Month: June 2011

It's hardly a state secret that California's speed limit laws are designed to increase traffic speed at the expense of communities and urban design. AB 529, a hot piece of legislation by Assemblyman Mike Gatto that already quietly cleared the State Assembly, seeks to give communities a little more leeway in setting local speed limits.  The Senate has yet to assign the bill to committee, but Senate Transportation Committee staff have told me they're expecting it "any day now."

Slow start to the week, but it picks up on Wednesday.  Then, at the end of the week, the Flying Pigeon Bike Shop takes over the calendar page.

Indianapolis transit advocates were thrilled last February when a long-range transit plan for the city was unveiled, including a network of light rail lines, writes Curt Ailes at Network blog Urban Indy.

The project links physical and virtual worlds through digital media portraits of places, offering views from different neighborhoods up to the city and region at large. Out the Window aims to create a mosaic of the many social, cultural, economic and creative layers of this complex American city. In reply, bus riders can text responses instantly or eventually to location-specific and thematic questions posed on the screens by youths, artists or community curators.

I started working on transportation issues in 1995, back when advocates for transit, bikes, pedestrians and smart growth were a minority voice in the media — if we got into the media. Fast forward to 2011 and Streetsblog totally owns these issues and commandeers its own communications channel. Every time I want to call Damien and propose a story about how they’re testing the Expo Line, or the disagreements among people who are otherwise allies over the TOD parking reduction bill (AB 710), or Senator Boxer’s encouraging remarks about America Fast Forward and the transportation reauthorization, I look on Streetsblog and Damien has already posted a story!

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

On Friday, June 17, L.A. Streetsblog rolls back in to Northeast L.A. for its 2nd Annual Fundraiser with the Flying Pigeon Bike Shop on 3714 N. Figueroa Street.  The event will be in two parts, with a bike ride beginning at 6:30 P.M. and an after party beginning at 8:00.  We’re asking for $10 to joins us on the ride, $10 for the after party or $15 for both.  Of course, everything is on a sliding scale and nobody will be turned away.

More Info The Spoke (n) Art Ride is a once-a-month bicycle tour of art galleries, parks both public and private, and anywhere the creative human spirit expresses itself in North East Los Angeles.

Ninth Grade Students from the East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy (ELARA) will be presenting their park designs. These students explored the look, feel, and layout of three, diverse parks across the city. Then they worked in teams to design their ideal parks. They designed and built wonderful models for their parks using a grain of rice as the scale. www.flickr.com/photos/latinourbanforum/sets/72157626690444445