Streetsblog Los Angeles

(The following op/ed was written by Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield (D-SFV), Chair of the Assembly Budget Committee in support of AB 650.  Blumenfield’s legislation has already passed the Assembly and passed the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday.  It needs to pass the full Senate and go back to the Assembly for a concurrence vote before heading to the governor’s desk.  This piece first appeared in the California Progress Report and is reprinted here with the consent of Blumenfield’s office. – DN)

Traffic is killing us.  It eats up our time, it thins our wallets as our cars idly burn through expensive gasoline, and it spoils the air we breathe.  We need a path to real public transportation alternatives in order to get out of our cars and on with our lives.

That’s why I have authored legislation calling for a group of experts to develop California’s first statewide public transit development and financing plan.  And, ever mindful of our trying budget times, it will not cost our state’s besieged General Fund a dime.

Assembly Bill (AB) 650 establishes a blue ribbon task force to craft a public transportation development plan for California based on an assessment of what transit we have, what amount of transit we need, and how we can finance transit construction.  The task force will be composed of 12 experts in finance, transit, the environment, and public health who must complete their plan by September 30, 2012.  This work would be undertaken, in part, through workshops conducted across the state.  And, it would be financed from existing transit moneys provided through California’s gas tax, specifically those devoted to transit planning.

The blue ribbon task force is a tried and true way to help California find solutions to complex and enduring problems, like public transportation.  In recent years, task forces have helped California enact comprehensive fisheries protections off our coast and achieve breakthrough reforms that balance our state’s water supply needs with environmental protection. Read more…

Architecture Critic Christopher Hawthorne has been one of the more critical thinkers at the Los Angeles Times these last several years.  Over the weekend he weighed in on the growing conflict in Los Angeles between those that see a future for the city with subways, light rails, bike lanes and inviting places to walk and those that can’t see beyond the dashboard.

Critics Notebook: There’s a Growing Disconnect on a Better-Connected L.A. should be read in its entirety.  After juxtaposing the public’s reaction to CicLAvia to the media’s lazy reaction to the Westside Subway EIR; Hawthorne closes his piece by clearly defining the battle lines, and the path to victory, for those that want a “connected city.”

More and more, I am convinced that the gap between those who welcome additional density and crave mass transit and those who are on guard against such change is widening, and indeed will come to define the political landscape in Los Angeles for the next decade or two. To a certain extent, CicLAvia and events like it have a role to play in helping bridge that gap, mostly because they provide a way to see the cityscape with fresh eyes and at unusually close range.

But in the end, it’s not CicLAvia and other special events such as the Tour De Fat that will define Los Angeles, but the concrete changes in the way people move in their day to day life.  Hawthorne, and apparently the people that read his piece, get that.

Hopefully, everyone with a dashboard perspective can join him soon.

Since the Christopher Thompson verdict was announced on Monday, many cyclists have reacted with dismay to the media coverage of the assault, the trial, and the reactions of other Angelenos on message boards and call-in shows.  Cyclists were surprised at the venom shown by callers and mis-information from the host on progressive KPCC's morning show and other radio shows were just as bad.  Surprisingly, some of the best coverage, was from the conservative John and Ken Show, the top rated radio call-in show in Los Angeles.

Today, the Los Angeles Times stepped into the fray with an op/ed by columnist Meghan Daum.  The piece is typical of the good and the bad of the coverage.  Daum seems to think that all cyclists are spandex wearing weekend warriors or communist hippies; but she also charectarizes many drivers as socially acceptable sociopaths.  Consider:

Obscene gestures, vanity plates -- it's all part of the romance of Southern California driving. Road rage? That's just the inflamed passion part of that romance. But anyone who's been paying attention to the road lately has probably noticed a marked, even dizzying -- increase in the number of bikes on U.S. streets.

Ugh.  Stererotypes on parade.  However, our car driving friends fare even worse:

Because there's a larger bone of contention here, which is that cyclists make a lot of us feel like lazy slobs. Whereas drivers sit in an air-conditioned bubble, expending only the energy required to press the gas pedal, tap the brake and change from a '70s classic rock radio station to an '80s classic rock station, cyclists are out in the actual elements doing actual exercise. Whereas drivers are consuming calories by eating an entire bucket of KFC over 10 blocks, cyclists are burning calories and consuming nothing but seaweed at home. Whereas drivers' carbon footprints grow more beast-like by the hour, cyclists create no exhaust other than the sweet fatigue they feel as they drift off to saintly sleep at night.

Of course, moral superiority is insufferable, but you still shouldn't try to run it off the road or teach it a lesson with the family car. You might win on the street, but in court, it's a different story.

While I applaud the general sentiment of her story, that drivers and cyclists need to co-exist and it's incumbent on drivers as the bigger road users to be the bigger people; I have to wonder whether painting with such broad brush strokes, "drivers are slobs" and "cyclists are insufferably smug," is the way to get the message across.

If you haven't checked out Daum's column yet, I would recommend you do so.  If nothing else, the comments section gives you a chance to interact with some of L.A.'s less sympathetic drivers in a forum where their two tons of body armor aren't a factor.  I would leave my own comment, but I have to finish my seaweed before grabbing my cloth bags and heading to a farmer's market.

As Metro’s "Express Lanes" project starts to make headlines, you can expect to see more and more of these types of articles; misinformation dressed up as altruistic concern for others, appearing in local papers everywhere.  For those of us who love the idea of congestion pricing on highways we’re left with an unsavory choice: defend Metro’s week anti-congestion pricing program or let non-believers slam congestion pricing altogether.

Fortunately, today’s piece in the Times by Tim Rutten, the same journalist who wrote a very similar piece last year, is so tortured in its logic that it doesn’t require a lot of ammo to rebut.  In it, Rutten argues that Metro’s Express Lanes plan is bad because it is part of a conspiracy to bring road pricing of any sort to Los Angeles County, it won’t do anything to reduce congestion because it won’t apply during rush hour, and because it’s anti-poor people.

First off, let’s cover where Rutten is right.  Because Metro lacks the guts to require a toll from hybrids with the anti-logic clean air stickers or "HOV-"2 and because federal law requires that HOV lanes move at 45 miles per hour; the pricing plan will not be in effect when roads are most congested.  This is a very cogent argument.

However, Rutten’s defense of the single-working mother who will be forced to choose between being with her sick child or paying the rent because of Express Lanes; is beyond eye rolling.  Last year when Rutten rose to the defense of his imaginary working-class friends, I pointed to the fact that when actually asked, the working class and working poor living in areas with congestion pricing prefer having the pay lanes than not having the pay lanes.  Personally, I’ll believe what the less-well-off highway driver says when asked over what Tim Rutten has decided they think without having done any research.

This year, Rutten creates the following imaginary nightmare scenario which is even more easily debunked.  This time I didn’t even have to use a search engine.

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The Daily News printed a rare opinion piece yesterday that dared challenge the orthodoxy that adding lane capacity to the 405 is somehow going to improve quality of life for the people living near the widening area in Encino.  The I-405 widening project is one that the city hopes will receive stimulus funds and they have long argued that by encouraging carpooling you can better manage car growth because more people per car will lead to less cars.  Thus far, there has never been a study that has shown this to happen, but there is plenty of evidence that wider highways lead to more cars.

In the Daily News, Gerald A. Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino, argues that the city and state are dead wrong.  Instead of improving the environment, a wider 405 will lead to worse air quality and poor health for those living near it.

It is not reasonable to expect that residents living near the freeways should now be subjected to freeway expansion causing more noise, congestion, glare and air pollution for the convenience of commuters. At what point is enough is enough? After the 405 Freeway is widened, and later winds up with the same congested lanes, will people still say want to keep expanding and add even more car-pool lanes?

People who live near the 405 Freeway are affected by increased lung cancer rates due to automobile exhaust. Do drivers think it is OK to subject people to increased cancer rates for their commuting convenience? 

Oh, lung cancer, shmung cancer.  People need to get home and they deserve a wide freeway!

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Ben Fried got it exactly right about the errors that riddled Tuesday's David Brooks column. Brooks was so far off the mark, though, that it's worth another look at the ways he misled readers.

The core of his argument that Americans don’t like cities rested on this survey by Pew Research Center. The survey found that Americans, when asked where they would most like to move to, named Denver, San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento, Orlando, Tampa and San Antonio as their top ten, in that order of preference. Because these cities are mostly in the west and the south, Brooks concluded that Americans are interested in living in, well, the west and the south. But then he went further, citing it as general evidence of America’s anti-urban tastes.

What Brooks didn't address -- and which I have a hard time believing he didn’t know, given his usual informedness -- was that most of the 10 cities in the poll are pursuing pro-urban agendas with a vengeance. They are building lots of light rail lines. They are re-configuring streets to make them more walkable and bikeable. They are steering clear of policies and projects that would encourage more driving.

Nowhere is that more true than Denver, the number one city in the poll, which supplied the headline to Brooks' column, "I Dream of Denver." Well, a few years ago, this object of American aspirations voted to approve what is probably the largest new mass transit system in the United States. The city of Denver and a bunch of neighboring political jurisdictions managed to come together and agree to build a half dozen light rail and commuter rail lines at once. The metro area will end up with a complete rail-based transit system in one fell swoop, without having to proceed line-by-line over decades, like most cities.

Portland, of course, has been the most aggressively pro-urban city in the country for three decades, with its mix of pro-transit, pro-biking policies all set in a state that employs some of the most cohesive growth-management practices in the country. In Portland, as readers of Streetsblog know, you can now ride a bike and have priority over cars when you come to a red light, just like in Amsterdam, the place Brooks posits as the epitome of un-American living. If Americans don't want to be urban, why are they putting Portland in their top ten list?

Essentially all the other cities on this list are pursuing pro-urban policies, even if they aren’t all urban yet. Hell, even Tampa, in the belly of a state that defined suburban sprawl, opened a downtown streetcar line a few years ago.

Before posting this piece, I went back and re-read Brooks' column, just to see if I had gotten everything right or missed anything. Upon review, it's actually astonishing how misleading it is. It's such a textbook example of selectively using facts and figures to advance faulty logic that it's worth doing a blow-by-blow here.

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Fresh off the news that the Times was bringing back the Bottleneck Blog came the news that my favorite Times blog, the fabulous Emerald City, was closing down effective tomorrow, June 21.  Emerald City managed to transcend being a blog about environmentalism to being a daily guide on how everyone can clean up their lives in ways that were hip and fun.  Along the way, it also became one of the places on the ‘Net I visited every day.

Readers that have followed my writing since Street Heat will know that Emerald City was one of the first major blogs to pick up on what we were talking about.  The famously car-free Siel was always looking for new writers to keep Em. City full of new ideas and different voices and soon I was writing op/eds promoting congestion pricing and slamming gas tax holidays.

While tomorrow is Emerald City’s last day, its intrepid blogger’s writings can still be found at Green LA Girl and other sites around the net.  Siel will be gone from latimes.com but not forgotten.  Nevertheless, make some time in the next 24 hours to take a trip to Emerald City to walk down its green streets and say goodbye.

Last month, the LA County Board of Supervisors issued an edict that all taco trucks would now have to move every hour taking a firm stand against the free market and for increased vehicle miles traveled.  Hilariously, the first taco truck that was ticketed was actually owned by the same people that owned the adjacent restaurant and used the truck as a takeout window. 

Recently James Rojas, whose model of downtown appeared earlier this week in Streetsblog, wrote a piece for the Planning Report proposes a solution to the taco truck problem which would allow local government to collect some money and legitimate taco trucks to stay in business. Rojas' piece is reprinted in its entirety here with the permission of the author.

Latino Urban Forum's James Rojas Supports Permitting L.A.'s Street Vendors

A recent move by the L.A. County Supervisors has sparked a debate about the benefits that mobile food vendors bring the community.

The county of Los Angeles recently passed a law prohibiting street vendors (i.e., taco trucks) from lingering too long in one location, engendering controversy between the public and the brick and mortar businesses who claim to be threatened by these street vendors. In the following TPR exclusive, James Rojas, of the Latino Urban Forum, makes the case that the county's new restrictions on street vendors may be overlooking the solutions to problems of walkability and pedestrian-friendly streets that these "mobile" businesses offer the region.

Many major cities in the United States have developed street vending policies, often managing a variety of urban needs in the process. For example, the city of Portland believes that vendors provide valuable street amenities for pedestrians, but requires street vendors to meet design standards in order to maintain the city's pedestrian-friendly aesthetic. New York City allows street vendors to sell fresh fruits and vegetables in city neighborhoods that have high obesity rates among its residents, providing a creative, portable solution to a problem often caused by a failure of planning and neighborhood development.

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Editor's note: I'll be away from the computer for a couple of days.  LA Streetsblog will still publish, but will be on a sparse schedule until next Thursday.  In the meantime, enjoy the third (and at this point, last) installment of the SOCAL Voices Series I ran last December.  This piece seemed appropriate coming the week after Bike to Work Week.  Pastor Joshua Elliott McGuffie of St. Andrew's West Los Angeles writes about his experiences as a bike commuter.  This essay first appeared on Street Heat on December 26, 2007.

Since So I'm a bike commuter, or at least I was up until an amateur football match two weeks ago at Pan-Pacific Park, next to the Grove.

Ending up on the wrong end of a tackle, my right foot has now been multiple shades of purple and I've been told by various medical personnel to 'stay off it' for either a) the next few weeks or b) until a leftist is in the White House.

This is troubling to me. First of all because these lovely, cool, clear days are great days to be out on the bike in West LA (the siren song of the Santa Monica Bay Bike Path is so sweet). Secondly, because I now have to rely on my mostly-trusty '79 Mercedes 240d (The Desert Fox) to get around the West Side. This is a hassle for everybody, mostly for my wife, Nicole, who's stuck ferrying me around. From a less narcissistic standpoint though, having to drive around in the car is a hassle because it means needing to participate in the vehicular orgy that is rush hour in Los Angeles and it means needlessly spewing out hydrocarbon exhaust as we putter around Palms/Mar Vista.

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