I know I'm late here, that most blogs did their "Look at 2007" well before the New Year, but what can I say? I was late to start posting in 2007, so I'm also late to do a review.
When I arrived in LA, I was expecting to see little in the way of transportation reform. Over the summer I had read about the Mayor's escapades and his lack of political fight when Sacramento robbed LA of its transportation dollars, I knew that there were no groups like Transportation Alternatives or the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, and I had heard thousands of jokes about how car-centric the culture is out here.
What I discovered was a reform community that was alive and well. On the transit side you have two groups, the Transit Coalition and SoCATA holding regular events. For cyclists, the LA Bike Coalition is joined by the Bike Kitchen, Bike Oven and Bicrowave as "official" groups, but the movement also has dozens of critical mass, storm the Bastille, and Midnight Ridazz events that are less formal...but attended by thousands.
The blog community is also alive and well. Metro Rider seems to be the flagship of the independent transportation reform blog, with strong individual blogs such as Green LA Girl and Brayj Against the Machine also filling the blogosphere. Last, but not least, there's The Metro Library, who I think is responsible for about half of StreetHeat's hits, because they were kind enough to perma-link me on the left-side and occasionally clip one of my stories in their daily links.
And of course, there's this blog. I've had a lot of fun filling the web these last three months, and hope to keep doing it for years and years. Here are my 10 favorite stories from my first three months...
1. eat!sleep?bikes! - Awesome
2. Car Culture Not Mentioned as Dems Talk Greenhouse Gases
3. Some Humor at CALTRANS (Sadly, the website in Latin is gone...)
4. Community Slams Mayor, Weiss on Pico/Olympic Plan
5. SCAG:Better Isn't Good Enough
6. My First Trip to Heliotrope (Entitled: If You Can't Stand the Heat...)
7. Going to a Really Long Metro Board Meeting So You Don't Have To
8. Pedestrian Impressions 2: Walking Downtown
9. Metro's Stealth "Short Term" Fare Hike
9. Thomas Rubin Tells Transit Coalition: LA Needs More Buses...Not Trains
10. SCAG’s Top Goal for Bike/Ped: Reduce Fatalities by 25% (Ok, this one is only here because I'm doing an update on it tomorrow)
"Honorable Mention" to Metro's Beat the Clock and Metro's Stealth "Short Term" Fare Hike
And of course there were the three great guest posts for the SoCal Voices Series. I've learned that I need to do guest posts more frequently as these three did a great job, but since I did it over a holiday they didn't get nearly the love they deserved. Here they all are again:
1) Pastor Talks About Bike Commuting
2) Huntington Beach Planning Commissioner Talks About Life in the Burbs
3) Transportation Engineer Talks About the Staples Center
