Month: August 2009

(Update: the LADOT responded just before "closing time" today.  Here is their official response: The information provided yesterday is accurate and still stands: the Department has no current plans to remove any portion of the bike lane or to install peak hour lanes on Reseda Boulevard.  

As Barbara Boxer (D-CA) works on her upcoming climate change bill, the Senate environment committee chairman is "definitely looking at" a plan to give green transport 10 percent of the revenue generated from carbon emissions caps, according to a new report from BNA's Transportation Watch.

The White House's commitment to electrified cars, fulfilling an Obama campaign promise to put 1 million plug-in hybrids into service by 2015, is bound to have serious ramifications for the nation's already-crumbling system of paying for transportation.

A brief article in today's Orange County Register reports that the OCTA, the agency that recently employed Metro CEO Art Leahy as its top boss, is seeking public input on the best way to relieve congestion on the I-405.  While this seems like an inexpensive way to get a snapshot of public opinion; I can't help but notice that the only options the OCTA is proposing involve massive road widening projects.

Today from the Streetsblog Network, a look back at the early days of paved roads in the United States and the vehicle operators who led the way for their paving. The vehicles some of these men were operating, as Detroit's  M-Bike.org reminds us, were bicycles:

(Longtime readers will remember that Streetsblog has covered many of James Rojas' efforts to explain planning and get people to use their imagination when thinking about the future of transportation.  In the past, we've covered a fraction of Rojas' interactive planning  workshops "Pushing Planning Boundaries in Santa Monica," "A Future without Cars,"and "the Interactive Downtown Workshop."  Below is Rojas' coverage of the opening of the Re-Imagining Chinatown Exhibit opening from this last weekend and above is a video made of the opening.  The entire exhibit will be on display until September 5 at the Fifth Floor Gallery.)

For a story today on the political challenge of outlawing texting behind the wheel, the Washington Post sent its reporter to a downtown intersection to track whether drivers were obeying the city's ban on hand-held cell phones.

Yesterday I got an e-mail from Carolyn Jackson at the Los Angeles Department of Transportation which basically said that the LADOT has no plans to remove bike lanes or change the street parking patterns to increase peak hour travel on Reseda Boulevard.  Realizing that she was facing a skeptical audience of one, Jackson even included an email from the LADOT to the Northridge West Neighborhood Council to prove her point.