Month: October 2009

More headlines over at Streetsblog Capitol Hill.

Halfway through this afternoon's rally in support of a new federal transportation bill, there came an accidental but telling moment. A group of tourists, attracted by the hundreds of orange flags planted in the National Mall for the rally, walked through the event and whispered questions to attendees about its purpose. Once their curiosity was sated, the group lost interest and ambled away.

Last weekend, in the wake of Governor Schwarzenegger's signing of a law exempting the largest development project in Southern California since the L.A. Colliseum, the drumbeat began for more exemptions for projects that are going to be a lot less destructive to the environment.  The OC Register opines in a Saturday editorial:

Yesterday, the Senate environment committee held the first in a three-part marathon of hearings on its climate change legislation, with supporters singling out the bill's investments in clean transportation even as one senior Democrat notably withheld his support from the measure.

Via TreeHugger, Copenhagenize reports that Volvo is in the final stages of testing technology to improve safety for people outside its products -- a "pedestrian detection" system available in S60 models next year:

Opponents of expanding the I-710 near Pasadena to connect the road to the I-210 received a double dose of bad news in recent weeks from both the courts and our environmental governor.  First, Governor Scwarzenegger, between lecturing his wife about safe driving, found time to veto Senator Gil Cedillo's legislation that would have required any highway expansion in this area to take the form of a tunnel.  Second, a state court ruled against the lawsuits brought by South Pasadena and La Canada Flintridge against the inclusion of funding for the I-710 expansion in Measure R.

The future of transportation in this country is currently under debate by a bunch of old folks in Washington. But what about those who will live in that future, people now in their 20s and younger? How to influence their transportation choices is the topic of today’s featured post on the Streetsblog Network. A student … Continued

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Supporters of cash-out-parking, the state law that requires employers of more than fifty people that offer free parking to employees to provide an equal benefit to those that don't commute via automobile, were closely watching two pieces of legislation this session. The legislation was to fill two major holes in the state mandate, and while both passed both houses of the legislature, the Governor only signed one of them into law.