Over the past two days at the Congress for the New Urbanism Project for Transportation Reform conference, attendees have called for transportation reform at local, regional, and national levels. In a panel debate about the future of transportation funding and the role of regional planning through MPOs, several speakers argued that the foundation of transportation and development funding had to be systematically overhauled.

Photo: gwenturnerjuarez

Reforming the Transportation Bible

Another topic that has long been on CNU's radar for reform is AASHTO's "Green Book," the bible for traffic engineers. As we reported, CNU Chief John Norquist has been working with the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE) to add urban street concerns to the comprehensive roadway guidelines. Rick Hall, of Hall Planning and Engineering, in a plenary session yesterday elaborated on changes that would benefit pedestrians.

"There's not a single mention of pedestrians in the entire first chapter of the AASHTO's green book," said Hall. "It's all about cars." He argued that AASHTO's street classifications (arterials, collectors, locals) do not account for walkability inputs that make urban streets comfortable and livable. 

In Hall's opinion, MPOs and traffic engineers should start by indentifying cities that work for pedestrians, then use computer modeling and simulations to simulate urban forms in those cities, not just the travel and movement of motor vehicles.  For Hall, the most important walkability design parameters are, in order of importance:

• Small block size
• Buildings fronting the street
• Mixed-land uses
• Lower traffic speeds
• On-street parking (pedestrian buffer)
• Interconnected streets
• Narrow streets
• Quality Sidewalks
• Lower traffic volumes
• Street Trees
  

Hall called for a change to AASHTO's guidelines, including the creation of a new classification he called "compact urban," where speed limits would be lower and a number of pedestrian factors would be considered in conjunction to road characteristics.  In compact urban areas, he said, road design should not allow for speeds greater than 25 mph, versus AASHTO's current urban low-speed of 45 mph. MPOs could determine that they want to alter development patterns to add compact urban areas to suburbs and re-design streets accordingly.

CNU President Norquist told the audience he anticipated positive additions to the Green Book by 2010.

Throughout the day Friday, CNU participants have broken out into working groups to discuss the various proposals put forth in the conference and bring them together into the working document, Sustainable Transportation Network Principles [PDF], which the organization will take to policy makers in Washington D.C.

With the U.S. unemployment rate hitting 10.2 percent today, its highest level in 26 years, a palpable shift is occurring on Capitol Hill.

House transportation chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) (Photo: STLToday)

For weeks, we've heard senior Democrats and the transit industry make the case for more transportation spending as a potent job creator, but the lack of funding for a full six-year bill has kept the conversation stalled.

But two things have happened in the week since Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) floated the idea of a "front-loaded" infrastructure plan that would concentrate investment in the first two years:

• The defeat of two Democratic candidates in Tuesday's off-year elections reinforced that job creation and economic worries are the No. 1 concerns for voters.
• Gross domestic product may be rebounding, but unemployment decidedly is not.

This adds up to renewed interest in fast-tracking a new transportation bill, perhaps with a two-year window. As House transport committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) told David Rogers of Politico, "The concrete is cracking."

But even if the White House is prepared to abandon its insistence on an 18-month extension of current law, how to pay for new transportation legislation remains a very open question. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC), for his part, told Rogers that he likes the sound of Rep. Pete DeFazio's (D-OR) proposed tax on Wall Street oil speculators:

There are some painless ways to fund the highway bill. Transaction taxes, that’s a painless way ... Where are the shared contributions to all this? If you’re sitting there on Wall Street, if you’re Goldman Sachs, if you’re making all this money, if you got all this federal money [in a] bailout, and you are paying all these big bonuses to your folks, where is your contribution to this recovery? That’s why it’s painless.

Clyburn's reference to the "highway" bill brings up another lingering mystery about the type of transportation spending being envisioned by senior Democrats. If the White House does agree to support a new infrastructure bill after health care is finished, will it include policy changes or just new money?

Because, as Clyburn inadvertently acknowledges, simply adding more money to the framework of the 2005 infrastructure law would help highways but do little to move the nation towards a more rational mix of transit and roads. Oberstar's pending six-year bill, by contrast, would institute an array of reforms, cutting 75 funding categories from the current system and allowing more "flex-ing" of road money for use on transit.

If a front-loaded bill is passed with some of the policy changes offered by Oberstar, job creation and a more accountable national transportation system could start moving hand-in-hand. If a front-loaded bill is passed but scrubbed of any substantive reform, jobs may be created but voters will still be sitting in traffic.

Late Update: House Republicans are making noise about using unspent money from this winter's economic stimulus law to bolster infrastructure projects, which comprised just 6 percent of the stimulus' $787 billion price tag. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) said at a press conference today:

And so I'd like to see us go to the back end of where the stimulus is going, to be inflating more government programs ... scrape that money out and put it into infrastructure, which we know [is] the job creator.

The concept of tapping the stimulus is one that Republicans have floated for months, including in legislative form when the nation's highway trust fund was nearing insolvency over the summer. The problem, then as now, is that senior Democrats such as House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI) are staunchly opposed to diverting funds from the massive recovery bill.

Later Update: Politico's article cites Oberstar as arguing for "an upfront investment of $80 billion over two years" in transportation. But it's worth noting that the transportation chairman has not formally endorsed that figure, according to his office.

Earlier this week, L.A. Streetsblog reached its one-millionth page view.  At the rate our readership is growing, it's going to take a lot less time to reach our two-millionth view; but it goes without saying that Streetsblog wouldn't have had the success we have had as a news source or activism tool without your help, readership, story suggestions, submissions, and comments.

So, thanks a million.  I'll see you all on Monday.

One week from today the Eastside Bike Club, Streetsblog and the Bus Bench will meet at the Union Station Entrance to bike the six-mile Gold Line Extension to document what we see concerning crossings and safety.  I've been getting a lot of questions about the ride, so I'm going to answer as many of them as I can here.

If you have other questions, put them in the comments section, and I'll answer them in the body of the article.

What's the point of doing this ride anyway?

There's been a lot of controversy over safety issues with the opening of the Gold Line Extension.  When there's a complaint or suggestion, the answers have either been that they're going to fix that before the opening or that the person complaining was probably doing their nails and breaking the law.  We're going to ride at street level, witness what the crossings look like at rush hour and come to our own conclusions.  

Why so close to the line's opening?  Won't that minimize the impact of your findings?

This isn't planned as an advocacy ride, more of a fact finding mission.  By riding so close to the line's opening we're giving Metro as much time as we can to make all the improvements that they can.

When did you start hating/stop trusting Metro?

I don't hate Metro.  I actually think light rail is one of the safest forms of transit.  But, that doesn't mean we have to take everything they say at face value.  I wouldn't be surprised if we end up really liking all the improvements and changes that have taken place over the last couple of months.

What's the route?

The route is super simple.  We'll ride south to the Little Tokyo stop then head east on 1st Street all the way to the Indiana stop.  Then we'll head east on Third until the light rail ends at the Atlantic Ave. stop.

What do I have to do to join the ride?

Nothing.  Just show up at the entrance to Union Station by 7:30 next Friday.  If you're under 18, you're required to wear a helmet.  Other than that, I trust you to decide how to protect yourself and if you're ready to ride East L.A. at morning rush hour.

Today on the Streetsblog Network, a story about some kids in Los Angeles who did their research and came up with several good ideas about improving conditions for bicycle commuters. Then they ran up against the reality that the public forums on the city's bike plan weren't so public. But they didn't let that stop them.

Stephen Box at SoapBox LA reports:

The FIRSTteamWestside (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a group of kids who prepared a presentation that they intended to give at the Bike Plan (draft) workshops.

Their mission was to develop a plan to improve local transportation. They did the research and they prepared and they discovered that the public workshops were not the robust public arena they desired, so they adapted.

Their coach reports, "The kids were hoping to give a presentation at one of the "public forums" but were badly disappointed when they found out that members of the public would not be allowed to speak so they posted it on YouTube and submitted the link at labikeplan.org."

The kids give an amazingly articulate and informed statement, recommending additional bike cars for the region's commuter rail system. The future is coming.

More from the network: The Transport Politic looks at the importance of aligning transitways with walkable neighborhoods. On Transport discusses the concept of "lifestyle centers" and their aspirations to create a sense of community in a suburban mall setting. And Intersection 911 reports on the 38 percent bump in Philadelphia bike commuting during the SEPTA strike.

The first time I saw this ad I thought my eyes and ears were deceiving me. But no, there it is: a young woman holding a cellphone toward the camera as "nüvifone" maker Garmin beckons viewers to "communicate while navigating."

"With my nüvifone, I can take calls from my friends while I'm driving to them," she says as she's shown piloting an SUV with two passengers, one of whom accepts an incoming call on a phone mounted to the windshield. (Note to Garmin: Hands-free is not brain-free.)

Maybe the most egregious aspect is the "Do not drive while distracted" disclaimer -- which pops up as the young woman is depicted driving while distracted.

Crowding is just one indignity transit users have to face. Others include inadequate bus shelters, nonexistent or vandalized seating, blocked entrances -- you know the stuff.

Send us your pictures of crummy transit service and infrastructure where you live and we'll put together a new slide show. You can e-mail JPEGs to me at sarah [at] streetsblog [dot] org, or tag them with "streetsblog" and "transitfail" in Flickr. Get your submissions in by next Thursday morning.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

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.

Photo: npGreenway

The Congress for the New Urbanism's Project for Transportation Reform summit in Portland, Oregon, has brought together transportation engineers, city planners, and transportation reform advocates to share best practice policies for reforming transportation metrics, funding mechanisms, and regional practices that isolate transportation planning from land-use and growth targets.  The highlight of the first day of the program was Portland itself, as councilors from Portland Metro, one of the only elected municipal planning organizations (MPOs) in the country, elaborated on their multi-disciplinary mission, which seeks to limit development within an urban growth boundary and coordinate transportation, parks and recreation, and solid waste management to achieve a more sustainable city.

It's quite a mandate, one that Metro's own councilors and representatives reminded the audience was a work in progress. Despite Portland's reputation among new urbanists and livable cities advocates as a national leader in promoting pedestrian safety and multi-modal accessibility, the region's municipal stewards said they have a long way to go.  

Metro Councilor Robert Liberty said, "I know this is the image many of you have of our region," while displaying a slide of Dorothy and her cohorts skipping along the yellow-brick road to Oz (Portland's green bike lanes do beg at least a chromatic comparison to the Emerald City). In reality, said Liberty, moving onto a photo of one of Portland's many crisscrossing freeways, the city is still fighting off the influence of Robert Moses (who visited in the 1940s and convinced city leaders they should build bigger and faster roads). 

Since 1973, with the passage of Oregon's Senate Bill 100, which led to the original urban growth boundary around Portland, the region has incrementally chipped away at the Moses paradigm of freeway expansion, instead funding light rail, robust bus service, extensive neighborhood traffic calming, and ever more impressive bicycle infrastructure. So thoroughly have Portlanders embraced the bicycle, in fact, St. Stephen's Episcopal Church recently unveiled a new bicycle shrine in its efforts to reach out to cyclists.

An abandoned spur from the planned Mt. Hood Freeway, plans for which were scrapped after the freeway revolts of the 1960s and 70s. Photo: Matthew Roth

Despite this effort to moderate the expectations of conference attendees, it was clear twenty minutes into the first presentation that Metro has so thoroughly incorporated new urbanist principles into their lexicon that they are essentially speaking a different language than any other MPO in the country. What's more, they are not merely drafting good plans that collect dust on a shelf, but funding the innovative policies and setting performance targets so the public, which has a remarkable opportunity to give direct feedback via the ballot box, can gauge their successes and failure.

When I asked the city engineer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, how receptive his peers, their MPO and the state DOT were to principles of network connectivity and human-scale transportation objectives, he gave me a bemused smirk. He explained that his city was moving closer to installing a 2-mile streetcar route, but that most efforts to convince Wisconsin DOT that it should consider transit projects are met with responses like, "we're in the highway business."

Two other conference presentations from the day were particularly interesting, the first from CNU President John Norquist, who explained the efforts his organization has been involved in to build support among fire and emergency service personnel for human-scale streets, traffic calming, and dense development. Norquist said the process has been slow but positive: they are hoping more states will adopt policies similar to Oregon's, where final authorization of traffic calming depends on traffic engineers, not the fire marshal.  

The other presentation, by University of Connecticut Engineering Professor Norman Garrick, bolstered Norquist's assertion that dense cities are safer cities, per capita. Garrick presented data from a yet-to-be-released study of cities all over California that measured the impact of street design on a range of safety factors, from emergency response times to bicycle injury collisions and pedestrian fatalities.

Garrick found that cities built on a grid network and cities built before 1950, which tended to have smaller streets not designed primarily for automobility, realized significantly better safety indicators. In grid cities, according to Garrick, one's chance of dying in a car was 50 percent lower than in suburban-style cities (branch street networks) and injury collisions were 30 percent lower in grid cities.  People living in grid cities were four times more likely than their suburban counterparts to walk and bike and two-to-three times more likely to take transit.

During the afternoon, attendees broke out into groups to take tours of Portland's various networks, from streetcars, to bicycles, to green streets (my post on the green streets tour will be forthcoming). Today's highlights will be  panels on MPO reform and analysis of the VMT reduction benefits of dense development along transit corridors. Tomorrow, attendees will hear from Representative Earl Blumenauer on his national transportation agenda.

You can get updates from the conference on Twitter by searching for #CNUtrans and be sure to check the CNU website for presentations and video.

Clarence Eckerson Jr., the mad genius behind Streetfilms, believes that the next frontier of activist journalism isn't going to be written blogs but video blogs.  Sometimes, when I look at the performance of your average Streetfilm  compared to the hits one of my best researched and most popular stories, it's hard to argue with him.

Picking up the mantle of citizen journalist is USC Junior Matt Schraeder who's story on how the city will ticket cars parked on streets due for cleanings is pretty much a must-see piece of journalism.  While you're not going to confuse the above piece with a Streetfilm, Schraeder does take the needed steps to take the film beyond your run-of-the-mill time elapse video to a worthy, well-rounded news story.   He manages to interview officials in the LADOT and Parking Enforcement.  Just add some music, get rid of the sympathy for drivers who park illegally and we're in business!

While you won't catch me crying crocodile tears for the drivers in Schraeder's piece, it's not like they know the streets isn't going to be cleaned when they make their parking decisions, there is a major issue with this ticketing practice.  The City of Los Angeles is in desperate need of parking reform, which should include more rate increases and longer metered hours.  The more the city decides to use the new funds to fill a hole in the general fund and the more it hands out tickets that are more likely to enrage than educate; the harder and more politically unfeasible it is going to be for politicians to make the right decision when it comes to parking pricing and reform.

Earlier today, Walk Score, the website that ranks areas based on how easy it is to lead a car-lite lifestyle, has taken a big step towards improving its metrics by adding transit data.  As long as a city has google transit, which thankfully Los Angeles now does, you can get a much clearer picture of how easy it would be to ditch your car after moving to a new neighborhood.

The site's usefullness to home buyers and others just looking to move is one of the sites' most useful tools.  Local real estate websites, such as Zip Realty, use Walk Score on their website to help home buyers make decisions.  When we were planning to move to Los Angeles, my wife and I used Walk Score to narrow down the neighborhoods in which we looked for a rental house; so I can vouch for the site's usefulness.  Of course, the site doesn't take into account urban design and safety issues, but between google street view and the LAPD's crime map that information is also readily available.  In other words, Walk Score is a great place to start, but you probably want to do a little more research before signing a lease, a fact Walk Score doesn't try to hide.

Walk Score has a use that they don't advertise, what I call "Livable Streets Trash Talking."  My neighborhood has a Walk Score of 87, which is way higher than the scores for my brother's in Woodland Hills (67), my mom's in Marina Del Rey (71) or my Church's in West L.A. (72.)  Since I work from home, I can also boast that my "office" has a more walkable area than the Flying Pigeon Bike Shop (71) and my wife's office in Brentwood (72).  However, the trophy for having the most walkable community around your office goes to the Bus Rider's Union who edged the Bike Coalition with a score of 98 to 95.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) (Photo: AP)

The environment panel's chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) had offered Republicans several days to abandon their walkout, promising time to consider GOP amendments and a complete Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) modeling of the bill before it comes to the Senate floor.

But environment committee Republicans were unmoved, insisting on an immediate five-week delay for EPA analysis despite testimony from the EPA that such work would produce little new information. Boxer's GOP counterpart on the panel, Sen. Jim Inhofe (OK), seemed to delight in forcing the chairman's hand as he labeled the no-amendments move the "nuclear option."

The question now becomes whether the specific proposals added by Boxer's panel -- including grant programs for transit and clean transportation that nearly triple the funding approved by the House -- can survive a long slog through as many as five other committees.

Boxer insisted this morning that "many things in this bill ... are going to be part of that comprehensive bill" that ultimately reaches a full Senate vote. But others on the committee acknowledged that the bill's one-party approval would not bode well for its political prospects.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the chief sponsor of efforts to boost the climate bill's clean transportation provisions, described himself as "very, very, very disappointed," particularly given the loss of a chance to amend the legislation.

Carper submitted an amendment that would have added more than $400 million to the bill's annual set-aside of climate money for transit, inter-city rail, local land use planning and other projects.  "I don't like this process," Carper said this morning. "I don't think any of us do."

The question now becomes whether Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC), the lone Republican who has shown willingness to work with Democrats on the climate bill, can provide the momentum needed to overcome the Senate's molasses-slow pace.

Even if Graham's work produces an end result that can win over liberals and centrists, the billions of dollars that the environment committee devotes to transportation is not guaranteed to survive that process.

Portland Transport has a post on the connection between cul-de-sac development and safety for all street users, as discussed at the Congress for the New Urbanism Transportation Summit in Portland.

What are the dangers of cul-de-sac development? (Photo: TheMuuj via Flickr.)

For me the highlight presentation on opening day…was about the safety effects of different street network types.

The study was based on looking at all cities in California with population of 40,000 or greater. The surprising finding was that cities built before 1950 are safer (in terms of both serious injuries and fatalities for all classes of users: auto drivers/passengers, cyclists and pedestrians) than cities built after 1950.

The differences appears to be in the type of street network. Compact street grids seem to be safer, compared to the arterial-collector-local street 'tree' style of street network popular in post-war development.

No link to the study itself yet, but we're interested in hearing more.

Families that Mass together, stay together. Shot of May 2008 Passadena Critical Mass

Cyclists Inciting Change through Live Exchange (C.I.C.L.E.) has been preaching this sort of personal advocacy for years.  Now they're asking the question, "how can we encourage more families to ride together."  Earlier this week they announced the beginning of their "Families And Bikes" (F.A.B.) program that seeks to answer that question and put theory to reality.  The first step is to gather information and ideas from their supporters.  You can help by taking their survey or posting a comment on the article announcing the program.

C.I.C.L.E. lists a lot of great reasons that we should be encouraging families to take bike trips together, be they recreational, to the store, to run errand or to school.  From the announcement:

With epidemic obesity and Type 2 diabetes rates continuing to rise, promoting city bicycling, as a family activity, can be a great way to (literally) get entire families moving toward increased levels of fitness and a greater quality of life. Unfortunately, many parents living in the Los Angeles area are choosing not to bicycle with their children on city streets, and many view bicycling as an impractical or even an unpleasant transportation option for their families.

They go on to point out that this isn't just an L.A. problem, and provide examples from around the world that show parents skittish about putting children on bikes in urban settings.

The good news is that there are some solutions already out there.  A recent Streetsblog.net article challenged parents to work with schools to make cycling a "cool" and practical way to get to school.  Locally, City Lites hosts a ride every spring that has, literally, thousands of South L.A. children bicycling from park to park.  Also, C.I.C.L.E. board member David Pulsipher, when he's not working on the Bike Plan with Alta Planning or on the next C.I.C.L.E. event, writes Kids, Bikes, Dads, a great resource for families interested in getting the children on bikes at an early age.

Instead of leaving your suggestions for what else C.I.C.L.E. can be doing, leave those suggestions at their blog; let's fill the comments section with what riding with your family meant to you as a child or as a parent.  I'll go first.

Yesterday, a twenty-five year battle between the Los Angeles City Council and the development group Monterey Hills Investors may have reached the end of the road. The Council agreed to pay a settlement of $9 million for the land known as Elephant Hill. Instead of housing a 24-home subdivision as MHI planned, this twenty acres of green hillside in El Sereno will be preserved as open space.

At issue was the quality of the environmental documents for the project, that were consistently opposed by residents, environmental groups and city leaders. When the project was first proposed in 1984, it was a 13-acre project. As time passed, the project continued to grow to its current 24-acre size. The complaints against the project alleged that the developer's plan to strip existing ridges down to bedrock followed by extensive fill would endanger both the El Sereno community and workers constructing the site. The ridges rest on seemingly unstable geography and an underground stream. The Natural Resources Defense Council reports that in 2006, workers installing fencing on Elephant Hill created a large sinkhole. In 2005, a worker was buried in a hillside slide in El Sereno.

For those opposed to the Elephant Hill Development the settlement is a clear victory for the city's efforts to preserve this land as open space. The settlement comes after the Council voted in August of 2008 to require the developers to undergo an extensive environmental review, despite advice from the City Attorney that they did not have the power to do that. In January of this year a judge agreed with the developers that the Council over-stepped its powers.   The developers counter-sued the city alleging that the lawsuit caused a delay which caused MHI to lose $8 million dollars while the city appealed the decision.

All of that may have come to an end yesterday.  While an attorney for MHI notes that the agreement wasn't finalized,  yesterday's decision by the Council was hailed as a victory by all opposing the development and fighting for their community and open space.

Elva Yanez, the Elephant Hill Campaign Coordinator, released a statement hailing the settlement.  Via the Latino Urban Forum:

This is a huge victory for the residents of El Sereno and the coalition of community and environmental organizations that waged a long and hard fought struggle. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Councilmember Jose Huizar for his steadfast leadership as he championing residents' public safety and environmental concerns related to this development.

The residents of El Sereno have been afforded the environmental protections that are rightfully theirs. We are thrilled that this poorly planned project is not moving forward and environmental justice has prevailed!

Environmental Justice was also a theme of a quote by local Councilman Jose Huizar that appeared in today's Times. Meanwhile, the NRDC senior attorney David Pettit praised the El Sereno Community for their role in this long-coming victory:

Collective efforts of residents, community-based organizations and elected officials to protect public safety and require developer accountability succeeded in preserving one of LA's few remaining open spaces benefiting public health and the environment for years to come.

While it's a good day for El Sereno and supporters of Open Space, I can't help but note that it's a good thing that Monterey Hills Investment didn't have a Governor and Legislature in its back pocket.

Still, there's no mistaking the overwhelming sense of schadenfreude emanating from this new Times story (headline: "French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality"). Francophobes all over America are relishing the tale of Parisian comeuppance.

But bike-sharing is a global phenomenon. So why we do only seem to read alarming stories about the problems in Paris? Part of the reason appears to be that bike-share operators in other cities have few alarms to sound. In Montreal, 5,000 public bikes are available through the Bixi system, launched earlier this year. Responding to the Times story, a Bixi spokesperson told the Montreal Gazette that theft and vandalism don't affect the system very much:

“Our bikes are very robust and Montrealers have a great respect for the Bixi program,” said Michel Philibert, a spokesperson for Stationnement de Montréal, which oversees the bike rental program.

“Montreal is not Paris. The theft of bikes here is not a major challenge.”

The Bixi operators also brought down theft rates thanks to a technical fix: They reinforced segments of the docking stations, and fewer bikes were stolen.

Vélib showed the world what a bike-share network can accomplish, but the appeal of public bicycle systems has never been limited to Paris or France. In the past few years, cities in China, Brazil, and the United States have launched bike-shares of various size. London is looking at a 6,000 bike system, and Dublin recently launched a network with about 500 bikes. Boston may be on the verge of rolling out the first truly robust American bike-share network. Even in Australia, where it's illegal for anyone to ride without a helmet, bike-share is on the way.

Like any good invention, bike-share tech is going to evolve over time. The first telephone looked like a fat brick with a hole in one end, and there was no way to tell if someone else was calling you. So it makes sense that Vélib has some kinks -- it marked a huge step forward for bike-share systems, on a scale no one had ever tried before. Inspired by the Vélib model, cities all over the world are also trying to improve on it.

Just how much will the tax credit mushroom thanks to the deal reached in the Senate? As the New York Times explains, it's time to take the "new" off of the credit's name:

The homebuyers’ credit ... would be extended to cover homes under contract by April 30. Also, it no longer would be limited to first-time buyers; people who have owned a home for at least five years could get a $6,500 credit on a new residence. Income limits for eligibility would be raised, making many more people qualify.

Extending and expanding the credit would cost an estimated $11 billion, on top of the $10 billion spent so far.

As Ryan pointed out earlier this week, the higher rate of home ownership in suburbs tilts the credit's benefits notably away from urban areas. But that's nothing new for the federal government, which has lavished subsidies on home buyers while paying much scanter attention to improving rentals affordability.

In the fiscal year that ended October 1, Washington's support for home ownership totaled $230 billion, while parallel support for home renters was $60 billion, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported yesterday. That nearly four-fold gap is visible in the below chart:

(Image: CBO)

Even as federal lawmakers keep promoting home ownership as the "American dream," rental rates rose to one-third of the country in 2008, in part due to low-income and minority residents who were forced into default on risky mortgages. For many of those residents, as well as city dwellers in general, rentals tend to be the only housing option that offers access to affordable transportation -- but help from Washington has been perilously slow in coming.

And it may not come for a while yet. Legislation updating the Section 8 voucher program for rental housing was approved over the summer by the House Financial Services Committee but has yet to see floor time in the full chamber, let alone the Senate.

Meanwhile, the larger home buyers' credit is currently attached to a long-sought extension of unemployment benefits, making its approval a political fait accompli (though one much-delayed by partisan bickering).

Elly Blue writes:

Multi-use paths like the
Hawthorne Bridge have the
highest injury potential. Photo: Jonathan Maus

There’s a constant chorus -- sometimes soft, sometimes overpoweringly loud -- in every conversation about bike infrastructure in America. Its refrain: You’re safer without any bike lanes, separated lanes, cycle tracks, bike boulevards, off-road paths. Just take the lane, follow the rules, wear your helmet, and you’ll be fine.

A group of scholars at the University of British Columbia have found otherwise. They conducted a literature review, looking at all available studies linking bicycle safety with infrastructure. Their conclusions will be counterintuitive for some.

“Results to date suggest that sidewalks and multi-use trails pose the highest risk, major roads are more hazardous than minor roads, and the presence of bicycle facilities (e.g. on-road bike routes, on-road marked bike lanes, and off-road bike paths) was associated with the lowest risk.”

“One of the major advantages of infrastructure-based improvements, compared to personal protective devices such as helmets, is that safe infrastructure provides population-wide protection for all cyclists,” study co-author Meghan Winters said in a press release.

The study's abstract draws these conclusions:

Evidence is beginning to accumulate that purpose-built bicycle-specific facilities reduce crashes and injuries among cyclists, providing the basis for initial transportation engineering guidelines for cyclist safety. Street lighting, paved surfaces, and low-angled grades are additional factors that appear to improve cyclist safety. Future research examining a greater variety of infrastructure would allow development of more detailed guidelines.

I'm sure that many of our network members will want to dig deeper into this one.