Streetsblog Los Angeles

To maintain and operate it's transportation infrastructure, California needs a massive investment in the next decade. Photo Caltrans

One of the things I do each year is read the California Transportation Commission Annual Report. I find it a useful snapshot of policy and operation issues for transportation in California. Intriguingly the 2011 Report’s introduction mentions a statewide transportation needs assessment the Commission released late last year. Over 10 years ago the Commission undertook a similar assessment in response to legislation (Senate Resolution 8 [1999]). That document has withstood the test of time and years after it was issued I would see it still being cited in media coverage of transportation funding needs for California.

The rationale for the new assessment is laid out in the introduction:

The goal of this report is to detail what is needed for California’s transportation system and how we can pay for it. The report, therefore, allows transportation agencies and stakeholder groups to provide a consistent message to decision makers on these important subjects.

One of my first thoughts was this effort may have been what the Governor had in mind when he vetoed creation of the Blue Ribbon Committee last year.

Certainly the magnitude of the need and the challenges the state shortfall in transportation investment presents are daunting:

The total cost of all system preservation, system management, and system expansion projects during the ten-year study period is nearly $538.1 billion. Of this total, the cost of system preservation projects (both rehabilitation projects and maintenance costs) during the study period is $341.1 billion. It should be emphasized that the costs for system preservation contained in the report are based on the goal of meeting accepted standards that would bring transportation facilities into a “state of good repair” within the tenyear study period. These goals would lead to higher levels of investment in system preservation than are typically reflected in existing transportation plans and capital improvement programs.

The cost of system management projects and system expansion projects over the same period is estimated at $197 billion.

Quietly the Commission has been reaching out over the past few months to key stakeholders such as Mobility 21 and the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). In January the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee held an informational hearing

The Associated General Contractors in testimony before the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Transportation expressed support for the assessent’s findings. Read more…

Glendale PLACE Grant Coordinator Colin Bogart shows off the new tri-lingual pedestrian safety markings at an intersection adjacent to Glendale City Hall.

This week’s series on the grants from the L.A. County Department of Public Health’s Policies for Livable and Active Communities and Environments (PLACE) Grants focuses on Glendale and their groundbreaking Safe and Healthy Streets Plan.

Glendale’s grant was different than most because it wasn’t the city that was actually awarded the grant, but the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC). The LACBC and the city worked together on the grant application. We’ll discuss the unique collaboration between the LACBC and Glendale tomorrow. On Friday we’ll discuss some of the physical changes that have happened over the last three years and that are currently underway.

Today, we’ll focus on Safe and Healthy Streets, the planning document passed unanimously by the city in June and how their plan sets a new bar for clean and green transportation planning in Los Angeles County.

For their part, the City of Glendale professes confidence and optimism that Safe and Healthy Streets will bring a change to the city’s transportation grid.

“People in Glendale are really frustrated by our record on traffic safety,” provides Mayor Laura Friedman. “It’s a way to get a grip on traffic safety in the city, and it’s probably the most cohesive effort we’ve ever had.”

The Baseline: Glendale knew it had a problem and was open to change.

When she first joined the City Council, Laura Friedman (pictured above) pushed for bike parking at City Hall. Now the City's racks are partially filled everyday by staff with a few spots held for visitors. The LACBC's Jen Klausner calls the racks "beautiful."

By its own admission, Glendale was in desperate need for a new approach to transportation planning. The unintended consequences of a transportation network that emphasized moving cars can be seen in the statistics. In Glendale, approximately 17.4% of adults (age 18+) are obese as are approximately 15.8% of children. An additional 46. 2% of adults and 17.9% of children are overweight. Many of Glendale’s health problems could be solved by a transportation system that emphasizes “people powered” transportation, but for years they weren’t ready to make the change. In 2008, almost 40% of adults in Glendale engage in minimal to no physical activity and 66.4% of adults drive to go on an errand less than one mile from their home. Read more…

In 2008, Bruins for Traffic Relief Rallied for the Measure R transit sales tax which despite earning nearly 70% of the vote barely passed. New legislation seeks to lower that threshold from 67% to 50%.

A series of amendments proposed by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) to SB 791 would lower the threshold of voter approval for new taxes to fund transportation improvements from 67% to 50%.

“SB 791 empowers local communities to meet their local transportation needs, improve regional mobility, and invest in high-priority, job-creating infrastructure improvements,” said Sen. Steinberg.

News of this change broke over the weekend, and already transportation groups such as the Bay Area’s TransForm are already providing Action Alerts for Californians to contact their representatives in Sacramento.

The anti-congestion charge, in the form of per gallon fees on fuel paid at the pump, could be used to fund transit, bike and pedestrian projects, toll lanes, and the safety and maintenance of state highways and bridges. The charge would be levied on the sale of gasoline and diesel fuel and, for electric cars, on vehicle registration, and could be implemented for up to 30 years.

Revenues could pay for transit capital, operations and maintenance; bicycle and pedestrian programs and projects; programs and projects that would demonstrably reduce the growth in vehicle miles traveled (VMT); conversion of carpool lanes to toll lanes; and improvements “relative to the maintenance, safety and rehabilitation of state highways and bridges.”

“Almost half of California’s greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation,” said Warner Chabot, CEO of the California League of Conservation Voters. “SB 791 will provide Californians with better transportation choices. It will lead to fewer cars on the road and will greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This bill is an environmental milestone.”

As we’ve seen with other proposals that would allow expansion of transit, bicycling or pedestrian networks, there is unity between environmental groups, organized labor and business leaders when it comes to supporting “pro-transit” ballot initiatives. Read more…

The Leimert Park model is a thought provoking interactive diorama of this community that the public can use as tool to facilitate their urban planning ideas and fantasies for transportation, open space, housing, architecture and design.

Crenshaw Boulevard gets the Rojas Treatment. To see more pics from the Leimert Park model, visit the Latino Urban Forum Flickr Page.

Through creating this model I was able to explore the unique topography, vide, and urban form of Leimert Park, which is located in South L.A., nestled at the base of Baldwin Hills and located at the intersection of two diagonal streets Crenshaw and Leimert Boulevards.

The model captures the community’s majestic topography, and street pattern laid out by the Olmstead Sons whose father built Central Park in New York in the 1920’s. The diagonal streets crisscross with the grid to give a very unique pattern not found in many L.A. neighborhoods.

I highlighted the streets, landmarks, and the median islands with their tall trees, and other geographical features that visually define and create Leimert Park.

As an art piece I added some urban design interventions for creative thinking and provoke a response from the community. This also establishes the diorama as an art piece and not just a replica of the community. Read more…

A station in need of improvement. To see the Sierra Club's ideas on how, click on the image.

If you’re looking for a vision for a sustainable transportation plan for the Downtown Stadium, you shouldn’t look to politicians or even AEG executives.  A group of Sierra Club activists, led by Jerard Wright Angeles Chapter Transportation Committee Co-Chair, have outlined a transportation plan that would fulfill AEG’s claims that Farmers Field will encourage more sustainable transportation options than a rival stadium plan in the suburban City of Industry.

The key to providing real rail transit options is a series of major upgrades to the existing station at Pico and 12th, a rail station that in the Wrights’ words, is a “20 year old station that looks like it’s 50 years old.”  The Sierra Club’s presentation asks for the environmental documents for the stadium to include major upgrades to the Pico Station, bike facilities at the events center and nearby facilities, and streetscape upgrades that actually encourage transportation uses.

“Win or lose this is something AEG needs to do,” Wright said referring to the impacts Staples and L.A. Live are having on the already stressed transit station, “If we’re really serious about making L.A. a transit city, this is one way to do that.”

The first step to creating a great transportation plan for Farmer’s Field is to recognize the importance of the Pico Station.  Currently, the station serves only the Blue Line (and soon the Expo Line) and it’s still overcrowded after Lakers games.  An NFL Stadium can hold nearly four times as many people as Staples Center, so even if the Regional Connector is years away and plans for a Downtown Streetcar are sketchy, the station will need major upgrades just to handle the demand for the Blue Line.  Once the Connector is built, the station will be a hub of activity on game day as fans will be able to access the entire Metro rail system from one stop. Read more…

One slide from TransForm's Stuart Cohen's presentation yesterday. You can download the entire presentation here.

Streetsblog readers are likely at least somewhat familiar with many of the  connections between health and transportation; conference speakers explored those connections, with an emphasis on their impacts on underserved communities of color. This equity/transportation/health dialog was then tied into calls for action on local, state and federal campaigns.

After an introduction from CPEHN’s Ruben Cantu, speakers got underway with a presentation from TransForm‘s Stuart Cohen. TransForm is the kind of San Francisco Bay Area group that Los Angeles’ livability advocates should be jealous of - and should emulate. TransForm advocates for transit, walking, biking – focusing from local to regional to statewide. Cohen outlined trasportation/health connections, including somewhat familiar statistics: rising rates of obesity nationwide, declining rates of walking and biking to school. And some not as familiar: inadequate transit as a healthcare access issue (folks miss their clinic appointments when it’s difficult to walk or take transit to get there – more info here.)

Cohen expressed optimism over current initiatives from the Great Communities Collaborative to SB375 (CA’s greenhouse gas legislation), but stressed that strong coalitions, centered on health and equity, will be critical to success. Cohen also stressed that respected health professionals can be key in selling livability: when an environmentalist testifies about greenhouse gases, it’s generally not as effective as when a physician or nurse testifies about childhood obesity.

Next was a “panel of fierce women” (Ohland’s description) featuring Los Angeles based efforts toward transportation, equity and health – all of which have been covered at L.A. Streetsblog. Panelists included: Read more…

All sorts of cities are embracing the "Great Streets" concept. Here, Jacksonville announces plans for a Great Street in their Downtown.

On Tuesday night, a group of urban planners, transportation engineers, and public health advocates convened at Metro headquarters to preview the fruits of an intensive two-day labor. Led by design consultant Ryan Snyder, this team of local and national experts had been working in Los Angeles to create a new and visionary streets manual for the streets of Los Angeles County.

Their effort was backed by a grant from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, through its RENEW initiative. Standing for “Renewing Environments for Nutrition, Exercise and Wellness,” the program aims to improve public health by making our neighborhoods more conducive to healthy and active lifestyles.

The presentation kicked off with an introduction from Ryan Snyder. He quickly got to the fundamental question: “Why do we need a new streets manual?” According to Snyder, the manual is the DNA of our streets, and it defines everything from where to place bike lanes to how wide a roundabout should be.

Seasoned Streetsblog readers know all too well that our current manuals make it hard to create road treatments that encourage safety and access for all road users. Snyder described those old manuals has creating streets that are “ugly and difficult to cross,” and “not something my grandmother could cross easily, nor an elementary school child.”

The goal of this committee was, therefore, to tear down the old design standards that require such inhospitable streets, and in their place, create standards that encourage the designing of great streets.

The new manual considers the full gamut of street design issues from the neighborhood scale right down to the material of the streets themselves. The following is a list of the new manual’s twelve chapters, which were previewed in three-minute presentations during Tuesday’s event. I’ve added just a few highlights from each speaker in attempt to capture a slice of what each chapter has to offer. Read more…

The National Association of City Transportation Officials’ Urban Bikeway Design Guide was 20 years in the making, and already it’s having an impact, says the organization’s Mia Birk.

Bringing together transportation officials from 20 major cities to discuss progress on bikeway designs in the U.S. produced quite a few “aha moments,” said Birk. For one, transportation officials learned that many of the bikeway innovations they had been adopting from Europe aren’t as innovative as they had thought.

The protected bike lane on New York City's Ninth Avenue.

For example, Birk said, 20 American cities use bike boxes, one of the design features that isn’t specifically endorsed by the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices and the American Association of Highway Transportation Officials’ design guide.

“It’s not like it’s some fringe thing anymore,” Birk said.

She added: “There’s a comfort in knowing that your colleagues are on the same wavelength.”

Conversations throughout the course of the NACTO guide development process also revealed that federal officials aren’t as unfriendly to new bike treatments as many city-level transportation officials had expected. Federal transportation officials have indicated that many of the 20 bike treatments recommended by NACTO are allowable within federal guidelines — while not explicitly endorsed — and therefore eligible for federal funding, Birk said.

“They’ve basically green-lighted a few of them a yellow-lighted a few others,” she said.

Birk described the conversations with federal transportation officials as “really effective and positive.”

Read more…

Rail L.A.’s “LA Beyond Cars” Exhibit from 89.3 KPCC on Vimeo.

We don’t usually announce contests here at Streetsblog, but this one seemed too good to pass up.

Rail L.A., the people that brought you the L.A. Beyond Cars exhibit in Downtown L.A. last summer, are looking for your ideas on how to make it easier to get around Los Angeles. It sounds like a pretty cool project, so I encourage you to send them some ideas.

The Prototypical American City, Los Angeles, is at a crossroads. It has grown from distant communities of missionaries and rancheros to a diverse yet separated community of suburbs, and now to an unhappily-joined community of industries and sprawl. The growth of Los Angeles as a de-centralized city has created a playground for the automobile – where no less than a six lane freeway will do, massive parking lots litter the built environment, and traffic strikes fear into anyone looking to traverse the city. It has rendered a city incapable of movement, a place where the freeway no longer allows freedom, but instead has resulted in a life informed by sigalert and strangled by traffic.

In response to the current state of the city, we are looking for a few sentences of imaginative and exotic ideas of what to do with a city beyond cars. How would you improve your environments? Perhaps with localized agriculture? A Linear Shopping Mall? Centralized Housing to encourage walking to work? 25 Selected ideas will be given to a team of artist, designers and architects, and result in a publication + exhibition of before/after collages envisioning a new pedestrian based Los Angeles. Go to www.railla.org/inmycity to share your idea or multiple ideas, and help us vision a new LA beyond cars.

To find out more about railLA and our scheduled events, go to www.railla.org.