Month: November 2010

Friends,

I can't remember the first time I met Aktive, but it seems that every time I'm in the Northeast L.A. "Bike District" I run into him.  Going to an event at the Bike Oven?  There's Aktive.  Getting the baby bike together at Flying Pigeon?  There's Aktive.  June fundraiser?  Aktive.

Activists in Miami are celebrating a likely victory in a months-long campaign for livability improvements on Brickell Avenue, the main drag in the city's fashionable Brickell neighborhood.

Earlier this month, Mayor Villaraigosa, who also serves on the Metro Board of Directors, proposed that the transit agency give free Metro passes to classrooms for field trips during off-peak hours.  The proposal appears to be a win-win, as students in the "cash-strapped" LAUSD get a chance to travel to some of the many fun and educational places in Los Angeles and get a chance to do so via public transit.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

The Streetsblog house party series rolls on with a December 18th party at the house of Joel Epstein and Karen Sarachik.  Anyone that missed the amazing party thrown last month by Deborah Murphy ought to consider checking us out.  Joining Epstein, Sarachik and myself on the host committee are Friends for Expo founder Darrell Clarke, the Board of Los Angeles Streetsblog (more on them tomorrow) and City Council Transportation Committee Chair Bill Rosendahl.

Metro's Deputy Executive Officer of Service Planning and Scheduling Conan Cheung made nearly identical updates on service planning at the agency to the November 13th meeting of Southern California Transit Advocates and the November 17th meeting of Metro's Citizens' Advisory Council. Those who are unfamiliar with Metro's practice of semi-annual service changes (known as "shake-ups") should review the explanation in my Dec. 11, 2009 post "Metro Tweaks Schedule This Weekend. New Routes to Start on Monday".

Perhaps the Obama administration's greatest contribution to building more livable, less traffic-choked communities has been the new partnership between three agencies -- DOT, EPA, and HUD -- which are helping towns and cities grow more sustainably, using strategies from brownfield redevelopment to the provision of affordable housing along transit corridors. The agencies have collaborated to issue a series of grants to communities doing this work, but as the lower chamber of Congress shifts to Republican control, the funding for some of those programs is in question.

Environment California has been leading the charge for a cleaner automobile fleet for California and the rest of the country for years.  Earlier today, they released a new report, Gobbling Less Gas for Thanksgiving, promoting a "sixty miles per gallon" fuel efficiency mandate for American cars to be in place by 2025.  If that goal seems unrealistic considering that the average miles per gallon for the American fleet is only 26.4 miles per gallon today, consider that recent studies show that American cars are 99% cleaner today than they were fifty years ago.