Streetsblog Los Angeles

Newly elected Mayor Eric Garcetti campaigning at the recent CicLAvia-to-the-Sea

So what does it all mean?

Former City Council President and outgoing CD13 Councilperson Eric Garcetti will be our new mayor for at least the next four years.

Unlike the city council, where carefully carved districts and big money campaign donations mean even the most unloved council person can be almost impossible to turn out, Los Angeles has a history of running unpopular mayors out of office.

Most recently, it was a young Antonio Villaraigosa who handily defeated incumbent James Hahn, after losing to him in their first match-up in 2001. Then again, Villaraigosa was also one of the few candidates to defeat a sitting council member in recent memory, beating Nick Pacheco to represent the 14th District in 2003.

Not that anyone should expect the new mayor to be unpopular.

In fact, Eric Garcetti has proven to be very personable and able to connect with a wide range of people. It helps that he has an exceptionally wide range of experiences, from his multi-ethnic background to his skill on the piano and work as an intelligence officer in the naval reserve.

Though not everyone trusts that smile or the promises that come with it; that hasn’t been my own experience with Garcetti, however. Read more…

Eric Garcetti at the Empowerment Congress Forum on January 19

Earlier this morning, the Crenshaw Subway Coalition, the umbrella organization for South L.A. groups fighting for grade separated light rail from 48th to 59th Streets for the future Crenshaw Line, released grades for both leading candidates for Mayor of Los Angeles. Both candidates scored an “A-” for their support for adding a Leimert Park Station, but Wendy Greuel scored a “B+” for her support for grade separating the entire line while Eric Garcetti scored only a “C.”

Damien Goodmon, the executive director for the Crenshaw Subway Coalition, explains why the grades on the tunnel are more important than the grades for the station.

“…the MTA board is currently scheduled to decide the fate of the Leimert Park station at theirJune 27 meeting, which is before the next Mayor takes office, so their positions on the station may be moot. The more revealing question regarding the candidate’s willingness to put their political capital on the line for the Crenshaw community is where do they stand on the 11-block Crenshaw tunnel,” said Goodmon. . “Both appear committed to making the Leimert Park station happen if it doesn’t in June, but there are key differences in Greuel and Garcetti’s written positions on the Crenshaw Blvd tunnel.”

In May of 2011, the Metro Board of Directors voted to approve the environmental documents for the Crenshaw Line which included grade separated light rail except for the 11 blocks between 48th and 59th. The Board also watered down an amendment authored by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who represents the Crenshaw community, that would have required a station to be built at Leimert Park. The approved motion cleared the station environmentally, but didn’t require the construction to be part of the bids from companies.

In other words, if a contractor could build the station inside a budget designed not to build the station, it could be built. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa declared a victory. Journalists (myself included) were confused because a written copy of the amendment wasn’t available. The nearly 600 Crenshaw residents were not. They booed. Read more…

The next Cory Booker, or just a nice guy?

Paula Jai Parker attends the Martin Luther King Jr. Parade on Crenshaw Blvd in Los Angeles. Photo:Eric Garcetti

Social media’s been buzzing with news that City Council Member Eric Garcetti is using his mayoral campaign to help out pedestrians in need. Chris Cruse reports on Facebook, in a story that has been confirmed on background by two people in the Garcetti campaign, that the mayoral candidate can still find time to help the little guy. Cruse reports, in a post originally picked up by Venice for Change:

I walked down my street to pick up some food, and came across a young guy laying on the sidewalk. His friend was yelling at him, slapping his face to wake up. The guy on the ground had a big gash and was bleeding out of his head. Not moving. I asked his friend if he was ok, but it was clear he needed help.

Right then, a black car pulled up on Silver Lake Blvd and a handsome businessman-looking guy rolled down the window. Asked if everything was ok. I told him this guy hit his head real bad. The car pulled over and 2 guys got out. They seemed to know exactly what to do. One brought a shirt and rolled it up and stuck it under the guy’s head. Asked a bunch of questions. The other called the paramedics. The friend was worried that they’d be in trouble, and asked us to just leave them there. The handsome one said they work for the city, they can’t just leave someone hurt on the ground. He hit his head, he needs to be checked out. The friend nodded ok. Read more…

Via LauraJNelson.com

A quick note on the changing of the transportation guard at the Los Angeles Times. Ari Bloomekatz, who has covered the beat for the past several years, is moving on to the healthcare beat. He will be replaced by Laura J. Nelson.

Previously, Nelson covered business, entertainment, national and local news. Her writing has also appeared in The Boston Globe, the St. Petersburg Times and the Los Angeles Daily News.

According to her website, she comes to Los Angeles from Kansas. She studied French and journalism at the University of Southern California. If you want to familiarize herself with her writing, you can check out a diverse set of clips by clicking here.

Laura, welcome to the beat!

Ari, we hardly got to know you! Don’t be a stranger.

The long process of reconfirming Ara Najarian to the Metro Board of Directors has come to an end with the Glendale City Councilman still standing. Flying in the face of tradition, a group of cities that support the 710 Big Dig Project, allegedly at the direction of Supervisor Mike Antonovich, attempted to squash Najarian’s nomination from the North County cities he represents.

One of these men will be serving on the Metro Board of Directors in July. Image:The Source

At a December meeting of the City Selection Committee, fellow Board Member and Duarte City Council Member John Fasana and Alhambra Mayor Barbara Messina managed to get Najarian’s nomination rejected. Every L.A. County City, excepting Los Angeles, votes in the City Selection Committee with weighted votes. Cities such as Culver City and cities in the South Bay rejected a nomination from the North County in December. Last night, the opposition to Najarian vanished. His nomination passed  by a weighted vote of 3,160,000 to 290,999.

“I’m very happy that I’ve been confirmed to take my seat on the MTA Board,” said Najarian. “L.A. is moving in the right direction in terms of transit, subway and light rail. I look forward to working with my fellow directors and community leaders to continue to make L.A. a good place to live, work and travel.”

Najarian is currently a member of the Metro Board of Directors and chaired the board in 2009. He was also a member of the Metrolink Board of Directors until he was removed by Antonovich last year.

After his rejection in December, a heated campaign that included the No on 710 Coalition, Congressman Adam Schiff, and Najarian himself ensued. Eventually, the Los Angeles Times’ Jim Newton weighed in on the Najarian nomination and pointed the finger at County Supervisor Antonovich for the confusion. With the wind at his back, North County cities met to re-consider the nomination and refused to nominate anyone else for the position except Najarian.

Read more…

Janette Sadik-Khan addresses the UCLA Complete Streets Conference. Photo by Juan Matute.

Last Thursday UCLA hosted its third annual Complete Streets Conference in Downtown Los Angeles. I was excited to have had the opportunity to attend with such a packed line up for the all day event, with a few big names in the mix including the esteemed Janette Sadik-Khan.

During the opening presentation UCLA professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris walked the crowd through UCLA’s new document and tool kit for parklet planning entitled Reclaiming The Right of Way, incorporating some of the best practices for cities that have been doing them. She remarked that s0metimes “to think big you have to start small.” and pointed to the new Spring St. parklet in DTLA as a model for creating low cost an easily accessible opportunities for physical activity.

I had my first opportunity to listen to the LADOT’s new pedestrian coordinator Margot Ocañas in a panel discussion on implemented. There is a lot of work to be done in the ped arena for LA, an understatement, but Ocañas was a refreshing voice from the agency, and her appointment has clearly been a step in the right direction. You could hear the exasperation with dealing with LA’s bureaucracy in her voice at times, but she appeared determined to foster change. During the presentation, she showed off plans for quick modular conversion of underutilized auto space to parklets and ped plazas, among the more basic work of better crosswalk striping that began recently.

Westlake Streetcar Plaza in Seattle. (Source: SDOT)

On the same implementation panel with Ocañas were urban planner Darby Watson, an Associate at Arup, who presented on complete streets projects in Seattle and Fred Dock, Director of the Pasadena Department of Transportation. Watson discussed that in Seattle they had a successful streetcar project in their downtown that was followed by a reduction in vehicle volume on a section of street at an irregular area of intersections. Planners wanted to appropriate some of the overbuilt car space into forming a large public plaza area around the streetcar stop. They were primed to go cheap and fast for a pilot first pass, but the business community there wanted something more substantial, and contributed toward more permanent infrastructure on the first go (project details).

Watson also spoke to the issue of transit & bicycling being at odds with each other,  commenting that unfortunately “sometimes your most sustainable modes hate each other.” Although touching this issue only briefly she mentioned more careful consideration in street car design and transit islands for buses and streetcars with bike lanes behind, something more common in European bikeways, and reduces leap frogging and merging conflicts at loading points. I really wish that there were more planners in the active transport world and transit planning in the US talking more closely to each other instead of being off in separate worlds.

I had a little trouble keeping up with the adjectives & acronyms per minute of Fred Dock of the Pasadena DOT, but a few points stuck with me. He emphasized that we should focus on measuring travel times, not speeds and look at trips, not just intersections. The city of Pasadena is currently in the process of rethinking it’s LOS (level of service) standards, which are typically auto-centric, to incorporate other street users and uses. This is an area where I admittedly don’t have a lot of background on the specifics, but is of significant importance to how things are planned, designed, approved and built in California. Read more…

Two years ago, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and a host of city officials stood at the podium announcing a new day for cyclists in Los Angeles. Today, he was back in the same place, at the same time, to announce that the city is making progress.

City Council Members look on as Villaraigosa announces the signing of the Bike Plan on March 2, 2010.

“CicLAvia’s success and the breakneck pace of bikeway construction demonstrate that L.A. has removed its training wheels,” said Mayor Villaraigosa. “The synergy of public support and infrastructure investment has put L.A. at the front of the transit pack.”

To date, LADOT has installed 123 miles of new bikeways, at a rate of 61 miles every 12 months. This is nearly 8 times the rate of the previous 40 years. In fiscal year 2011-2012 L.A. installed 76 miles of bike facilities. Two thirds of the way through fiscal year 2012-2013 they’ve already added another 39 miles. This pace of installation includes 97 miles of bike lanes, 4 miles of bike paths, 21 miles of sharrows, and 1 mile of bicycle-friendly streets.

“I am ecstatic that the City is continuing on a path to complete 40 miles of bike lanes per year,” said Councilman Bill Rosendahl. “We are seeing first hand how The Bike Plan is dramatically improving the City’s multi-modal system of transportation, as well as having a positive impact on our air and climate.”

There are now a total of 431 miles of bikeways citywide, up from just over 300 when the Mayor last held a bocycle themed press event at City Hall.

“Lack of infrastructure is the biggest barrier to more people choosing to ride. When the City installs bike lanes, ridership goes up 100 to 200 percent within the next year,” said Jen Klausner, Executive Director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. Read more…

(Over the next couple of weeks, Streetsblog L.A. will strive to cover all of the City Council elections that are not part of the Streetsblog TV schedule. Our next piece of election coverage will be Live Streaming the LACBC/Occidental College CD 1 Candidate Forum on Streetsblog TV this Sunday.)

Just a couple of years ago, the election to replace Jack Weiss in City Council District 5, which includes Westwood, Fairfax, Bel Air, and more was a hot one for Livable Streets advocates. On one hand,  you had former West Hollywood Mayor and AIDS Life Cycle participant Paul Koretz against David Vahedi, a lawyer who succesfully sued the City of Los Angeles for dangerous non-maintenance of bike paths. The race came down to a runoff and was close until the end. Koretz won.

A rare shot of the former Life Cycle rider and his bike. Photo:KPCC

This time, Koretz faces Mark Herd, a little known opponent who it appears designed his website in 1998. Since this race will mostly be about the incumbent, Streetsblog presents a brief look at his record.

Over the last four years, Koretz has been a dependable vote on Livability Issues, usually voting for safer streets, better pedestrian design and more bike lanes. In 2010, he was one of the Council Members who pushed the Planning Department to do more than the bare minimum when drafting the Bike Plan. His letter to City Planning earned high marks from the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition who called it “Outstanding.”

More recently, Koretz backed the new Motor Avenue bike lanes that are already providing safer commutes through the western part of his district for hundreds of cyclists a day. While some in the surrounding community grumbled that the lanes created a choke point for car traffic, Koretz stood his ground.

Not only is his apointee to the Expo Bicycle Advisory Committee one of the most active and engaged members, his chief transportation deputy Jay Greenstein attends nearly every meeting, the only member of L.A. City government to do so.

Koretz’s record on transit projects is perhaps more mixed. Read more…

Moments ago, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa signed a new bicycle parking ordinance into law which requires more bicycle parking at new developments and even allows a small swap of car parking for bike parking in certain approved development plans. The ordinance was on the verge of being signed last year before a series of small technical changes were added and the legislation had to go back through the City Council Committee structure.

Villaraigosa at the bike plan signing, March 2011. Photo:LACBC Blog

“The city is undergoing a transportation renaissance and we are changing the way Los Angeles moves,” said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, before signing the bill. “We have made unprecedented investments in the city’s bike infrastructure, with more bikeways and bike parking spaces than any time in the city’s history. The bicycle parking ordinance is another step in making it easier for Angelenos to navigate the city on two wheels.”

The ordinance  goes into effect on March 13, 2013.

Under the new law, up to 30% of auto parking can swapped for bicycle parking within a commercial nonresidential  project and 15% of auto parking can be swapped within a residential project that is near a major bus or transit station.  This could be particularly crucial for the transit oriented developments that pop up as a result of the new train lines that are coming online as a result of Measure R.

The ordinance also provides a mechanism to add more bike corrals to city streets.   These on-street public bicycle parking spaces offer an opportunity to provide ample bicycle parking without taking up pedestrian space on sidewalks. Bike corrals have been proven to increase bicycle usage in areas where they are installed, as they encourage residents to travel by bicycle around their neighborhoods to do their shopping and errands.   Read more…

This article is cross-posted from the blog of former Streetsblog SF editor Bryan Goebel, who’s aiming to launch a new website ”devoted to sustained coverage of biking, walking and transit issues in Sacramento, both at the Capitol and locally.” You can also follow Bryan on Twitter.

A proposal in Governor Jerry Brown’s budget that would change how the administration doles out federal and state money for biking and walking improvements could imperil critical street safety programs such as Safe Routes to School at a time when California is facing a growing health crisis and trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Photo: Myleen Hollero

“It does not reflect a serious sense of purpose by this Governor’s Office or the transportation bureaucracy to really make bicycling and walking a central part of California’s transportation system,” said Dave Snyder of the California Bicycle Coalition.

The move by the administration is a response to the federal transportation bill passed by Congress last year. MAP-21 ended some dedicated funding for biking and walking programs.

States are also receiving less money under Transportation Alternatives, the federal program previously known as Transportation Enhancements, which historically granted the bulk of bicycle and pedestrian funding to state transportation agencies and metropolitan planning organizations.

The League of American Bicyclists is encouraging state transportation agencies to make up for the cuts by seeking funding for street safety projects from other eligible pots of federal money.

California is receiving $80 million in TA funds, $13 million less than last year. In its current form, Brown’s budget, which has been widely praised for being balanced, would not kick in any other money to make up for the loss.

Under the administration’s proposal, the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, which oversees Caltrans, would combine five funding programs, including Safe Routes and the Bicycle Transportation Account, into what’s being called the “Active Transportation Program.”

The combined total in the account would be $134 million, compared to $147 million last year.

Read more…