Streetsblog Los Angeles

Planning Commission President Bill Roschen and Times Archtect Critic Chris Hawthorne question Council Woman, and Mayoral Candidate, Jan Perry on Friday. Photo:L.A. Streetsblog/Flickr

In her own words, Mayoral Candidate and 9th District City Council Woman Jan Perry has had a “bird’s eye view” of planning in Los Angeles since 1990, when she was tapped by then City Councilman Mike Woo to be his planning deputy.  In the over two decades since then, Perry has been a key figure in City Hall when it comes to any discussion of  planning and Los Angeles, most prominently as a member of the City Council for the last eleven years.

Roughly one hundred people filled the Ronald F. Deaton Civic Auditorium in the new LAPD Police Administration Building to hear Perry outline her vision for the built environment of Los Angeles.  The conversation was moderated by Bill Roschen, President of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission, and Christopher Hawthorne, Architecture Critic for the Los Angeles Times.

There were three themes that dominated the discussion: Perry’s track record supporting attractive affordable housing, a need to protect Los Angeles’ communities and how term limits get in the way of good planning.

While she wouldn’t say that changing Los Angeles’ term limit laws, Perry complained that because of the role that a Council Member (or Mayor) has in creating a vision for an area of the city and moving projects that she was hesitant to get the ball moving on projects that would end after her terms for fear  she would be tieing a successor’s hands or starting a project that would never be finished.  ”There was a point in 2011 when I stopped working on new projects, because I knew I wouldn’t be in office when it was completed because of term limits,” she explained.

But within the 9th Council District, Perry is known as a leader who has succesfully pushed for major projects.  At various points in the evening she talked of her support for attractive affordable housing projects such as the Avalon development for seniors.  She also talked up the city’s parklets program in response to an answer about green space.  ”I have demonstrated that you can build quality affordable housing that fits into the community.” Read more…

How to avoid traffic and get to the Staples Center tomorrow.  Image: Friends for Expo

In case you've been living under a rock for the past week, you know that Michael Jackson has passed away and a memorial has been planned for the Staples Center tomorrow.  The city is bending over backwards to try and figure out what to do with all of the cars that will descend on the Downtown for the memorial, to the point that I even watched Council Woman Jan Perry give a five minute interview on the expected traffic crunch and how mourners can avoid the jam without once mentioning the words, "transit," or "bus," or "Blue Line," or "bicycle."

While taking transit to the event may not have occured to the City Council as a way to beat traffic, google and Metro are informally working together to make certain that information is just a couple of clicks away.

After years of its public demanding that Metro share data with google as agencies around the country have already done; Google Transit for Metro has finally launched.  LAist has already covered the launch.  While the routing is still a little buggy, Metro is already claiming this is a test and not to get too worked up over any mistakes.  Amusingly, Metro staff says that they aren't at the point of making an announcement, despite the service's available since for the last three days and the news articles heralding its announcement.

Meanwhile, if you want to tryout letting google map your transit route, using the application is as quick as typing "maps.google.com"  into your browser and selecting the transit option from the drop down bar on the left.  I've already gotten some feedback on weird routing.  For example, my sister-in-law decided to use google transit to map a trip from her house in Woodland Hills to the Staples Center.  Despite living a couple of blocks from the Orange Line, google transit would have sent her on five different local bus routes on a three hour oddyssey.  Feel free to leave your feedback for Google and Metro or the results of your own experimentation in our comments section and I'll make certain they are passed along.