While their colleagues in the House were debating more than 80 amendments to a transportation bill, members of the Senate Banking Committee were quietly passing their two-year transit bill with — get this — unanimous bipartisan support. The bill includes some reforms — such as allowing federal funds to be spent on transit operations — that transit advocates have been pushing for.
Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Johnson (D-SD) has joined Barbara Boxer in passing a bipartisan transportation bill. Image: ABC News
The Senate has so far reached bipartisan agreement on two out of three portions of their two-year bill. The only remaining title to be approved, the Finance Committee’s portion, will be taken up shortly. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid intends to take the entire transportation package to the Senate floor on February 13.
The Senate bill’s progress draws a stark contrast with the legislative efforts underway in the House. The House bill has also moved forward at an aggressive pace, but it has looked worse and worse at every step. The most recent revelation, that the bill’s financing component would potentially eviscerate dedicated funding for transit, is only the latest in a long line of attacks on walking, biking, and transit. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood told Politico earlier today, “It’s the worst transportation bill I’ve ever seen during 35 years of public service.” LaHood also gave credit to the Senate Environment & Public Works committee for legislating in good faith:
They get it. They passed a bipartisan bill with no dissenting votes in their committee. Because they worked together, and they really tried to put together a bill that reflects the transportation values of the senators… That’s not what happened in the House. Look, this is obviously a one-man show in the House.
LaHood was singling out John Mica, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, but the real star of the show may be Speaker John Boehner. With each successive piece of legislation, Boehner has forced his party and his chamber farther and farther away from the long-standing precedent of bipartisan transportation bills. With a highway-centric, drilling-heavy, transit-averse, anti-bike/ped, Keystone-pipeline-linked bill all but doomed to fail in the Senate, Boehner has reduced the reauthorization debate to a crude political tool.
“I used to rail against the Senate,” said Rep. Corrine Brown at today’s House markup (which, at the time of this writing, has just entered its second recess of the day). “But now I thank God for the Senate.”
(Move L.A. has an action alert and sign-on letter outlining ways to contact California members of the committee. I’ve uploaded the action alert here and letter here. Here is a link to a national sign-on letter opposing the House Ways and Means gambit on transit funding. Move LA asks that if you are able to sign on please click here and submit the form by 5pm PST.- DN)
In a move that should dispel any remaining thoughts that the House transportation bill [PDF] will ever be signed into law, the Ways and Means Committee announced today that they will try to forbid gas tax revenue from funding transit.
House Ways and Means chair Dave Camp (R-MI) and Speaker John Boehner. Photo: Talking Points Memo
The Ways & Means bill [PDF] would funnel all gas tax revenue toward road programs, redirecting billions of dollars per year away from transit, which for decades has received about 20 percent of fuel tax receipts. Instead, the House GOP wants transit funding to come entirely from the general fund, pitting transit against all other government spending. To offset that spending, $40 billion would have to be cut from the rest of the federal budget.
Essentially, the House GOP is holding transit hostage to achieve budget cuts elsewhere — and they don’t seem to care if the hostage dies. They will also be tossing aside a precedent set during the Reagan administration, one that has enjoyed bipartisan support through several transportation bills, including the 2005 law, known as SAFETEA-LU, which was passed by a Republican president and Republican Congress.
Dan Smith of USPIRG put it like this:
The House Ways and Means Bill stops just short of defunding America’s public transit system. Instead it says that the real money with a funding source will all go to highways, while the tooth fairy will pay for transit. For Big Oil and the highway lobby, this is a dream, but it’s a nightmare for America’s transportation future.
In keeping with the secretive nature of the current House’s transportation reauthorization process, the announcement comes just one day before Ways and Means will mark up the bill. There is even less time to protect transit funding in the House bill than there was to protect bike/ped programs in today’s T&I markup.
In August of 2010, the Bureau of Street Services repaved Westholme Avenue leading up to UCLA, demolishing the newly-installed and much touted Sharrows placed on the street. After the grumbling was over and the Sharrows were re-installed, the Bureau of Street Services and LADOT promised that Sharrows wouldn’t get demolished in future road repavings.
Now we know what this promise looks like in practice.
The Bureau of Street Services has repaved a section of Sharrowed street on Bronson Avenue in Hollywood. Stephen Box grabbed a couple of images so we can see how the Bureau of Street Services handled the repaving.
Bronson Avenue at La Mirada | Bronson between Fountain and La Mirada Photo: Stephen Box
As you can see, the Bureau of Street Services’ solution was to paint around the Sharrows, leaving small stretches of the road where bicycles will ride unpaved. Sometimes they left the Sharrows untouched, sometimes they accidently paved over part of them.
Streetsblog will email LADOT for comment. If there’s any news, we’ll let you know.
Looking to hire a smart, qualified person for a position in transportation planning, engineering, IT, or advocacy? Post a listing on the Streetsblog Jobs Board and reach our national audience of dedicated readers.
Looking for a job? Here are this week’s listings:
Membership and Outreach Associate, National Complete Streets Coalition, Washington, DC
The Coalition seeks a motivated full-time Membership and Outreach Associate to coordinate the involvement and activities of Coalition members in pursuit of Complete Streets.
Santa Monica Columnist, Streetsblog Los Angeles
Los Angeles Streetsblog is hiring a writer to contribute a weekly column covering transportation and livability issues in the city of Santa Monica. The winning applicant will have a knowledge of progressive urban planning and transportation policy as well as a familiarity with Santa Monica city government.
Book author Nathan Landau will be signing copies of his newest book, Car Free Los Angeles and Southern California next Friday evening at 7:00, at Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena. It would be great if you could list it in your calendar–here’s Vroman’s link.
Car-Free Los Angeles and Southern California is designed as a complete guide to a car-free vacation in Southern California, from the time travelers land or arrive until the time they leave. Car-Free Los Angeles and Southern California reveals how to get from the airport—or the train station or bus station—into town. For Los Angeles or Southern California residents, this book tells how to plug into the transit network and start traveling car-free to the local attractions.
Vroman’s is a short walk from Memorial Park Gold Line and has Colorado Blvd. buses (180, 181, 780 at Lake) right there, along with other nearby bus lines. For more information and directions, visit the Vroman’s website.
This morning, the Los Angeles Times featured our own James Rojas in a story about his wonderful interactive planning exhibit in Long Beach that allows visitors to re-imagine their city in a new way. Streetsblog has featured Rojas’ work several times over the years as he’s traveled to United Nations’ conferences, all around the country or just a short hop to East L.A.
Anyone whose imagination was captured by Rojas’ work for the first time, or is a long-time follower looking for the next interactive modeling session, won’t have to travel to Long Beach to join the fun and learn something new. His next event looks at Glendale Boulevard in Echo Park from the 2 fwy to Sunset this Saturday at 1770 Glendale Boulevard in Los Angeles at 10:00 A.M.
Rojas explains how the session will work at a post on the Latino Urban Forum list serve, reposted in the Streetsblog calendar section:
Participants will be asked to create their ideal street in 20 minutes. Using recycled objects participants will build small dioramas to help think through their ideas. Because there are no limitations, and right or wrong answers this is a safe zone for all ideas. Once the time is up the builders will share their ideas in a one-minute presentation to the group. Collaboration is the next step and participants will be place in small groups. They will have 15 minutes to share their ideas. They will be tasked to pick a spot along Glendale Boulevard where they can implement their ideas. Each team will present their plan to the group. As a conclusion the ideas will be synthesized and discussed.
Thanks for the amazing year. There’s just too many people who work to make this online media outlet such a success that I’m going to skip trying to list them because I always forget people. So that being said, allow me to single out just a couple people without whom we wouldn’t be here today.
1) Mark, Aaron, Ben, Christa, Nick, Noah, Chris, Clarence, Elizabeth, Tanya, Aaron B., Angie, and everyone at OpenPlans without whom their would be no Streetsblog and certainly no L.A. Streetsblog.
2) Joe, Carter, Deborah, Joel, Jocelyn, and James, the current Editorial Board of L.A. Streetsblog and Dana, Dorothy and Jessica for their past work on the Board.
3) Everyone that contributed time, money, stories to the website. A couple of notable donations include the reader who donated a car via Cars for Causes and Amanda Lipsey who has pledged to be our largest individual donor blasting past a couple of our Board Members and my Mom.
4) Michael, Paul and David at the David Bohnett Foundation who had the vision to support us in 2010 and 2011 before we had our fundraising organized enough to be self-supporting. Mary Lou at the California Endowment for sharing our vision of community based reporting in Boyle Heights and South L.A.
5) All of our advertisers, but especially Howard and Lisa at GEK-Law and Josef at Flying Pigeon L.A.
6) All the people that promote our stories on social media but especially Alex Thomspson, El Random Hero, Ted Rogers, and Carol at LACBC.
7) My wife who puts up with me writing until midnight most nights and saying things like, “Can you watch Sammy for an hour? Paul Backstrom left a message…”
And of course, everyone reading this has supported us in one way or another. I would be a negligent non-profit manager if I didn’t make one last pitch for our end of the year fundraising drive and to remind you that all donations are tax deductible. Given all the good news we’ve had recently, you might not think your donation matters, but it really does. Funds from major donors are tied to specific projects, and we still need help to cover our day to day expenses.
Thanks again for everything, and we’ll see you on January 3rd (or next Tuesday at the Library Alehouse for the LACBC fundraiser…)
(Today begins our four-part end of the year coverage. Tomorrow and Thursday will have our remaining Streetsie award announcements and Friday will feature some predictions for next year. – DN)
There was a lot of important news that broke over the last year. It’s hard to believe that a year ago the City of Los Angeles hadn’t passed a Bicycle Plan and Metro hadn’t approved a route for the Wilshire Bus Only Lanes. Here are the 12 stories that made 2011 the year that it was:
January: Metro Announces New Round of Bus Service Cuts
Right off the bat, Metro set the tone for what would be one of the ongoing stories of the year by announcing another extensive round of bus service cuts. Most transit advocates panned the cuts even as Metro tried to spin them as necesary. The cuts were ultimately approved and went into effect later in the year. Also, as a sort of preview of another major story, Dana Gabbard noted that Metro wasn’t exactly meeting its own promises of providing information on all the service changes in the timeline it outlined.
February: Los Angeles’ First Livable Corridor on South Figueroa?
This is one of the "Good" designs for South Fig. It only has a separated bike lane and transit lane. There were more progressive designs proposed for other parts of the corridor.
A team of international design experts joined some of L.A.’s top local planners to create a truly amazing series of design renderings for a new South Figueroa Street. While the designs are out of this world (or at least out of this city,) it’s been almost a year since we’ve heard from the South Figueroa Corridor Project. It’s past time for an update from the city and the CRA who have been mum even when asked directly what’s going on.
March – Villaraigosa Signs the Bike Plan
After years of public outreach and months of debate and back room maneuvering, the City of Los Angeles finally had a shiny new Bike Plan. The late morning ceremony at City Hall drew a crowd of cyclists, many of whom took time off from work, to celebrate what was viewed by many as a watershed moment. There is pretty intense debate over whether or not the LADOT is fulfilling its pledge to complete the plan, but at the same time there is near consensus that the city did more for bikes in 2011 than any year in memory.
April – CicLAvia II
For the second time, Los Angeles closed 7.5 miles of streets to cars and opened them to a variety of uses for everyone else. But even as Rob Adams was answering the question, “What is CicLAvia” for Streetfilms, there was an undercurrent of dissatisfaction from the CicLAvians who didn’t use two years to explore the city. These concerns led to a small retooling of the event for the October CicLAvia, with a series of mini-grants given out to make the event more about games, open space, and the amazing City of Angels than about racing from one place to another on two wheels.
May – Metro and “Crenshaw Subway Coalition” Collide at Board Meeting
One of the most powerful Metro Board Meetings of the year occurred when Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas brought a motion to add a Leimert Park Station and full grade-separation for the Crenshaw Light Rail project to the Board. Hundreds of South L.A. residents, many brought by Damien Goodmon’s Crenshaw Subway Coalition, packed the room. In the end, the Board rejected the grade-separation proposal and came up with a compromise on the Leimert Park Station proposal. The Board approved, but didn’t fund, the station so that any funds left over after the current route and stations were finished could go towards the new stop. Needless to say, the advocates in attendance saw this proposal as “pandering” and not “compromise.”
June – The Christine Dahab/K-Town Wednesdays Crash
Take a group of Midnight Ridazz at a late night/early morning regrouping and add an inattentive driver, throw in an ignorant cop and don’t forget a mindless television reporter and you have a recipe for tragedy. When Christine Dahab (allegedly) plowed into a group of Midnight Ridazz, it was only the first chapter in a tragedy that hasn’t reached its conclusion. The LAPD badly bungled the “investigation” blaming the people being carted off on stretchers and not the person who plowed into them, but fortunately the crash occured just within the border with Culver City so the debacle was more “sideshow” than anything else. Streetsblog added to the story with an important story detailing how Culver City was aware the intersection of the crash was dangerous and poorly designed. Weeks after the crash, funds to fix the intersection were approved by a county panel. Dahab is currently awaiting trial on felony DUI.
July – Karma/Heaven
Despite months of warning and media hype, Carmageddon turned out to be a non-event. Angelenos are apparently smart enough to know how to avoid going out for long car drives when a major freeway is closed. Who knew? Oh, right. I did.
Meanwhile, Wolkfpack Hustle, Gary Kavanagh, Joe Anthony and Ezra Horne pedaled and flew to the rescue with the Jet Blue v Wolfpack Hustle (aka #flightvbike) race. A Jet Blue promotion flew people from Burbank Airport to Long Beach Airport. On one of the planes were Anthony and Horne were on one of those flights racing against a Midnight Ridazz themed race team known as Wolfpack Hustle. The race went from Horne’s house to the Long Beach light house The flyers used taxis and airplanes, and never had a chance. In the end, the Hustle beat the plane team so badly that a skateboard shop owner who pledged $10 to LACBC for every minute the Hustle beat the flyers had to sell his car to make good on his promise.
For our part, LA Streetsblog was the only website to offer live coverage of the race, thanks to a transponder placed on one of the Wolfpack’s bicycle. Our coverage of the race that day shattered every Streetsblog record for readers and page views.
August – ExpressPark Comes to Downtown Los Angeles
Finally, the City of Los Angeles seems serious about doing something about its parking problem. By parking problem, I mean that there’s too much cheap or free parking in a city that is somewhat famous for having more cars than it knows what to do with. The city’s first real stab at implementing the theories of Parking Rock Star and UCLA Planning Professor Donald Shoup was put into place. The Express Park program creates variable parking rates at meters in Downtown Los Angeles. Hopefully the program will prove as successful in Los Angeles as it did in San Francisco and can spread from the Downtown to the rest of the city.
September – Eli Broad Steps Into and Out Of Regional Connector Discussion
One of Streetsblog’s major scoops for 2011 was publishing a letter, signed by billionaire Eli Broad, that proposed major changes to the Regional Connector. Considered by transit experts to be the lynch pin of Metro’s ambitious rail expansion program, even more important than the Westside Subway, completion of the line would boost connectivity by allowing for easy transfers between nearly all of Metro’s planned and current rail projects. If Broad, whose reach is considerable, had been succesful in his lobbying effort, it could have delayed the project for years, even if the ideas expressed in his letter made sense. Metro politely rejected his changes and Broad has remained silent on Metro’s transit plans.
October – Brown Vetoes “Give Me 3″
Governor Jerry Brown shocked the cycling world when he vetoed S.B. 910, which would have mandated a three foot passing cushion when drivers pass cyclists at speeds over 15 miles per hour was universally supported by Democrats in the Assembly and Senate. Even worse than the veto was an incoherent veto message that was clearly heavily influenced by the unsafe driving advocacy group AAA or the comically mis-informed California Highway Patrol. Some advocates are now calling an instance where a driver passes a cyclist at unsafe distance or speed a “Jerry Brown.”
November – Green Bike Lanes Appear in Downtown Los Angeles and Boyle Heights
Conflict zone green thermoplastic on First Street bike lanes
Ok, everyone who thought L.A. would have predicted last year that we would have two green bike lanes this year by now, raise your hand. That’s what I thought.
The gas tax: It’s the holy grail of our screwed up transportation system. We can’t have good infrastructure because no one has the political cojones to raise it. No one has the cojones to raise it because the economy is awful. But anemic investment in our country’s infrastructure isn’t exactly good for the economy.
States left $10 billion in potential gas tax revenue on the table last year. Photo: CNN
It’s not just the federal government that is playing this game of chicken with roads, bridges and transit. A majority of states are equally egregious offenders. According to a new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, US states leave a combined total of $10 billion on the table every year that could be used for infrastructure.
Thirty-six states have gas taxes that aren’t indexed for inflation. For the average state, that tax has declined in real value by 20 percent since the last time it was raised. That amounts to $300 million in losses each for the states of Iowa and Oklahoma, or $500 million a piece for Maryland and New Jersey.
Of course, many states would likely just blow the additional revenues on unneeded highways.
But still, desperate states like Wisconsin, Utah and Nebraska are dipping into general fund revenues to offset the decline in gas tax receipts, according to TEP. That means education, healthcare, social services, economic development and other important government concerns are suffering because states are afraid to challenge the almighty driver.
Furthermore, that means those who choose to get around in single occupancy vehicles are enjoying an additional subsidy of their harmful activity.
You can see what your state has lost in forfeited transportation revenues in the appendix of the ITEP report [PDF].
If it still looked like this, people wouldn't fight about it. Photo: Joe Linton/Eco Village
Yesterday afternoon, LADOT Senior Bicycle Coordinator Michelle Mowery and City Planning’s Claire Bowen visited the Los Angeles City Council Transportation Committee to give an update on the City’s progress on implementing the surprisingly progressive Bike Plan. You can read the entire report, here.
To nobody’s surprise, the duo reported that everything is going according to plan. “We’re actually ahead of schedule,” Mowery replied to Committee Chair Bill Rosendahl when he asked how completion of the physical projects is going. ”We have great support from the Mayor…We have good leadership from the Department. We’re chasing more money than ever.”
But almost everyone in the room had questions about the the Spring Street Green Buffered Bike Lane, and most of those questions had to do with the repeated problems of keeping the green on the ground. Atlantic Cities reported earlier this week that while the city has applied a second round of green paint to the street, that green paint is looking just as chipped and worn as it did before.
But Mowery thinks she has the culprit, and it’s not just the rainy weather. ”It looks like most of the paint is coming up on the concrete surfaces, not the asphalt,” Mowery reported. In other cities with Green Lanes, such as New York and Chicago, more of the roads are asphalt. In L.A., the roads are a mix, and for whatever reason the concrete road isn’t holding the green as well.
So what’s the solution? Mowery and Bowin gave two possibilities.
The first is to find something green that sticks to asphalt better that the green paint, such as the thermoplast used for L.A.’s other green lane on 1st Street in Boyle Heights. The 1st Street green lanes uses the more expensive thermopast, applied with applicators and blowtorches, but only uses them in conflict zones where cars and bikes have the greatest interaction, such as intersections or car parking areas. This leads to using less and more expensive ground markings.
Councilman Paul Koretz, after praising the Spring Street Buffered Bike Lane for bringing more cyclists to Spring Street than he would have believed previously, went on to question LADOT about the beat up paint. ”I don’t understand the problem. As long as I remember we’ve been painting white on asphalt, concrete everywhere on the street.” Mowery responded that much of what people believe is paint is really the more expensive, and more sticky, thermoplast.
The second option to fix the paint job on Spring Street is to wait to apply a third coat until the weather, the street, and everything else is dryer. LADOT originally pinned the shoddy condition of the newly painted lane on the rain, and that answer does hold some truth. But does the city really want to wait half a year to fix up the road on what is essentially a pilot project? That remains to be seen. Read more…
