Streetsblog Los Angeles

Today is a national day of action to oppose the House GOP transportation bill, with Transportation for America, Rails to Trails, Bikes Belong, the Natural Resources Defense Council and many other organizations mobilizing against the extreme attack on transit, biking and walking. They are urging people to contact their representatives and support a sane, sustainable transportation policy by rejecting this radical proposal.

The House GOP bill would leave transit riders stranded. Photo: ifmuth/Flickr

Streetsblog Network members are on the case: Darla at Walk Bike Lee, in Lee County Florida, says the bill unfairly pillages the pittance given to sustainable transportation modes and urges her readers to voice their concerns to Rep. Connie Mack. Yonah Freemark at The Transport Politic says the bill is the pinnacle of bad transportation policy. And Daniel Nairn at Discovering Urbanism writes that is tailored to the interests of oil companies, not your average citizen.

Opposition to the proposal is starting to emanate from editorial pages: The New York Times and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel have called it “terrible” and “not worthy of passage.”

Meanwhile, Deron Lovaas at the NRDC’s Switchboard blog points out that House GOP bill doesn’t even pass the rudimentary test of fiscal discipline. Congressional Budget Office projections show that John Boehner’s plan to plug the transportation funding shortfall with $2 billion in oil drilling revenues only kicks the can down the road:

Read more…

• GOOD Video Illustrates Impact of Small Modal Shift on Congestion
• Long Beach Planning Ties Transportation and Public Health (Press-Telegram)
• LA County Declares War on Physical Activity on Beaches (CBS 2)
• “Think Labs” Hope to Make Planning More Accesible (LAist)
• California’s Biggest Bike Race Coming to California’s Least Bike Accessible City (Biking In LA)
• Yup, Planting Ficus Next to Sidewalks Was a Mistake (LA Observed)
• Man Tasered for “Meandering” in Freeway (Daily News)
• Redondo Beach Seeks Input for Aviation Blvd. Bike Lane (Daily Breeze)
• Coming Soon, BH Will Respond to Metro’s Response to BH’s Response to Metro’s Report on Westside Subway Tunneling (Patch)

The House GOP’s transportation bill is legislation only Big Oil can love. By eviscerating dedicated transit funds, killing programs that support safe streets, and linking transportation funding to oil drilling in the Arctic, the bill has managed to alienate everyone from environmental advocates to the ultra-conservative Club for Growth.

Steven LaTourette, an Ohio Republican, said he opposes the House transportation bill as it is currently written. Photo: Cleveland.com

So there’s a chance that House leadership will fail to round up the 218 votes needed to pass this bill. Based on Streetsblog’s initial conversations with House GOP members, the bill could be too anti-transit and too hostile to street safety to pass, even in this extremely partisan political climate.

Streetsblog began reaching out to House GOP members this morning to see where they stand, and already we’re finding representatives who think the current bill is too extreme. One Republican with misgivings is Ohio Rep. Steven LaTourette, who represents rural and suburban areas in the northeast part of the state, east of Cleveland.

LaTourette has been a supporter of common-sense transportation reforms in the House, co-sponsoring national complete streets legislation as well as a bipartisan measure that would have increased flexibility with federal funds for struggling transit agencies.

Through his chief of staff, Dino DiSanto, LaTourette’s office had this to say about the bill:

In its current formation there are lots of things we don’t like about it. If it’s not changed drastically, we’re not going to support it.

What they’re doing to highway funding — removing [Transportation] Enhancements, not allowing more flexibility for transit agencies? There’s no reason [transit agencies] should be able to buy buses but not operate them.

Infrastructure used to be something that was widely popular among both parties, and for some reason over the last few Congresses, they’ve become highly polarized.

Meanwhile, Bob Turner (R-NY), whose district encompasses parts of Queens and Brooklyn, has reservations as well. In a statement, Rep. Turner indicated his disapproval, specifically for the portion of the bill that would eliminate dedicated funding for transit:

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Here’s what’s happening around the Network today:

This intersection, Chicago's North Avenue at Kedzie Avenue, would be eligible for automated speeding enforcement under new legislation in Illinois. Between 2005 and 2010, 22 pedestrians and cyclists were injured by auto collisions at this intersection. Photo: Grid Chicago

Speeding Cameras Coming to Chicago: New legislation has cleared the way for automated speeding enforcement — speeding cameras — in Chicago. The cameras will be used only in “safety zones,” or areas around schools and parks. Fines will be $50 – $100 depending on the magnitude of the violation.

Steven Vance at Network blog Grid Chicago is dispelling some common misconceptions about speed cameras, pointing out that they will save lives. “Speed correlates with the survival rate of a pedestrian involved in an automobile crash. If a pedestrian is hit by a person driving a car at 30 MPH, there is an 80% survival rate. If a pedestrian is hit by a person driving a car at 40 MPH, there is a 30% survival rate.”

Will the cameras be effective? Vance summarizes three studies that looked at the efficacy of speeding cameras in preventing traffic collisions. The studies found that speeding cameras were indeed useful in motivating drivers to reduce their speed, improving safety. “There have been reductions in the number of people speeding, and the number of injuries and fatalities, in locations where speed cameras are installed and operated,” Vance writes. “In my assessment of multiple studies, it seems that speed cameras are a main cause of these reductions.”

Why Subway Construction Has Gotten to Be So Expensive: Building new subway lines is more expensive than ever — even when adjusted for inflation. Yesterday Benjamin Kabak at Second Avenue Sagas reviewed a recent Salon article by Will Doig, who identified seven issues that contribute to skyrocketing costs and ballooning construction time tables. Some of the culprits: the slow wheels of bureaucracy, the difficulty of assembling funding for large transit projects in an environment that marginalizes public transportation in favor of auto travel, and NIMBYism. Salon also identifies some progressive reforms, including environmental impact statements, ADA compliance and union rules, as hurdles that aren’t impeding China’s ability to lay down tracks for metros seemingly overnight.

Read more…

• Look Kids, It’s Ray LaHood! (The Source)
• Gas Prices Hover Near Record Highs (LAT)
• Metro Reponds to Bev. Hills: Our Analysis Was By the Books (The Source)
• On Eve of Women in Bikes Launch, ZevWeb Profiles Some Female Bike Leaders
• LADOT Paints the Spring Street Green Lane, Third Times the Charm? (Brigham Yen, Blog Downtown)
• City Council Passes 400k Plan for City Hall Landscaping (Curbed w/renderings, Daily News)
• Pomona Law Maker Wants Gold Line to Run to Claremont (LAT)
• San Francisco Bike Count: Up 61% Since 2006 (SF Streetsblog)
• Streetsblog Founder Mark Gorton Takes Livability Lessons to New Delhi (Times of India)
• In Bid to Increase Safety, Paris to Allow Bikes to Run Reds (Daily Mail)

At Ease, Soldier: A young member of the East Side Riders proudly poses with his bike at the Watts Towers.

Several years ago, I spent a week photographing a stretch of 37th St. as part of a neighborhood documentation project of the area around USC. Where other photographers had diligently snapped structures and streets, I had cajoled residents into participating in the project and later gave them copies of the photos so they could see the final product. The soul of a neighborhood is its people, I had argued in defending my approach at the time. Without them, the structures are just a shell.

I was reminded of this while surveying the scene at Augustus Hawkins Natural Park on a chilly Sunday morning in late January. About 60 riders had shown up to participate in the CicLAvia South L.A. Exploration Ride through Watts. Each had a different motivation for being there. Some simply enjoyed participating in exploratory group rides. Those unfamiliar with the area came to check out our landmark destination, the Watts Towers. Others were linked to the CicLAvia South L.A. Host Committee, TRUST South L.A., C.I.C.L.E., or the BikeRoWave, the groups facilitating the ride. Still others were from the Watts-based East Side Riders (ESR), eager to make the case for Watts to be included in the CicLAvia expansion route.

Finally, a sizable contingent—at least 20%—came to document the ride, including the L.A. Times, KPCC’s OnCentral, the Annenberg Innovation Lab, filmmakers from Ride: In Living Color, folks from ParTour (a USC initiative harnessing new media and mobile technology to advance positive social change), and, of course, Streetsblog. The apparent newsworthiness of this crossing of socio-economic boundaries served to underscore how infrequently it occurs, even in a city as diverse as ours.

The ride was a continuation of the Committee’s efforts to host monthly rides into South LA. The larger purpose was to promote cycling and show the value of livable streets in communities, bridge gaps between communities by helping people explore new areas, demonstrate proper riding techniques and the rules of the road, and, in the case of ParTour, to engage participants in the creation of a crowd-sourced map of the route to showcase South L.A. as a rideable destination. Read more…

Happy news out of Denver. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was in town yesterday for a tour of the under-construction West Rail Transit line, part of 122 miles of passenger rail the region is planning as part of its FasTracks program.

Denver's plan to add 122 miles of passenger rail is boosting the local economy. Photo: The Fast Lane

The secretary’s blog, The Fast Lane, discusses how this project promises to be, on many levels, a winner for the Mile-High City:

The enthusiasm in yesterday’s crowd was electric. It’s not hard to see why. The West Rail Line is 85% complete, and the mock-ups and progress to date indicate a beautiful, state-of-the-art transit system.  The new line will allow tourists and commuters to spend less time in traffic and less money on gas. That’s something everyone can appreciate.

Not only will the FasTracks program provide an efficient and cost-effective way to get to and from work, school or the airport; but it is also creating jobs right now.  There are more than 500 men and women working on the West Rail Line alone. FasTracks estimates that its plan will eventually provide work for 4,200 others.

But we can’t be content to see this progress in just one city.  All across America, there is work to be done on projects like the West Rail Line.  More and more Americans are looking for greater choices in transportation today, and it’s important we provide the funding to ensure transit remains one of the available choices.  Now is the time to connect people who need work with the work we need to do improving our nation’s transit centers, highways, railways, airports and ports.

This is exactly the type of investment in the future that other cities would miss out under the House GOP proposal to strip transit projects of dedicated federal funding stream.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Mobilizing the Region reports that political leaders in the New York-New Jersey region are united in their opposition to the House transit proposal. Streets.mn asks if traffic engineers’ roadway classification system is an outdated way of understanding transportation dynamics. And Suburban Assault introduces Dallas’s first bike café.

• Culver City CRA Busy Last Day, Gets Out Request for Projects and Approves Contract in Last Week (Wave via Curbed)
• Red Line Stations Getting Hats (Brigham Yen)
• …And This Time, It’s Staying Green! (LADOT Bike Blog)
• Express Bus Linking South Bay to Long Beach Coming in May (Daily Breeze)
• Breaking: Not Everyone Hates High Speed Rail (OC Register)
• Contract with Proposed Mine Endangers L.A.’s Clean Energy Plans (LAT)
• Cafe Stella in Silver Lake, Tear Down That Wall (LA Weekly)
• Secretary LaHood and Villaraigosa Holding Press Event at 9:45 at Union Station.  Release After the Jump.

The last piece of the Senate’s two-year transportation reauthorization proposal will be marked up by the Finance Committee tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. The committee was tasked with finding approximately $12 billion to bridge the projected shortfall of the Highway Trust Fund over the life of the bill. So far, according to a summary released by Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT), they have found a little over $10.4 billion:

Sen. Schumer had made restoring the pre-tax commuter transit benefit a priority in 2012. Photo: AP

• $3.7 billion transferred from the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund, already funded by a slice of the federal gas tax
• $2.8 billion from reducing a tax credit on certain biofuels
• $2.5 billion from taxes on imported cars, redirected from the general fund to the HTF
• $0.7 billion from the “gas guzzler tax,” also redirected from the general fund
• $0.7 in back taxes collected after revoking passports of serious offenders, assuming offenders would rather pay the feds than lose their passport

Furthermore, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) has sponsored an amendment that would restore parity between the pre-tax commuter benefits for transit and parking. There had been parity between transit and parking pre-tax benefits since the Stimulus Act was passed in 2009, but the transit benefit was slashed in half — from $230 a month to $125 — when the measure expired on January 1st. Schumer’s amendment would make the parity permanent.

Live updates will be available tomorrow on twitter (#TranspoMarkup).

Tuesday, Wednesday – Metro may have completed the final environmental documents for the Regional Connector, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have one last chance to weigh in before the design state begins in earnest.  You can click the link on the right to visit the Connector’s webpage, or click here to get information for a pair of public meetings on Tuesday and  Wednesday.

Wednesday – We usually don’t publicize events that happen down in Long Beach, but this event seems like such a combination of fun and activism that I couldn’t resist.  Women on Bike SoCal launches a program to double the number of women and girls riding bicycles.  The kickoff includes the announcement of a scholarship program for League of American Cyclists instructors that specialize in teaching women cyclists.  Sounds like a good start.  The kickoff starts at 9 A.M. at Bike Station.  Click here for more details.

Wednesday – Vroom!  More speed limit increases on the agenda.  Fun times for the City Council Transportation Committee as it meets at 2:00 P.M. in City Hall.  Get the details and the agenda, here.

Wednesday – The Living Room on Sunset Boulevard in Silverlake is hosting a fundraiser for the California Bicycle Coalition.  Get the details, here.

Thursday – City Planning and the LA County Department of Public Health are sponsoring a series of workshops on TOD in South L.A. around the Green and Blue Lines.  Get the details on this week’s meeting at Augustus Hawkins Park by clicking here.

Friday – Do you love CicLAvia?  I do.  Get the details on their Valentine’s Day fundraiser, here.

Sunday – L.A. Graffiti Artist LA graffiti artist Galo “MAKE ONE” Canote is back for another workshop! Learn about MAKE’S
creative process as he takes you on a journey into LA street culture and teaches you the fundamentals of letter structure and design.  Get all the details, here.

If there’s an event we missed, please email damien at streetsblog dot org.