Month: June 2011

Last night, dozens of Westsiders and union members packed into the Mar Vista Recreation Center to watch the Bill and Tim Show.  Hosted by Councilman Bill Rosendahl, a former talk show host, and featuring special guest AEG CEO Tim Leiweke, the two hammed it up with the help of a team of able sidekicks and more often than not brought applause from the audience as they sold Westsiders on an improved convention center and new football stadium.

A few weeks ago, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor published his list of bills the House will attempt to get through before the August recess. The transportation reauthorization was not among them.

Last Friday, the Baldwin Hills Conservancy, a county agency, awarded Culver City $570,000 to improve the intersection of Jefferson Boulevard and Hetzler road, the same intersection where Christine Dahab crashed into a group of stationary Midnight Ridazz early in the morning of June 16.  The improvements include the installation of a raised median near the intersection to differentiate the area surrounding the Scenic Overlook and the rest of the park from the industrial area around it, bike lanes from Duquense Avenue to the west to the City border to the east, a sidewalk on both sides of Jefferson and installation of a pedestrian signal at Hetzler.

Just nine days after Long Beach Mobility Coordinator Charlie Gandy gave me a personal tour of Long Beach's impressive bike infrastructure, David Barboza has translated his third Streetfilm into Spanish for us.  Now, the same tour I received from "the bike guy," as Gandy introduced himself to people around the city, is available to the thousands of people in the Southland who can speak Spanish, but not English.  Thanks, David!

Things are tough all over, and that goes for America's institutions of higher learning as well. Colleges and universities, once thought to be recession-proof, are being forced to raise tuition and cut back.

Today in Ridiculous Carmageddon News:

Critical Mass avoided controversy on Friday night, rolling to the Westside to UCLA Medical Center (where the last hospitalized victim from the Culver City Crash a couple of weeks ago is still recovering) to the traditional stop at Western and Sunset.  Tickets were kept to a minimum, I could count on one hand the number of times I saw officers pulling over cyclists, and I heard more discussion of New York's decision to allow gay marriage than I did complaints about the LAPD's handling of the aforementioned crash. The LAPD estimated that at its peak, there were 1,300 riders taking part in the ride.

If the newly-restriped .3 mile area of Wilbur Avenue was supposed to be a compromise between the LADOT, City Council Office, advocates of fast moving car traffic, bicyclists and residents, it appears the LADOT put the politics of the situation over the road diet ahead of responsible engineering.

Why give to Los Angeles Streetsblog? Exactly for the reason that LA Streetsblog has become a game changer in transportation in Los Angeles, even more so than the other cities it's appeared in. Before Streetsblog hit the scene, in order to hold carcentric agencies accountable and know what developments were happening, you either had to be a total nerd or a government planner/engineer. I was the former, and Streetsblog gave me an informal and crucial crash course education during my years at UCLA in transportation politics.