Streetsblog Los Angeles

The South Figueroa Corridor Plan proposes changes for more than just Figueroa Street.

A standing room only audience descended on the Fashion Institute of Design on South Grand Street to listen to a presentation from the embattled Community Redevelopment Agency for a ground breaking and popular proposal to transform the South Figueroa Corridor.  When people discuss Los Angeles’ streets, they usually use terms such as “car-oriented” or “ugly.”  The new South Figueroa, aka My Figueroa, would be a truly beautiful street designed for people to walk, bike wait for transit or just enjoy life outside as well as a way to shuffle cars from one area to another.

The South Figueroa Corridor Project covers three miles of South Figueroa from 41st Street to Seventh Street as well as a half mile of 11st Street between Figueroa and Broadway, a half mile of Martin Luther King (MLK) Boulevard just south of Exposition Park, and a half mile of Bill Robertson Boulevard from into Exposition Park starting at MLK Boulevard.  While there are different proposals being studied for each part of the corridor, Oliver Schultze, from the world-renowned Gehl Architects in Copenhagen, promised that every part of the corridor would see some sort of improvement.

Good.

The project team offered three proposals for different sections of Figueroa, a “good,” “better,” and “best” options.  Whether a segment qualifies for good, better, or best depends on the amount of funding available and the current level of street life in the segment.  The good option consisted of an eight foot separated bike lane traveling the length of the corridor in each direction, an eighteen inch separator, car parking and bus bump outs, and a transit only lane for buses and streetcars.  In addition to creating a safe place for cyclists, removing them from car traffic and the sidewalk, it also created a 22 foot buffer between the sidewalk and the first regular vehicle travel lane.

As Joe Linton noted from the audience, “I love that protected bike lanes are the base proposal.”  Figueroa street would be the first street in Los Angeles to feature protected bike lanes.  In fact, no city in Los Angeles County has these special bike lanes, although Long Beach is adding some as we speak. Read more…

For a full copy of the map, click here.

(Editor’s note: If you want to dig a little deeper into the numbers on Metro’s customer satisfaction surveys, we have the full results in pdf form for bus riders, train riders, and everyone available for viewing or download. – DN)

Yesterday, Angie Schmitt, who writes the daily “Streetsblog.net” roundup, reported on an analysis that ranked cities based on the quality of the car commuting habits of its residents.  As usually happens with these sort of stories, the data shows that car commuters in Greater Los Angeles are taking it on the chin spending over $400 a month on gas and maintenance and losing 70 hours a year to congestion.

Ouch.

In direct contrast to the dire picture portrayed in the article on Bundle on car commuting, comes a survey of Metro’s riders, done on behalf of the agency.  The survey shows that  86% of respondents agree with the statement, “Generally speaking I am satisfied with Metro bus/train service.”

On one hand we have a picture of Los Angeles’ car drivers bogged down in traffic with their money flowing into the coffers of the oil industry.  On the other hand, we have a picture of Metro riders, content if not happy with their service and paying hundreds of dollars less.  Sometimes, I don’t even need to editorialize to make the point.

That being said, there are some cracks in Metro’s armor.  While The Source and LAist reprinted the good news from the survey off the press release, Streetsblogger and So.CA.TA. Board Member Dana Gabbard dug a little deeper into the numbers.  Over one fifth of respondents said they encountered a brokendown bus in the last month?  And what’s with the 65/35 split between English and Spanish speaking riders?  Gabbard’s full comments can be found after the jump: Read more…

The number of cars per person in Greater Los Angeles. For a full copy of the map, here.

Density. Vehicle Ownership. The number of cars packed into a small area.

These are concepts that we discuss often on Streetsblog. Thanks to a UCLA research project undertaken by Professors Mike Manville and Donald Shoup, we can get an idea of some of the challenges Los Angeles’ planners face in trying to ween our city off the automobile.

This article will look at the population density, car ownership per person, and car ownership per mile maps and charts.  At the top of each article will be a “Streetsblog sized” map for Los Angeles with links to maps for San Franscisco and New York for comparison purposes.  All maps are based on information from the 2000 Census.

A huge hat tip to Katie Matchett, without whom this article wouldn’t have been possible. Read more…

Aging infrastructure across the country has become an enormous safety risk. It’s also becoming an economic hazard.

SEPTA is forgoing new amenities to focus on making sure their trains don't end up like this one. Brownstoner

Last year, the Federal Transit Administration announced that the seven largest rail transit systems had a backlog of $50 billion in maintenance needs to bring them into a state of good repair. In June, the agency determined that nationwide, the backlog is nearly $78 billion.

Though these needed repair and maintenance projects may be less impressive to the public than major expansions, they are key to increasing ridership and decreasing costs.

Last week, FTA Deputy Administrator Therese McMillan told the North America Strategic Infrastructure Leadership Forum that the agency is linking good transit maintenance to its livability initiatives. Keeping systems in good repair, she said, is the foundation of safe, reliable rail service that can help draw new residents to vacated areas.

“When we’re looking at the opportunities for in-fill, particularly in our major urban areas, where we can take advantage of the infrastructure we already have, this is where State of Good Repair becomes a very key piece of a livability initiative,” McMillan said. “So it’s not just about building the new stuff into greenfield. It’s about investing and making transit a real value-added as part of these strategic re-investments in communities.”

Read more…

Metro Rapid map.  Photo: RJM Connel/Flickr

Is that what transit in Southern California in the modern age has had as its goal? My long held suspicion is that transit as an alternative to the automobile is mostly an empty slogan that officials speak of but that as a practical matter receives little attention beyond lip service. And the great danger is trends may actually be leading us toward having transit use widen while officials and others aren't preparing for the many challenges this presents.

Our present public transit system is structured to meet two markets: peak hour commuters and the transit-dependent population (mostly made up of folks of modest means, seniors, the disabled and youth). Over decades service and funding structures have been built up predicated on that being the population it serves.

Read more...

Should private transit companies enjoy the same federal gas tax
exemption that many public operators receive? How does the existence of
private inter-city bus service affect the government’s development of
new high-speed rail lines? And does it matter that private transit
firms are eligible for public subsidies, even if at a much smaller rate
than public rail and bus agencies?

A private firm recently signed a deal with New Orleans officials to help run the city’s streetcars, seen above. (Photo: NYT)

Few definitive answers to those questions were on offer today at a transit panel sponsored by the Mobility Choice
coalition, which allies members of conservative-leaning think tanks
with a handful of environmental advocates and urbanists — but the
discussion yielded some provocative evidence of the fault lines between
public and private operators.

Principally sponsored by the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS), the group describes itself as adopting "a fiscally responsible, free market oriented approach to expanding
competition among transportation modes for the purpose of reducing
oil’s strategic value."

American Bus Association (ABA)
Chairman James Jalbert, whose group represents private bus and
motorcoach companies, lamented that the U.S. DOT’s implementation of
its $10.5 billion high-speed rail program — which is expected to
receive billions more in federal funding in the coming years — did not
envision a role for private-sector firms that already provide
inter-city service.

Read more…

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan said late
Friday that his agency will soon start gauging the "location
efficiency" of its grant applicants, determining each project’s
potential for connecting residents to surrounding neighborhoods — and
mirroring the recommendations of a recent report that found a correlation between homeowners’ foreclosure risk and their dependence on car ownership.

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, right, with Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) at left and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed at center. (Photo: White House Press)

Donovan’s announcement came during an address
to the Congress for the New Urbanism’s (CNU) annual meeting in Atlanta.
During his visit, the former New York City housing commissioner also
toured the BeltLine project, an ambitious local effort to convert former rail track into new light rail and trails.

In
his remarks to the CNU, Donovan depicted the integration of "location
efficiency" measures as a way to encourage housing developers to pursue
more mixed-use, denser construction.

"[I]t’s time that
federal dollars stopped encouraging sprawl and
started lowering the barriers to the kind of sustainable development
our country needs and our communities want," Donovan said. "And with
$3.25 billion at stake in these competitions, that’s exactly what they
will start to do."

Evaluating
the range of transport options available for prospective residents of
urban and suburban areas was among the central recommendations of a foreclosures report
released in January by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
That study was aimed at mortgage lenders rather than the government,
but Democratic lawmakers last year began pushing for HUD to insure more mortgages based on the properties’ "location efficiency."

Donovan said that HUD would use the new LEED for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND)
system, created by the CNU, the NRDC, and the U.S. Green Buildings
Council, to measure the transportation potential of grant proposals. LEED certification has become an increasingly popular method of tracking the environmental sustainability of new buildings, although skepticism about the range of energy consumption of buildings with the LEED imprimatur prompted some revisions to the format last year.

In addition to the announcement of
a new local bike-share system, today’s D.C. Bike to Work Day found both
the U.S. DOT and the nation’s leading bike advocacy groups positioning
themselves to claim new victories for cyclists in the coming days.

FTA chief Peter Rogoff addressing cyclists at this morning’s Bike to Work Day events. (Photo: U.S. DOT)

The U.S. DOT sent several senior officials to this morning’s capital-area bike events,
using the day to finalize a new expansion of eligibility for federal
funding of cycling and pedestrian infrastructure connected to transit.

Federal
Transit Administration (FTA) chief Peter Rogoff, who suited up for a
morning ride into downtown D.C., told fellow cyclists that "the Obama
Administration will keep supporting cycle-friendly policies because
they help connect communities in ways that are beneficial to everyone
at very little cost," according to a statement released by the U.S. DOT.

First proposed in November,
the FTA’s new policy for boosting federal bike-ped spending sets radius
surrounding a transit station in which bike infrastructure projects
would be eligible for aid at three miles. Pedestrian projects within a
half-mile of transit stations would be eligible for federal assistance.
The previous regulatory radius was 1,500 feet, in most cases.

Meanwhile,
nine national cycling and pedestrian advocacy groups released a letter
in advance of Bike to Work Day seeking extra clean transport funding
from the new Senate climate bill. The groups studiously avoided the
critical tone that the transit industry and state DOTs used on Wednesday
to seek a greater share of the revenue from the climate measure;
nonetheless, the bike-ped backers urged sponsors Sens. John Kerry
(D-MA) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) to lift their legislation’s limit on
transport spending.

Read more…

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) is set to join
the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials
(AASHTO) and two construction interests tomorrow in protesting the
Senate climate bill’s proposed diversion of new fuel fees away from
infrastructure — an argument that puts the transit industry’s leading
D.C. lobbying group squarely in the transportation mainstream.

In
a release previewing its joint press conference with AASHTO, scheduled
for this morning, APTA said the Senate bill’s use of new fuel fees
for purposes beyond infrastructure, such as paying down the federal
deficit, "would harm efforts to pass
a new surface transportation bill and would also greatly impair the
ability of
states, counties, cities and transit systems to reduce our dependence
on foreign
oil and reduce transportation-related emissions."

AASHTO's new report recommends that America's urban transportation policy repeat the mistakes of the past. Photo of the Cross-Bronx Expressway: Tool Ake via Flickr

The umbrella group for America's state DOTs, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, has started a major new push for, you guessed it, more highways. The new campaign argues for highway expansion in urban areas as if fifty years of similar policies hadn't led to a dead end of sprawl, pollution, and oil dependence.

As described in an important post on Mobilizing the Region by Ya-Ting Liu of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, AASHTO has released a series of reports and a new website making "the case for capacity." The website is filled with friendly explanations of "what's so great about an interstate" and promises that "urban interstates are the new 'Main Street.'" As unbelievable as those claims must be to anyone living next door to the Bruckner Expressway or parked in traffic on the Cross-Bronx, AASHTO's stated intention to massively expand the urban highway system is all too real.

Read more...