The first Give Me 3 poster on 1st and Main in Los Angeles, 2010. Photo: LADOT Bike Blog

“The community of people who care about the safety of bicyclists continues to be the backbone of support for this bill,” said Jim Brown, spokesperson for the CBC. “Nearly 1,800 people have contacted their state senators to urge a yes vote this Thursday. This is a very large response by any measure, especially for bike-related legislation. It shows how strongly people care about making our roads safer.”

If passed, SB 1464 would require drivers to give cyclists a three foot passing berth when passing them. A nearly identical proposal, SB 910, was vetoed by Governor Brown in October due to pushback from AAA and the CA Highway Patrol (CHP), despite making its way through both houses of the legislature. As reported in Streetsblog  last month, the CBC worked with AAA and the CHP to revise the language they objected to and propose a new bill.

SB 1464 differs from last year’s bill by allowing drivers to cross a solid double yellow centerline (when safe) if necessary to give a bicyclist at least three feet of space. If three feet aren’t available, the bill requires drivers to pass by slowing down to 15 MPH and giving bicyclists as much space as possible.

The CBC launched the “Give Me 3” campaign to support the bill last year using imagery from Los Angeles’ bike safety campaign in 2010. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told Streetsblog that the passage of a safe passing law in Sacramento is “a top legislative priority” for him.

If the Senate passes SB 1464 on Thursday, it would then head to the State Assembly for approval by the appropriate committees and the full assembly. After that, it’s back to the Governor Brown’s desk, where he could sign it into law or veto it again.

TransForm and the CBC partnered to provide an easy form which supporters can use to write their legislators. By clicking on this link and entering your zip code on TransForm’s website, you can generate an email addressed to your senator. You can also modify the email with a more personal message, which is especially powerful if you know someone who was injured in a crash. If you would prefer to use email or regular mail, click here for instructions from the CBC.

Sample letter. Click here to generate your own.

• Tuesday, Wednesday – The Flying Pigeon Bike Shop is moving from its current location to a storefront right next to Antigua Cultural Coffee House in Cypress Park.  If you have some free time today or tomorrow, they could use the help for their bike move.  For more details, check out the Flying Pigeon blog.
• Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday – Meetings continue for the I-710 Corridor Project, the same one we’ve jokingly referred to as the “Big Dig” because of the popular plan to dig a tunnel under South Pasadena and other communities.   For more information on this week’s meetings, we have a nice graphic in our calendar section, or better yet click on that nice advertisement to the right.
• Wednesday – Most of our coverage of Malibu over the years has been a somewhat tongue-and-cheek review of their efforts to keep cyclists off the PCH or at least have them “behave better.”  However, the city seems to be making a good faith effort to create safe corridors for cyclists in the Bu.  Good for them.  Get the details of the latest efforts at tomorrow’s meeting.
• Thursday – Metro Board Meeting. Westside Subway. WESTSIDE SUBWAY.  WESTSIDESUBWAYWESTSIDESUBWAYWESTSIDESUBWAY!!!!  and other stuff.  Read the agenda, here.
• Thursday - SurveyLA, the Los Angeles Historic Resources Survey, is looking for suggestions for historic places in the City of Los Angeles. SurveyLA is the first-ever comprehensive program to identify and record the City’s historic resources. This workshop will focus on the communities of Atwater Village, Eagle Rock, El Sereno, Highland Park, Lincoln Heights and Mt. Washington.  Get more details, here.
• Friday – In May 2010, Critical Mass protested the massive oil spill in the gulf outside a BP station in Hollywood.  The nervous manager called the LAPD, and a somewhat ugly confrontation took place, some of it caught on film.  This led to the LAPD/LACM alliance over the last two years which saw the police “escort” the ride through the city.  A lot has changed in two years.  What hasn’t is that Critical Mass meets at Wilshire/Western at 7:00 P.M.
• Saturday – City Lites sponsors it’s 9th Annual Inner City Sports Festival and Health Fair.  Sahra will have more details on the event later in the week.  But if you want more details on the 23 mile bike tour which starts in Jesse Owens Park or the 5k fun walk/run click here.  The event is free and open to the public.
• Sunday – Bikerowave offers a free class entitled “How to Fix Your Derailleur.”  Name doesn’t leave a lot to the imagination.  Get more details, here.

Did we miss something?  What about events next week?  Email all your events suggestions to damien at streetsblog dot org.

Administration priorities for the conference bill came down from headquarters. Photo: Wikipedia

Everyone from the petrochemical industry to environmental and equity groups [PDF] to state DOT officials [PDF] are penning their missives to committee members, asking for everything from expedited project delivery to fix-it-first to automatic approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.

U.S. DOT got in on the letter-writing campaign last week too, expressing the Obama administration’s priorities for the bill [PDF].

The letter, signed by Secretary Ray LaHood, started off reiterating the promise to veto any bill mandating automatic approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. The administration opposes the GOP’s bid for coal ash deregulation but doesn’t threaten a veto over that issue. It also opposes some of the streamlining proposals made by the House, saying they “would radically change the application of environmental laws” and would undermine the National Environmental Policy Act.

The administration says it “strongly supports local decision-making and boosting the capacity of agencies that perform statewide, metropolitan, and rural transportation planning” — staying agnostic in the battle between state and city power. It supports the Senate’s Buy America language, which the House has instructed its conferees to accept. New Starts, high-speed rail, and TIGER all get a shout-out too.

U.S. DOT supports transit operations funding in times of high unemployment and in the wake of a disaster, and it reminds conferees that the administration’s 2013 budget included $3.2 billion for for transit maintenance. It mentions CMAQ only to oppose a House change to the program that never passed but does not weigh in on the changes to CMAQ in the Senate bill.

The Bullitt Foundation's "Living Building," which it calls the "greenest commercial building in the world" was nearly hamstrung by environmental regulations. Photo: The Bullitt Foundation

The problem, Adam Bejan Parast at Seattle Transit Blog writes, is that we are stuck with environmental regulations from a bygone era:

I have thought for a while that each generation of environmentalists is shaped in response to the differing environmental challenges of their time. While older generations of environmentalists were shaped by the back-to-the-land movement, one that believed in an essentially rural solution to environmental problems, young environmentalists are exactly the opposite, believing that dense cities are the primary solution to the problems we face.

Call it Vashion Island environmentalism vs Capitol Hill environmentalism. I find these underlying beliefs to be a helpful organizing structure when talking about density, tree preservation, parking requirements or other issues facing infill development.

Parast links to a post by Dan Bertolet, who argues we are entering a “fourth wave of planning,” influenced by climate change, energy concerns, food systems and sustainable regional development. How long will it take for our environmental regulations to catch up?

Elsewhere on the Network today: The League of American Bicyclists unveils its project aimed at memorializing every cyclist killed on American streets. Steven Can Plan compares traffic injury rates in the Netherlands to Chicago. And Brown Girl in the Lane discusses obstacles to women in the cycling movement, and how she developed a sisterhood of supporters.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Portland rules in Bicycling Magazine's 2012 bike-friendly city rankings. Photo: Cycloculture

Today, Pacific coast sustainability standard bearer Portland topped Midwestern standout Minneapolis in Bicycling Magazine’s bike-friendly city rankings, bi-annual source of bragging rights or shame, depending on your locale.

The top-two results were a reversal of the 2010 rankings. Bicycling Magazine did not explain what boosted Portland but did mention the city’s stature as the only large city to receive the League of American Bicyclists’ “Platinum-Level” Bike Friendly City Award, as well as its tendency to be the earliest of early adopters when it comes to innovations like bike boxes (Portland had the nation’s first).

Meanwhile, Minneapolis recently snagged national bragging rights with its Bike Score — the new bikeability scoring system that the creators of Walk Score unveiled last week.

Overall, big cities enjoy a growing prominence in Bicycling’s top ten, reflecting a trend in bike-friendly political leadership in America’s major metropolises.

While tiny Boulder, Colorado took the bronze, Washington, DC came in an impressive fourth place, boosted by its enviable bike-sharing system.

“There is no clearer evidence of the urban-cycling revolution sweeping the United States than in the nation’s capital,” wrote Bicycling’s Ian Dille, “where ridership jumped 80 percent from 2007 to 2010.”

Also surging ahead was Chicago, taking fifth place. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan for 100 miles of protected bike lanes was cited as a big factor, along with the popular Bike-the-Drive open streets event.

New York City, which will be launching the nation’s largest bike-share system this summer, ratcheted up one spot to seventh place, on the strength of the bike infrastructure built on the watch of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. San Francisco dropped a few places to eighth. And Seattle rounded out the top ten.

Smaller trailblazers Madison, Wisconsin and Eugene, Oregon slotted into sixth and ninth place, respectively.

Bicycling Magazine’s rankings are based on data from the League of American Bicyclists and the Alliance for Biking and Walking along with input from local advocates. Fifty cities are ranked this year, from De Moines, Iowa to Miami, Florida. To qualify, each city “must possess both a robust cycling infrastructure and a vibrant bike culture,” according to the magazine.

This is the message and image being used to promote a $6 billion transit-and-roads referendum in greater Atlanta. Photo: Decatur Metro

We’ve written a few times about how transit referendums need a simple, to-the-point message summarizing what voters can expect to receive in return. Here’s how they’re doing it in Atlanta.

In their quest to win voter support for a $6 billion funding package that would be split about evenly between transit and roads, proponents have settled on the phrase ”Let’s Untie Atlanta’s Knot.” Equating the ballot measure to a referendum on Atlanta’s notorious congestion woes seems like a smart idea.

Network blog Decatur Metro decided to evaluate the “untying” claim on its central promise — congestion relief — and found that it passes the sniff test, especially when it comes to transit:

The AJC this morning has summarized the Atlanta Regional Commission’s findings from a 10-year traffic simulation program and shown that the figures overall are either impressive or underwhelming, depending on what area you look at and/or which expert/non-expert you speak with. Atlanta’s infrastructure is a big ol’ expensive mistress, and though $6 billion may sound big compared to, say, our annual salaries, it’s a drop in the bucket for the metro area’s collection of road and rail. Or Mark Zuckerberg for that matter. But some figures seem heartening…

From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

On average, the number of metro Atlantans able to reach job centers in under 45 minutes would rise just 6 percent by car, and about 20 percent by bus or train, if the projects are built. The new transit projects expect perhaps 75,000 or more daily boardings.

Regional planners insist that in the world of transportation design, a 6 percent or 20 percent jump in good commutes is a big deal.

This should be a slam dunk for Atlanta. We’ll be following it through voting day in July.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Grid Chicago continues to evaluate Chicago’s transportation “Action Agenda” in a second sit-down question-and-answer session with DOT Commissioner Gabe Klein. Bike Lane Living shares a video documenting Indianapolis’s Bike to Work Day. And Alex Block weighs in on the density debate spurred by Richard Florida’s comments at the Congress for the New Urbanism conference in Palm Springs.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Looking for a job? Here are this week’s listings:

Coordinator, South Bronx River Watershed Alliance, New York City
For nearly a decade, the SBRWA has campaigned to replace the 1.25 mile-long Sheridan Expressway with 28 acres of affordable housing, open space, and new economic development opportunities. The SBRWA is seeking a Coordinator to carry out its community education and organizing work, support the participation of its member organizations in the campaigns, and manage its day-to-day communications and operation.

Marketing Assistant, VELODOME, Clifton, New Jersey
VELODOME is a company that designs and produces bicycle parking shelters and promotes cycling as an alternate mode of transportation to schools, government agencies and private sector companies. This internship, which can lead to a full-time position, will include market research, social media marketing and working with suppliers.

Looking at median housing prices and Walk Scores in more than 250 cities, Emily Washington found a clear correlation. Photo: Market Urbanism

As part of her graduate studies, Emily Washington at Network blog Market Urbanism set out to determine if people were willing to pay a premium for housing in a walkable urban setting. She developed two different models to see if there’s a link between housing prices and Walk Scores in 259 cities. Wouldn’t you know it, she found a pretty clear connection. Washington shared the results of her research in a post yesterday and is asking for feedback on her methodology:

I tested the impact of Walk Score on median house prices controlling for household income, unemployment, and cost of living. The sample includes 259 cities for which I had Walk Score data and Census data by Metropolitan Statistical Area for the other controls. The results suggest that for a one-point increase in Walk Score, we can expect a .5% increase in a cities’ median house price, and this result is statistically significant.

In another way of measuring the same question (an IV regression using the year the city was founded as the instrument), I found that a one-point increase in Walk Score can be expected to increase home prices by 3%. This result is also statistically significant, but I have less faith in this model.

For the most part, the other studies that I’ve seen of Walk Score’s relationship to house prices look at one city or a few cities and control for variables like a neighborhood’s crime rate and housing quality. While there are obvious advantages to these more detailed, local studies, I think the national view gets around the sample selection problems that make other results ungeneralizable.

Elsewhere on the Network today: An exhibit brings the trains rejected by Wisconsin governor Scott Walker to Milwaukee, demonstrating what might have been if it weren’t for political antics, reports Urban Milwaukee. BikeWalkLee writes that a Fort Myers area women who fell asleep at the wheel and killed a local cyclist won’t face criminal charges. And Bike Portland highlights some of the successes from the local political action committee dedicated to walking and biking issues.

I asked the Cap’n what his questions would be. The reply:

Meanwhile, reader Ryan Richter sent in his revised list of questions too. They’re a little more specific, so I’ll start with Ryan’s. With any luck, the answers to Cap’n Transit’s questions will be woven into the answers below.

Thanks to both of you for keeping me focused on what really matters in this whole political hullabaloo.

Ryan’s first question:

1. How will public transportation fare after being practically decapitated in the last round?

Public transit came out a winner when members of the House GOP mounted their full-frontal assault against it. “The uprising was so immediate and so bipartisan [the Republicans] backed off,” said Deron Lovaas of NRDC. Democrats and some urban and suburban Republicans blew up at the idea that transit would no longer be eligible for its 20 percent of Highway Trust Fund dollars, which it’s gotten since the Fund’s Mass Transit Account was created under Ronald Reagan in 1983. Surviving an attempt against it makes transit that much stronger now – its opponents know that defunding transit is a losing issue for them.

The Senate bill keeps transit funding levels about the same as they’ve been but it makes some good changes to transit policy, like reducing delays in getting transit projects moving and prioritizing improvements to existing transit infrastructure. Perhaps most significantly, it allows transit agencies, under some limited circumstances, to use federal funds for operations instead of just capital. The restrictions on those funds have left some agencies with brand new buses and no way to pay drivers. Transit advocates have been asking for more flexibility in using these funds for years, and it’s reassuring to see that some relief could be coming.

The Senate’s MAP-21 also provides funding for TOD planning and would permanently restore parity between transit and parking commuter benefits.

Will all of these Senate provisions make it into whatever comes out of the conference? It’s impossible to know, but if I may turn back to inside-baseball Washington politics for a second, it’s worth remembering that the Senate is in a strong position to maintain many of its bill’s key elements. Technically, nothing should be introduced into a conference bill except for provisions in the two bills being conferenced, and there’s no real House bill to speak of. Plus, it’s very possible that the outcome of this conference will be no bill at all but another extension until the lame duck period after the election. But if there is a bill at the end of all this, Ryan also wants to know:

2. How do we handle the overwhelming state of good repair issues impacting all transportation infrastructure?

This is one place where the Senate bill shines. Transportation for America has a good write-up of the Senate bill’s State of Good Repair provisions, in which they applaud the new requirement that at least 60 percent of maintenance funds be used for actual maintenance, not new capacity. Allowing states to divert 40 percent of repair funds for new capacity still seems like too much, but they used to be allowed to squander up to 50 percent on non-maintenance projects.

Plus: “States are required to develop asset management plans,” wrote Steve Davis at T4America, “and as a part of these plans establish performance targets for the condition of roads and bridges and the performance of the system. In addition, the program includes provisions to hold states accountable for the repair of Interstate pavement and National Highway System bridges by requiring that they spend a certain amount of funding on the repair of those facilities if they fall below minimum standards established by USDOT.” And roads that fall under the National Highway System will go from about 160,000 to 220,000 miles. These maintenance requirements will help steer states away from building new highways that would only exacerbate sprawl.

The House bill (when there was a House bill) would have required better reporting and allowed for some penalties for deficient bridges but didn’t have the same restrictions on spending.

But Ryan, you asked about all transportation infrastructure, not just roads and bridges. As we referenced above, the Senate bill also includes the Core Capacity Improvement Project, which would expand funding eligibility to include improvements to the capacity and functionality of existing fixed guideway systems. And it directs U.S. DOT to “achieve a balance” between rail system development and improvement of the current system.

3. How does the bill recognize the long (and short) term societal trends towards transportation that does not include the automobile?

It doesn’t. Not really. It maintains the current four-to-one highway-to-transit funding ratio, it weakens programs to fund bicycling and pedestrian safety (even the Cardin-Cochran amendment is only a partial fix), and it doesn’t even contemplate land use. The Senate bill has some helpful provisions for rail (discussed more below) but nothing that will propel forward high-speed rail or even a substantially more robust and reliable non-bullet passenger rail network.

I hope you ask that question of elected officials, Ryan. It gets right to the heart of the problem. A future less dependent on cars (and road-building and oil) is where we’re headed. But even the Senate bill, which transportation reformers support (albeit not without reservations), only makes some thoughtful tweaks on the margins of the current system – it doesn’t substantially reform it.

Next question, Ryan?

4. What is the priority for high speed rail or any other long-term transportation infrastructure investments?

Strangely, the transportation bill isn’t the primary vehicle for rail issues – most of that is covered under the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act (PRIIA). There is some movement to fold passenger rail into the transportation bill, but neither the House nor the Senate bills do that.

That’s not to say that these bills don’t address rail, but they’re not the place where a true high-speed rail network will be born. The Senate bill requires U.S. DOT to develop a long-range national rail plan, as well as regional rail plans that address implementation. If states want federal intercity passenger rail grants, they’ll have to follow suit. There are provisions to get next-gen equipment to more states and to make life a little easier for Amtrak (as opposed to the House, which has shown an interest only in killing Amtrak). The Senate, on the other hand, would expand the kinds of grants Amtrak can apply for (currently, Amtrak can only apply directly for high-speed projects), allow Amtrak to match grants with ticket sales, and create a 100 percent federal grant program for Amtrak and the states to improve or preserve long-distance service. It also allows Amtrak to take over responsibility for environmental reviews. The Senate bill also encourages on-time service by penalizing Amtrak’s host railroads when they are to blame for consistently late train service.

The House’s H.R. 7, on the other hand, would have cut Amtrak’s operating subsidies, limit its use of federal funds, and deny federal funds to “low-speed” projects under 125 mph.

So what will the conference bill do? It will probably be a compromise, with Senate language that requires new spending especially vulnerable. Amtrak is a lightning rod in this Congress, though, and there could be big disagreements over any of it.

5. How will the bill address critical operational funding shortfalls (not to mention capital) that transit agencies are facing?

I’ve addressed some of this above, but the biggest help is the Senate’s allowance of flexible spending for operations during periods of high unemployment. As for capital, the changes to New Starts I mentioned are positive, but it all comes back to Ryan’s third question: Don’t expect this bill to radically shift the balance from car travel to anything else.

6. How will the bill address the structural financial problems facing the Highway Trust Fund? 

Along with the answer to #3, this is probably the most pathetic part of this whole pathetic process. The bill doesn’t address the structural funding issues at all. It doesn’t raise revenues or put in place a more sensible or sustainable system. It doesn’t create a National Infrastructure Bank to help leverage private investments. The House tried to tackle the problem by slashing spending, but that plan was soundly rejected by everyone involved. Then they said they could keep spending levels the same but raise revenues through oil drilling, which would be hilarious if it wasn’t so scary.

The complete paralysis around reforming the funding for transportation is exactly why this bill has been such a headache, and it’s why the Senate bill has to end in September of next year – that’s when the Highway Trust Fund is scheduled to go insolvent, and someone in Washington is going to have to show some real conviction of character to actually change something. But no one wants to do that yet. Which brings me to your last question, Ryan:

7. Will there be a push towards alternative user fees to fund transportation infrastructure?

Now you’re just depressing me. No. No, there won’t.

Your donations directly fund the original reporting, commentary, and videos we produce – powerful content that influences the decision makers who shape our streets and the places we inhabit.

For a bit of added incentive this week, we’re giving away a new handmade messenger bag from Vaya, makers of bags and other bike accessories using recycled materials, to one lucky reader who donates by May 24 at midnight. Here’s a look:

If you value the work we do at Streetsblog and Streetfilms to advance livable streets and green transportation, please give. Thanks as always for reading.

Photo: Salon

Today Adonia Lugo at Urban Adonia points to another unexpected source of venom: the feminist blogosphere, a.k.a. ladyblogs. These bastions of tolerance and acceptance have a strange blind spot for cyclists, Lugo writes:

When the topic of bikes comes up, there’s always a mini-war in the comments between people who despise “bike hipsters” (read: entitled, privileged jerks who think they own the road) and people who actually ride bikes. Commenters trot out their most extreme stories of negative interactions they’ve had with people on bikes, sometimes concluding with things like “F#%* BIKING HIPSTERS I HOPE A BUS HITS YOU.”

These are the same websites that promote things like fat acceptance and anti-bullying campaigns. Why are bicyclists portrayed as inhuman creatures unworthy of sympathy, dismissing an incredibly diverse world of practice (bicycling) because of the stupid behavior of a few jerks? And, this is the thing that really confuses me, why do people find jerk bicyclists so harmful to society when they constantly interact with motorists who run red lights and stop signs, use infrastructure like traffic circles in dangerous ways, talk and text in the car, drive without looking from side to side when entering intersections, and engage in other dangerous behaviors that kill people every day?

I asked a few of my friends, one a bicyclist and one less inclined to the bicycling arts, what they thought about this phenomenon. Both responded that it’s because you can see a bicyclist’s face, whereas it’s easier to think of a motorist as a car. The interactions with bicyclists stick out in people’s minds, and maybe they feel more personally insulted by the face-to-face flouting of laws. I think it’s also because we’ve trained ourselves to think of driving as passing through an obstacle course rather than moving through a social space. Cars that do dumb stuff are a nuisance, but they do not interrupt the illusion until there’s an actual crash. Bodies that do dumb stuff are a threat to the idea that driving is a no harm, no foul activity. You might actually hurt someone!

Elsewhere on the Network today: Mobilizing the Region shares a story about New Jersey high school students who are fighting for 0.2 miles of sidewalk at a dangerous turn by their school. Greater Greater Washington sees parallels between the misperceptions of New York City’s bike-share plans and the days preceding the launch of Capital Bikeshare. And the Transport Politic says Dallas’s Trinity highway plan, which will parallel a new light-rail line, represents “transportation planning at its worst.”

Members of the Google robocar team. Photo: Inhabitat

Writer Michael Lind argued that the “case for infrastructure investment has suffered from the lack of a plausible vision of the next American infrastructure.” Things that are not “plausible,” according to Lind, include “renewable energy and mass transit.” He wrote:

The idea that the U.S. could transition quickly from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources like wind power and solar power inspired many liberals to support artificially rigging markets in favor of renewable energy by methods like cap-and-trade and renewable energy standards that force working-class consumers, via utility, to buy expensive power from uneconomical wind, solar or biofuel sources. And for a brief moment in time, the center-left in the United States was entranced by the mirage of a continental high-speed rail system.

Okay, we’ll give you a second to consider that this was printed in one of the country’s leading, left-leaning online magazines.

“Rigging markets” is some pretty debatable rhetoric to describe renewable energy standards and cap-and-trade — a policy that is supported by the overwhelming majority of economists. (Billions of dollars in tax breaks for gas companies and subsidies for road building – some people might describe that as “rigging markets” in the opposite direction, but we digress.)

Unlike “uncritical,” “unrealistic” and “entranced” proponents of rail, Lind has a vision for the future that is very much like the present, or even the past. Brace yourself, readers: In the future, the U.S. will have an endless supply of fossil fuel thanks to “environmentally responsible” shale gas exploration. Plus, in the future, rail and bus transit of all kinds will never be able to complete with Google’s self-driving cars.

Lind is a big fan of Google robocars. He goes on about their many benefits:

Robocars may be fatal for fixed-rail transportation, at least for passengers rather than freight. Google has been test driving self-driving cars in California and Nevada has become the first state to legalize driverless vehicles. No doubt it will take several decades for safety issues and legal arrangements to be worked out. But high-speed trains might find competition in high-speed convoys of robot cars on smart highways, allowed higher speeds once human error has been eliminated. And the price advantage of subway tickets over taxi fares in cities may vanish, when the taxis drive themselves. Point-to-point travel, within cities or between them, is inherently more convenient than train or subway journeys which require changing modes of transit in the course of a journey. Thanks to robocars, much cheaper point-to-point travel everywhere may eventually be cheap enough to relegate light rail and inter-city rail to the museum, along with the horse-drawn omnibus and the trans-atlantic blimp.

What Lind — and Salon — fail to mention is that his professional interests are very much entangled with the producer of those cars.

Lind works for the New America Foundation — a nonprofit think tank whose board chairman is Google executive chair and former CEO Eric Schmidt. Schmidt holds company stock worth billions, and both Schmidt and Google Inc. are among the think tank’s largest financial supporters. According to the New America Foundation, Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, gave between $250,000 and $1 million to the organization in 2010. (Its annual budget was about $15 million in 2010, according to IRS data.) Google itself funded the organization at between $100,000 and $249,999.

In a 2010 article for the New Yorker, reporter Jane Mayer — writing about fossil fuel industry titans the Koch brothers — warned of think tanks with close links to the economic sectors affected by their policy recommendations:

You take corporate money and give it to a neutral-sounding think tank which hires people with pedigrees and academic degrees who put out credible-seeming studies. But they all coincide perfectly with the economic interests of their funders.

Google has surely made a significant investment its self-driven car technology. Now that this economic behemoth has a stake in robocars and robocar infrastructure, let’s hope we won’t see a rash of Koch-esque intellectual posturing in favor of auto-oriented transportation policies.

The New America Foundation does some good work, which we’ve occasionally highlighted on Streetsblog, with funding from a diverse array of sources. The organization is a far cry from transparently self-interested groups like the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity. It would be a shame if it started drifting in that direction.

It seems an odd charge to level, that either Streetsblog or Damien Newton, our editor and writer of the story in question, are in the tank for Metro.  Streetsblog often publishes stories critical of Metro, including one earlier in the day yesterday criticizing Metro’s fare gate policy.  Streetsblog also often refers to the Metro Board of Directors as “dysfunctional,” mocks Metro highway projects such as the I-710 Big Dig, and awarded Sunyoung Yang of the Bus Riders Union the Streetsie award for 2011′s “Transit Advocate of the Year.”

In addition to writing most of the aforementioned articles, Newton has filed complaints with the District Attorney’s Office alleging Metro has violated the Brown Act and has openly pondered suing over a twice-rejected Freedom of Information Act Request.  In the week preceding the opening of the Expo Line Phase One, Newton conducted an interview with Damien Goodmon — a chief critic of the line’s design — as part of a collaborative project with Intersections South L.A.

Because we believe in full transparency, we’ve put together a disclosure list concerning the relationships that exist between Streetsblog and Metro so people can make up their own minds.

Financial Links

As an agency, Metro does not contribute anything to Streetsblog’s budget.  A few of Metro’s contractors have purchased ads on Streetsblog in support of their public outreach efforts — i.e. to notify L.A. County residents of upcoming community meetings, workshops, etc.  In total, these ads will account for less than 2% of Los Angeles Streetsblog’s revenue for the 2012 Fiscal Year that ends June 30.  In the three years previous, ads from Metro contractors accounted for 0% of the budget.

As for donations, no Metro staff member has contributed to Streetsblog at an event or through the website to the best of our knowledge.  Some Metro contractors have staff members who have attended Streetsblog fundraisers.  Donations from these employees comes to less than 1% of the Los Angeles Streetsblog budget.

Board Member/Staff Connections

Publishing Los Angeles Streetsblog is a collaboration between two non-profits: the California-based Southern California Streets Initiative and the New York based OpenPlans.  There are no connections between OpenPlans and Metro.

The Southern California Streets Initiative has nine members of its Board of Directors: Joe Linton (president), Deborah Murphy (vice-president), Carter Rubin (treasurer), Damien Newton (ex-oficio as executive director), Joel Epstein, Juan Matute, Sirinya Matute, Jocelyn Ramirez, and James Rojas.

Of these nine, two, Carter Rubin and Joel Epstein, currently work as contractors for Metro as contributors to its official blog, The Source.  Neither supplied any input whatsoever on either the story in question or any of our any stories involving Metro.  Long before joining The Source, Epstein used his Huffington Post column to advocate for the Subway route underneath Beverly Hills High School with a station at Constellation Blvd. and Avenue of the Stars.

James Rojas was a long-time employee of Metro until 2010.  Most of Rojas’ work for Streetsblog revolves around his “interactive modeling” projects.  When he does write about Metro, the articles have been about the I-710 Big Dig and have been critical.

L.A. Streetsblog has no full-time employees, but three regular writers.  Neither Newton, Kris Fortin or Sahra Sulaiman have any financial connections to Metro.  Of our volunteer and freelance contributors (meaning they’ve written at least three stories for Streetsblog in this calendar year), Dana Gabbard, Lindsey Miller, Carlos Morales, and Mark Vallianatos have no financial connections to Metro, although Vallianatos has written grant requests for and with Metro as part of his job as a professor at Occidental College.  That hasn’t stopped him from writing several harsh opinion pieces on the 710 Big Dig.

Editorial Position on the Westside Subway

Los Angeles Streetsblog does not have an editorial position supporting one route over the other on the Westside Subway.  None of our staff or board of directors are either geological or seismic experts, so we could not give an educated opinion on which route is the safest one.

That being said, we believe the over-heated rhetoric and mis-information we’ve seen out of some factions in Beverly Hills is counter-productive and dangerous to the public decision-making process.   This isn’t the first time Newton has corrected Beverly Hills Courier stories. (Read: here and here.)

It seems more than likely that the final route for the Subway will be decided by a court.  If the courts tell Metro they have to dig along Santa Monica Boulevard, then the project will likely die as Metro Staff have said over and over they believe that route is infeasible due to the fact that the station and tunnel would sit on top of an earthquake fault.

If the court gives Metro the green light, how will Beverly Hills react?  After years of telling anyone would listen that a corrupt agency is going to kill the children at their only high school, where do you go from there?  There is no easy answer to those last two questions. And that’s one reason we find the public relations campaign being waged by many of the loudest voices in Beverly Hills to be so dangerous to everyone’s long-term good.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Source: RAND Corporation

The brilliant thing about car-sharing is that it leads people to drive less by providing access to cars. It allows people to give up their personal vehicles (along with the gas, maintenance, parking, and insurance costs they entail) without giving up the ability to use the car once in a while when necessary. It diminishes the need for parking spaces, since one vehicle can serve several households. And it makes people think harder about the trips they take, since each trip constitutes a higher cost than in a personal vehicle, which come with high upfront costs but low per-trip costs, encouraging more driving just to get your money’s worth out of your investment.

But only 0.27 percent of U.S. drivers participate in car-sharing programs.

A recent study from the RAND Corporation estimates that that number could rise to 4.5 percent if policies were put in place to support car-sharing. RAND’s outer estimate of the potential of car-sharing goes as high as 12.5 percent of the 21-and-older population of major cities. The potential for greenhouse gas emissions savings is significant.

The RAND authors cite a 2008 survey showing that for every shared vehicle in use, nine to 13 private vehicles are taken off the road, and that half of car-sharing participants either sold a car or didn’t buy a new car because of their membership. Another survey found that average vehicle ownership per household fell from an already-low 0.47 to 0.24 cars after adopting car-sharing. Average vehicle ownership per household is 1.87 in the United States.

RAND attributes the greenhouse gas reductions from car-sharing to a) fewer vehicle miles traveled, b) fewer cars being manufactured, and c) more efficient vehicles being used more of the time. After all, car-sharing can avoid SUV syndrome, where people buy a big, heavy car for the one time a year that they actually go into the mountains with it, and then spend the rest of the year driving alone on highways and trying to park it in small spaces. Also, intensively-used shared cars will be replaced more often than private vehicles, meaning that more of them will have the most modern fuel-efficiency ratings. The report doesn’t mention the GHG savings if car-sharing results in the building of fewer roads or parking spaces.

The estimates of car-sharing’s potential market penetration are among the most helpful elements of the RAND report.

In the most optimistic scenario — 20.3 million car-share users, or about 36 times the current rate — car-sharing would reduce overall car emissions by 1.7 percent. A more realistic scenario of 7.5 million users, which would still require the widespread adoption of policies to support car-sharing, leads to a 0.6 percent emissions reduction. The authors provide a “cautionary note that estimates of growth in vehicle sharing have previously been proven wrong.” They cite a 1994 study that predicted that the market potential in Germany was 2.45 million members; “however, ten years later, the market stood at 70,000.”

On a per-person basis, car-sharing doesn’t cut emissions as much as transit. One person taking transit to work instead of driving can save more than two metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, according to APTA, as opposed to the above estimate of 0.89 tons per person car-sharing. But car-sharing also works in tandem with transit, functioning best where people can rely on transit for many trips. Car-sharing remains a largely urban phenomenon, according to the RAND report, with the only non-urban success stories on college campuses or eco-communes.

The other major contribution of the report is that it suggests some ways to make car-sharing more attractive. They say it will never take off unless car-sharing is 1) cheaper and/or more convenient than owning a personal automobile, 2) profitable for providers, and 3) reaches critical mass in a geographic area. To make that happen, they recommend reducing impediments in insurance policies and tax codes and increasing provisions for “one-way, dynamic vehicle sharing,” and better ride-matching services. The recommendations also include the promotion of short-distance, low-speed “neighborhood vehicles,” like the golf carts senior citizens drive around retirement communities, and the promotion of driverless vehicles. The report doesn’t explain in detail how driverless cars would enhance vehicle-sharing.

The Nationals' new stadium has turned a dead urban zone into a hotspot. Photo: NRDC Switchboard

But that doesn’t stop too many cities, and there are examples of places that have gambled on sports facilities and won big.

There’s a new member of that club now: Washington, DC. It’s been nearly 10 years since the city green-lighted a package of 30-year bonds for a new home for the Nationals baseball franchise in a depressed southeastern section of the city. Kaid Benfield at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Switchboard blog reports that the investment is paying off:

According to developers in the area, building didn’t really become financially feasible there until the city committed to the ballpark. Today, the neighborhood’s new projects are about 30 percent built. In addition to the new commercial properties, the area’s residential population has increased from about 1,000 to more than 3,500 and should eventually reach 16,000.

It is especially heartening that even those originally opposed to the stadium like what they see. Neighborhood resident Naomi Monk was a prominent skeptic, arguing that the park would only be an eyesore benefiting millionaire players and businessmen, with nothing in it for low-income residents. But in March she told Fisher that “I have to say, it’s been for the betterment of the community. Our crime seems to be under control. The neighborhood looks 100 percent better. The new housing is a great improvement.”

I’m not going to make a broader point about the extent to which public investment in sports is a good thing. It’s likely situational and, though it has been enormously beneficial here in Washington twice (though in the case of Verizon Center the city paid only for infrastructure), and it also appears to have been beneficial in nearby Baltimore, the facts and circumstances vary.

Benfield reports that the tax issued on big businesses to support the stadium is bringing in twice what was expected. Plus additional property taxes related to new investment have added $13 million to the city’s coffers. Nice, for a change, to see a city enjoying a windfall at this moment in history.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Bike Delaware shares a League of American Bicyclists’ report showing that one in four collisions between cyclists and cars involve cyclists being hit from behind. Bike Portland reports the city’s first open streets event of the season attracted an astounding 28,000 people. And Transit in Utah says sustainable transportation advocates need to do a better job developing sales pitches and buzz words.