not to hear about sustainable transportation successes in Santa Monica (LUCE) or Santa Clarita, we are here to learn how Metro CFP will deal with the bicycle in the future. Or will they continue the habitual and all-Californian injustice of discounting the bicycle option right from the start. Injustice it is, and sheer stupidity, or something else I do not understand. Perhaps it is politics.

A strange and pathetic spectacle: Metro seems to encourage the multi-mobility audience to offer new programs, raise new options, but always knowing in advance what to do with the bicycle: Nothing. 30% of all trips are less than 5 miles, but METRO CFP somehow cannot support bicycle encouragement programs. A scandal for which I have not words. The drama is all in the person of Robin Blair, who presides over these proceedings as clown, sage and questioner, with a small band of ill trained soldiers. Has he invited us to teach us, to get our input, to feel the pulse of the time, to have a dialog with his own preconceptions? Has he invited us to remind us of the challenges of SB 375, so that we remind him of the exclusion of the unjust bicycle? Questions, questions.

How to improve the process? I'd say start with formalities and procedure. Make the invitation process public and put aside the old boys network of "you have been selected to participate." Inviting a distinguished speaker (McCarthy) two days before the event is striking proof how little importance Metro invests in serious TDM work. Circulate the program in advance of the event. Put it on the internet. Answer emails. This is good practice, but apparently very difficult at Transit Plaza. Even the speakers were left in the dark about the program and their time slot. This lacks respect and betrays the fatal arrogance of an institution which has grown too powerful. Be clear about what Calstart is doing in this process, and what their role is. Why is their logo on the program? Be clear about the nature of the event: Was that the "task force committee to develop the structure and objectives" for which an invitation was sent out in May 2009, and for which a meeting date was never divulged to the bicycle advocate who expressed an interest. Have we missed something?

On Wednesday evening, Zócalo will host an evening entitled "The Curse of Oil" at the Skirball Center and featuring a discussion with Peter Maass, New York Times Magazine writer and author of Crude World, all in a demonstration of sublime irony or in a ridiculous display of complete disconnect.

Zócalo has a tremendous track record for bringing brilliant guests and invigorating topics to the community, hosting films, discussions, panels and presentations in a wide variety of venues.

In honor of Wednesday's subject matter which will take a look at the unhappiness that oil-producing nations experience as a result of the oil production, from Nigeria to Venezuela to Angola, Zócalo has selected a venue that is inhospitable to those who elect to travel free of the "Curse of Oil!"

The Skirball Center is a wonderful facility but it is located in a location that is difficult to walk to, challenging to ride to, fairly inconvenient to those who travel by mass transit and is promoted with the promise of free parking. In other words, bring a motor vehicle. Burn some fuel, park for free, embrace the irony, gnash your teeth as we examine the injustice of oil production and then burn some more fuel to get home. Your awareness is all that is needed to change the world, not a shift in your behavior, just a wee bit of guilt as you tool down Sepulveda Boulevard in your fossil fuel burning motor vehicle.

Zócalo is a Spanish word that means Public Square. We know that LA is lacking in public space that would qualify as a "public square" but surely Zócalo could have done better, especially for a program that promises to "explore the consequences of gas-guzzling, the paradox of plenty, and how to cure our addiction to oil."

I love the Zócalo programming and have enjoyed a screening of The Garden at the Laemmle Music Hall, an evening with Tom Vanderbilt at the Actor's Gang, and panel discussions at the Central Library and at the Endowment Center, all easily accessible to those on foot, to those who ride bikes, to those who travel by mass transit and even to those who arrive in motor vehicles. The Zócalo Public Square is a wonderful organization and it hurts to criticize them, almost as much as it hurts to watch them commit the gaffe of the oil-addicted.

I expect this from City Hall, from our elected officials, from the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, even from the Metro but to have Zócalo host an event on oil-addiction and then host it in an environment that favors the oil-addicted and is inhospitable to the point of absurdity to those who dare to put down the oil is simply unacceptable.

Zócalo, meet us at One Gateway, the Endowment Center, Union Station. Offer transit passes instead of free parking, host this event at a venue with a well lit sidewalk that encourages pedestrians. Make it a standard to host your events at locations with bike parking. Stop with the free auto parking and walk toward the light!

Santa Monica's AltCar Expo made it crystal clear, from a distance and in the parking lot, "The Car is King" and all else receives a token gesture and comes in a distant second.

I attended the 4th Annual AltCar Expo misunderstanding the concept and expected to find "Alternatives-to-the-Car" at the Expo, thinking that the promise of "Alternative Fuel and Transportation" would entail some shift in the auto-centric focus but I was wrong.

Attendees to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium event were promised cheap parking and upon arrival were greeted with abundant opportunities to test drive "alternative-cars" including automobiles that ran on electricity, hydrogen, cooking oil, good intentions and high-hopes. People lined up as beautiful men and women plied them with data and promises and assurances that by driving these beautiful "AltCars" they would seriously change the world. Immediately.

Hidden behind a bus and a large truck and at the very back of the parking lot was an area reserved for the "Alternatives-to-the-Car" such as the Segway, the electric bicycles and other options that were obviously secondary and obligatory and not even close to worthy of headliner status. Such was the priority of the Expo.

The LA Greensters, Hollywood's first all pedal powered transpo team, had a "double-wide" booth which Ron "the Sherpa" Durgin and Jeremy Grant turned into Park[ing] Booth, recreating the park that the LOAD[ing] Zone team hauled across LA as part of the Park[ing] Day LA celebration. Park[ing] Booth screened videos including Reel Sustainable, a documentary about sustainable film production, Park[ing] Day LA and the Crenshaw Crush, a Greenster organized discovery bike ride in the Crenshaw District.

We had a great time in "the Annex" and the folks that stopped by Park[ing] Booth were tickled to hear of the LA Greensters, the see the Xtracycles on display and to hang out in the Park[ing] Booth and to watch videos that demonstrated that the bike was a serious option for moving gear, for shopping, and for all of the basic transportation needs that come up in a community.

Bravo! All the congestion but without the pollution.

I took a lap to get the lay of the land and then I took a much slower lap and once I had dispensed with the automobiles, I found several non-vehicle booths tucked into the main room. The Clif Bar booth is always a favorite and although I was a wee bit jealous that they were in the main room while the LA Greensters were in "the Annex", I was happy to take advantage of their wares.

I came across a booth that featured a motor vehicle and I almost slipped right by until I realized they weren't promoting the vehicle but were instead washing it without using water. The Lucky Earth company sells a non-toxic, dye free, cleaning solution that is sprayed on your dirty vehicle and with a "spritz, spritz" and a "wipe, wipe" leaves behind a sparkling clean car with no wasted water. When my mild interest was met with an offer of a bottle, I declined and explained that I had no car to wash. They immediately switched bottles and gave me "Bike Wash" demonstrating very clearly that if these people were hosting the Metro's booth, there would be more people riding mass transit.

Lemonade, the catering company, got in the swing of things and enticed the "green" crowd to pay more for less by positioning a large poster at the beginning of the lounge that dramatized the impact of methane vs. the impact of auto emissions, positioning guilt as the appetizer for the vegan-fare that served as penance for the supplicants.

Lest there be any confusion, let me clarify, Ed Begley Jr. is still the reigning Rock Star of the Green Revolution and there were two booths proudly displaying a life-sized cutout of Ed, demonstrating that there are two kinds of green products on the market. Those that enrich Ed and those that don't. Ed was selling a system that reduced "phantom-power" waste and promised to reduce utility bills by 25% and Ed was selling a water system that promised to provide clean water. It was good to see Ed and I thoroughly enjoyed his water, especially since it was delivered in a cup that appeared to be plastic but was actually made from corn starch and was bio-degradable. I was thirsty so I drank a few glasses of water but I drank quickly, worried that the cup would start to fade on me as I drank. It all worked out and I was again in Ed's debt!

It was quickly apparent that there were three "castes" at the AltCar Expo with the "Alternative Car" in first position, the "Green Products and Services" in second position and the "Alternatives to the Car" in third position. Once I was clear on the lay of the land and on the structure, I settled in and simply invited folks to visit the "Annex" which I rebranded as the "VIP" room and things picked up accordingly at the Park[ing] Booth.

Sometime during the afternoon on Friday, I noticed an increase in the number of "men in suits" making repetitious laps around the facility and it dawned on me that it was time to go into "Guv mode." We tidied up our booth and repositioned our selves, spreading out and putting DJ Chickenleather in a lead position, now very grateful for the Lucky Earth bike wash!

Sure enough, just as the Expo closed to the public and just as the staff for the Metro, the Big Blue Bus and all of the other "clock in an go to work in a booth" folks had left the Expo Hall, a dozen large black vehicles pulled up and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped into the Main Room of the AltCar Expo and the show began. Booth by booth, car by car, the Guv strolled through the Expo, surrounded by an entourage that started off as a group of individuals but within minutes had taken on amorphous qualities and began to move an a singular entity featuring the head of the Guv and then two dozen feet, two dozen hands and a half-dozen cameras flashing at regular intervals.

Governor Schwarzenegger visited every booth featuring a car, a generator, a battery, a cable, and anything else related to moving motor vehicles, demonstrating the traditional commitment to the personal motor vehicle and the complete disconnect from the larger challenge of getting people out of cars and of providing transportation alternatives. The Governor spent close to an hour visiting the booths in the main room and he was methodical, almost Austrian, in his up-down, back and forth, survey of the AltCar Expo. Then the pace quickened and it was apparent that the Governor's visit was ending and the entourage headed toward the exit.

In a demonstration of the disproportionate energy and attention that is dedicated to traditional auto-centric transportation vs. alternative transportation, Governor Swarzenegger spent 55 minutes looking under the hoods of electric and hydrogen vehicles and two minutes talking alternative transportation. Of course, I'm grateful for those two minutes, especially because he spent them talking to the LA Greensters!

As the Yukons outside idled and Santa Monica's air quality dipped, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was introduced to the LA Greensters, Hollywood's first all pedal-powered transportation team, featured in Reel Sustainable, the documentary that asks the hard question, "Can Hollywood produce films sustainably?" The LA Greensters demonstrated that the answer is yes by hauling all grip and electric, camera and audio gear on Xtracycles and with trailers, supporting the full shoot from shopping at farmers markets to all production runs, using only bicycles.

The Governor smiled and nodded, said "Great!" and I'm convinced that for a moment he contemplated ditching the entourage and instead hanging out with the LA Greensters. Maybe next time!

Tomorrow and Sunday will mark the Fourth AltCar Expo & Conference in Santa Monica.  Admission is free and directions can be found on the AltCar's website.

In 2007, I went to the AltCar Expo in Santa Monica and reviewed it for Street Heat in one of my first posts and first ventures into transportation reform in Los Angeles.  While I won't be going to this year's for the obvious reason, watching the growth of the Expo from a neat demonstration of car toys to a more balanced look at alternative transportation has been interesting over the past couple of years.

True, this year's Expo will feature the usual "green" car-show and a bevy of speakers extolling the virtues of "green" driving; but it is also increasing the presence of non-vehicular transportation at the Expo.  A welcome sign that AltCar can mean "alternatives to the car" as much as "Alternative Cars."

If you have a chance this weekend, and you're not too busy going to see Crude or hanging out with David Byrne, the Expo can be a good, fun and informative way to spend some time.  I'm not sure if any of next week's freelancers are planning on taking a stab at reviewing the Expo, but if anyone wants to put their thoughts to paper please drop me a line at damien@streetsblog.org.

The extraordinary documentary movie Crude is showing in Santa Monica this week. It's a compelling portrait of epic legal struggle by indigenous peoples in Ecuador to force Chevron/Texaco to clean up the toxins left behind from decades of oil extraction in the Amazon rainforest.

Streetsblog generally focuses on the local impacts of our car culture (and the hopeful stories of greener transportation alternatives.) Crude tells part of the other end of the story of car culture. Excessive reliance on automobiles doesn't just pollute, disrupt, kill and maim locally; it poisons the peoples, the lands, the rivers and watersheds of peoples from Ecuador to Nigeria to the Middle East.

Crude features some famous faces - Ecuadorean President Rafael Corea and even rockstar Sting - but the real inspirational hero of the story is Pablo Fajardo, the resourceful Ecuadorean lawyer behind the case. Due to Fajardo and his team's efforts, the courts have recommended $27 Billion in damages, but Chevron is still dragging things out.

Catch Crude on the big screen this week, and redouble your efforts to minimize your dependence on oil.

Billionaire Ed Roski seems bound and determined to give those people opposed to the construction of a new stadium to lure an NFL team back to Greater Los Angeles plenty of cause for concern.  Recently, Roski's lobbyists have been pushing Sacramento law makers to grant exemptions from environmental and planning requirements for his mega-stadium project in the City of Industry.

Roski apparently feels that his stadium is such a pressing need, that an NFL team is just chomping at the bit to move to Los Angeles, that the stadium needs an exemption from the City of Industry's General Plan and from the state's CEQA requirements.  A quick search of sports websites such as ESPN.com and NFL.com reveals absolutely no buzz about an NFL team planning to move or the NFL planning to expand by adding more teams.

The reaction to Roski's proposed environmental dodge has been a mix of in-credulousness to outrage.  Heck, even the L.A. County Board of Supervisors  found time to pass a resolution against the plan.  However, the leading voices against Roski's end round come from the environmental community.  The NRDC's David Petit demolishes the argument that they need an environmental exemption because those sort of pesky things just slow up the process.

And yet, development projects are completed all the time in California.  The CEQA process is not just a paperpushing waste of time:  it can improve projects, as we have seen repeatedly at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. 

Nearly every law carries with it the possibility of meritless litigation.  Should the civil rights laws be abolished because some losing cases are filed?  

Equally troubling is that the request for special treatment for the City of Industry stadium  is being pushed in the last week of the California legislative session, with a joke of a public "hearing" that only Capitol insiders will be able to attend.  Why the sudden rush? 

Also picking up a sword against Roski's misdirection was the Times, which editorialized against the proposed in today's paper.

Exempting the stadium from state environmental review would cut the public out of the process and free the developer from having to mitigate serious environmental consequences. The project would still be subject to review by the city of Industry, but things like traffic and air pollution don't confine themselves to one city; streets and freeways in the vicinity would almost certainly be jammed on game days, for example, and surrounding cities have a right to participate in decision-making and demand action to reduce the problems.

Back in February, Streetsblog discussed some of the protections that would be needed to protect communities from a traffic crush that would result from game day or other special event traffic created by a 75,000 seat stadium and accompanying parking lot.  Included in our suggestions were the creation of a feeder bus network, a traffic plan that protects the local streets of the surrounding communities and a plan to support transit options with a public relations and ticket sales campaigns.  It's highly doubtful any of these options would get serious consideration without an environmental review forcing the developer to face the issue.

The good news is that these types of proposals, the ones that are aimed at reducing public involvement, only grow in the dark recesses of Sacramento.  Thanks to the multiple efforts to shine light on Roski's feint, it is unlikely the legislation will get introduced, heard and passed tomorrow; the deadline for new legislation. 

However, we'll be keeping our eyes open in Sacramento and thanks to stadium backers announcing that their nervois about the stadium's environmental reviews we'll be sure to keep an eye on their plans as they move through the process.

When asked what value they would place on every 15 minutes sliced from their daily commute, 36.5 percent of CPI respondents said between $10 and $20. That's about five times the recent trading price of a ton of carbon emissions on the nation's climate-change exchanges.

And the price of a shorter commute was higher in more congested cities. In Los Angeles, 22 percent of residents said every 15 minutes not spent en route to work would be worth between $31 and $40 -- or more than $100 per hour.

What does the data mean? For one thing, those who fear that voters would revolt if asked to pay more for a more efficient, less congested transport network shouldn't let that stop policy-making. As every successful politician knows (and the president is re-learning on health care), messaging is the key to winning over the public.

In other words, Democrats who feign unwillingness to subject voters to higher gas taxes are ignoring their ability to control the message. When a greater contribution to transportation is pitched as a way to shorten commutes and give workers more free time, the prospect becomes more desirable.

And it's not that lawmakers don't know how to decrease congestion, particularly in the urban areas that were polled to produce the CPI. Reducing the number of car trips and lowering demand during peak travel times are proven to be a cheaper and more effective method of battling congestion than expanding highway capacity.

Ron Bloom, the president's top manufaturing adviser. (Photo: AP via HuffPo)

The bailout legislation approved in October allowed Treasury to take over "troubled assets from any financial institution," but provided for a very broad definition of the term.

That "ambiguity about congressional intent," the oversight panel stated, helped ensure that "Treasury has faced no effective challenge to its decision to use [bailout] funds for this purpose [of rescuing automakers]."

Media coverage of the report has focused on the panel's finding that GM and Chrysler would have to post an unprecedented financial turnaround in order to fully repay obligations to the government.

But the oversight panel isn't alone in concluding that taxpayers have a slim chance of recovering all their investments in the auto industry -- Ron Bloom, President Obama's chief manufacturing adviser, agrees.

From a footnote in the oversight panel's report:

During a meeting with Panel staff on August 11, 2009, Mr. Bloom explained that it was possible but unlikely that taxpayers would recover all of the money they had invested in Chrysler and General Motors. Mr. Bloom has acknowledged that “likely scenarios involve a reasonable probability of repayment of substantially all of the government funding for new GM and new Chrysler, and much lower recoveries for the initial loans.”

Those initial loans, the panel explained, are the $23.4 billion lent by Treasury to the pre-bankruptcy incarnations of the two struggling car companies.

So now that U.S. taxpayers have an inescapable stake in GM and Chrysler, what conditions should they expect the government to impose on the automakers?

The oversight panel, led by Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren, urges Treasury to refine its multitude of potentially conflicting objectives for the auto bailout into a specific set of goals -- and provide that long-overdue legal justification for the $81 billion rescue.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), the only panel member to dissent from okaying today's report, released his own hard-hitting recommendations. One of them touches on issues of great concern to environmentally motivated bailout critics:

The management of Chrysler and GM should provide the American taxpayers with a quarterly business plan that addresses, without limitation, the following challenging issues:

• Without a growing SUV market, how do Chrysler and GM plan to compete against the Asian and European manufacturers who have all but perfected the design and manufacture of well-built, fuel efficient cars? ...

• How do Chrysler and GM plan to develop the design and technical expertise necessary to build vehicles with the fit-and-finish and price-point of, for example, a Honda Accord or Civic or a Toyota Camry or Corolla, not to mention a Toyota Prius?
  

Chrysler's statement to the panel offers an illuminating answer to Hensarling's first question. According to the company's proprietary surveys, "Americans feel that fuel prices will be, on average, $2.89 per gallon in one year and $4.50 in five years."

Ted Rogers, who's Biking In LA blog should be required reading for L.A. cyclists, has discovered a plot in the Valley to take out a Bike Lane on Resedal Blvd., along with street parking, to double the car-capacity of the road at rush hour.  Apparently, traffic engineers in the West Valley Department of Transportation decided that not enough cyclists use the lane to justify its existance. 

Remember, the City of Los Angeles doesn't do bike counts, so how the engineers know this lane is being used by "one or two cyclists" is a mystery. Rogers explains that as normal, the LADOT is still showing the public outreach that led to such spectacular results with the Pico-Olympic plan:

According to BAC Chairperson Glenn Bailey, it only came to light when bike planning engineers tried to coordinate with the West Valley traffic engineers about long-standing plans to add another three miles of bike lanes, and eventually extend the current bike lane the full length of Reseda Blvd.

Instead, they were told not to waste their time. The WVDOT had already overridden those plans in order to create Peak Hour Lanes along Reseda Boulevard — meaning that all on-street parking will be banned during peak hours.

As a result, the three miles of planned bike lanes, which would have run next to the parking lane, were no longer under consideration. And a full two miles of the existing bike lanes on both sides of the road between Van Owen and Ventura Boulevard would have to be removed.

Tonight at 7:00 P.M. the LADOT is sponsoring a motion in support of their plan at the Northridge West Neighborhood Council at 7p, in the auditorium of Beckford Avenue Elementary School, at 19130 Tulsa Street in Northridge.  Bailey and Rogers are doing their best to get the word out on tonight's meeting and the LADOT's newest attempt to move as many cars as quickly as possible.

But why should cyclists even car?  If the LADOT is to be trusted, then the lane isn't fully utilized anyway and as has been referred to as "lame" by other activists?  First, the precedence of removing a bike lane is a bad and dangerous one for a city that already treats like annoying insects.  Remember the resistance formed last summer when the LAPD was considering closing one of the gated entrances to the Ballona Creek Bike Path?  Cyclists in Los Angeles have gotten pretty good at playing defense when the city is ready to rip up bike amenities.  It's too bad the city hasn't figured out a way to funnel our energies into supporting good projects instead of fighting bad ones.

Photo of a BID Bike crushed in a crosswalk sent after this story was first published by Stephen Box.

Last Sunday while biking through the Downtown I noticed the LA Business Improvement District's "Purple Patrol," those cyclists with the purple shirts and black pants charged with keeping the Downtown safe and clean, rode as close to the curb as possible, even if it meant weaving back and forth where cars were parked, crossing intersections in the crosswalk before weaving back into traffic and even positioning themselves in right-hand turn lanes at signaled intersections before crossing when the light turned green.  I observed this same behavior from three different members of the Purple Patrol during my slow ride through the Downtown.

None of this behavior is illegal, save for the one incident of a Purple Patrolman crossing the street in the right hand turn-lane, but the constant weaving stands in stark contrast to what I've learned in safe bicycle courses which is to "take the lane" and "hold the line."  The constant weaving is much more likely to create confusion with drivers, and if it hasn't happened yet, I worry that a crash is inevitable if this is common practice for the Purple Patrol.

But the most egregious example of bad behavior came from a driving instructor.  After a car with "STUDENT DRIVER" announced loudly on the back cut me off by making a left-hand turn well after the arrow had turned red, I caught up with the instructor at the next light and asked him why he thought that was an appropriate thing to teach a new driver.  After calling me an expletive, the instructor told me to "look it up" and that making a turn after the arrow turned red was perfectly legal.

The state of driver safety education in Los Angeles worries me if driving teachers are encouraging their students to run red lights.  While the Downtown LAPD has a pretty poor record enforcing traffic laws on everyone except pedestrians, it's chilling to get told off by a safety instructor for questioning the running of a red light.

The corner of Victory and Alameda in Burbank. Photo: BikerScooby/Flickr

CBS News reports (with video) that business owners along Victory Boulevard in Burbank opened their shops on Monday morning to a bad surprise.  The curb in front of their stores was painted red, as the city had banned street parking for several blocks to increase the boulevard's capacity for left hand turns.  The city gave shop owners less than 24 hours notice before removing the parking, in possible violation of a recent Los Angeles County Superior Court Ruling, causing an outcry from an already struggling business community.

In May of 2008, when the debate over the fate of the Mayor's Pico-Olympic Plan was at its hottest, a Superior Court Judge ruled that the City of Los Angeles needed to do an environmental study of the effects on eliminating street parking before moving forward with the plan to increase capacity on the two thru-fares at rush hour.  The judge specifically noted the poor public outreach done by LADOT and the City, an outreach campaign that looks like a model for good government next to Burbank's.

Somewhere, Jack Weiss, the former Council Member who was the sole backer in that legislative body for the Mayor's Pico-Olympic Plan, has to be wondering why he didn't think of just repainting the roads and seeing what happened.  Shocked that removing parking could cause such an outcry, the city engineer has already admitted that the public outreach "could have been better" and the City Council is already working on fixes.  I guess the City of Burbank's traffic engineering department doesn't have access to the Internet or any other way to do ten minutes of research to see how similar plans have fared in the past.

Don't worry, Streetsblog hasn't suddenly become an advocate for free street parking for the sake of businesses, but to ignore the impact that removing parking can have to basically, do it and say "deal with it," is bad policy no matter how you slice it.  Yes, I would write the same thing if they had taken the parking to put in bike lanes and not add vehicular travel capacity.