Streetsblog Los Angeles

• Perry Worried About Impact of Event Traffic in DTLA (OC Register)
• How to Beat the Crunch?  Two Words: Go Metro (NBC 4)
• Farmers Field EIR Comments Due Monday, Many Think Its Too Soon (KPCC)
• Construction Begins on No-Ho Parking Lot (Patch via Curbed)
• Bike Week Shows Rising Bike Riding Constituency (The Source)
• City Hiring New Parking Enforcers (Daily News)
• What’s Up with Wyoming Plates on LAX/LAWA Buses (Alan Best Buy)
• West Hollywood Develops Parking Credits Program (CP&DR)
• Arcadia Wants 800 Parking Spaces for Transit Garage (Pasadena Star-News)

Last week, I published a list of seven questions I had as the Transportation Conference Committee started meeting. I was examining the politics, not the policy. Turns out some readers wanted to hear more about the policy.

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.

Read more…

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blogging for a quick pep talk. Thanks to our generous and supportive readers, Streetsblog and Streetfilms are almost halfway to our goal of raising $30,000 by June 1. We’ve got two weeks left to raise $17,000 — help us reach that target so we can keep making the case for designing cities and towns around people, not cars.

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.

Major media outlets can be harsh to bicyclists — often inexplicably or irrationally harsh. Even progressive sites like Salon are not immune, as we’ve written about before.

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.”

• Will E-Highway Help Solve Pollution Problems Along 710? (LAT)
• Dear Courier, Now This Is an Official Response from Metro (The Source)
• High Speed Rail the Latest to Expect Legal Fast Track (LAT)
• Times’ Boulevard Series Causing a Stir (KPCC)
• Candidate Kevin James Calls for Longer Review of Farmers Field EIR (City Watch)
• L.A. E-Car Drivers Drive Longer, Charge at Off-Peak Hours (LAT)
• Caught Texting While Driving?  Fine Could Go All the Way Up to $30 (ABC7)
• Bike Week Continues with Mid-City/Expo Ride (The Source)
• Drunks!  Use This Guide to Avoid Traffic Stops and Get Where You Need to Go While Wasted (Daily News)

Last week Salon ran a pretty horrendous piece on the future of transportation called “Oops — Wrong Future.”

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.

Read more…

A lot is being made of the relationship between Streetsblog and Metro (aka Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority or MTA) after our post dismantling a Beverly Hills Courier “report” published yesterday.  The Beverly Hills Courier referred to L.A. Streetsblog as a “captive blog” of Metro and is now suggesting that everything we say is direct from the mouth of the MTA.  It’s a level of confusion on the Courier’s part that you might expect from commenters at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website. Read more…

• Beverly Hills Courier Rips Back.  Refers to Streetsblog as “Metro Blog”
• Conservative Muckracking Blog Picks up Courier Story to Smear Villaraigosa, Obama (Big Government)
• Meanwhile, Metro Responds to 3rd Beverly Hills Report on Seismic Studies (The Source)
• And Beverly Hills Talks Bikes Too.  A Complete Review of Commission Discussion and Future Routes (Better Bike)
• Cyclists Seek “Divine Protection” at Blessing of the Bikes (LAT, The Source)
• L.A. City Council Calls for High Speed Rail Construction (CAHSR Blog)
• CA Senate Passes Bill Increasing Fines for Drivers, Cyclists on Cell Phones (Press Democrat, Sac Bee)
• Not “Bike Friendliest City” Yet, But Long Beach Gets a Silver (Press-Telegram)
• BBB Cuts Downtown and Beach Routes (Press-Democrat)
• Local Property Tax Revenue Higher Than 1ST Reported (LAT)

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.

Read more…

Publicly backed sports arenas are always a gamble. Sold as a way to attract investment and energy, they can become big public liabilities, draining money for more essential services.

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.