Today’s Headlines

  • Mind the Gap. More on Big Dig Enviro. Docs (LAT, Star-News)
  • Infill Projects Surviving Most CEQA Challenges (Planning and Development Report)
  • Crenshaw Line Begins Construction Next Year. Meeting Thursday (Daily Breeze, Streetsblog)
  • Some Highland Park Residents Wary of Transit Village (Patch)
  • Did Lobbyist Knabe Help Enterprise Get Sweetheart Deal from County? (LAT)
  • Private Investment in Public Parklets a Win-Win (LB Press-Telegram)
  • More Gold Line on Weekends (The Source)
  • SF Explores Removing Part of 280 Freeway As part of CAHSR Project (CAHSR Blog)
  • Engineers Union Fears Lack of Oversight on High Speed Rail (Merc-News)
  • Dodger Infielder Sellers Arrested for Reckless Motorcycle Driving (Star-News)
  • The Wave of the Future: Big-City Mayors Tout Protected Bike Lanes as Economic Must-Haves (USAT)
  • Grand Park Home for Big Outdoor L.A. Inauguration Party (Daily News)
  • HOT TWEED ACTION (Orange 20)

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

  • Anonymous

    Two thoughts…

    CEQA: infill projects do succeed more often than greenfield projects, though we don’t know anything about the relative sizes of the projects. Drill down into the report, and you’ll note that mixed use projects are just as likely to get the CEQA axe as greenfield projects. But none of this accounts for (a) the fact that many infill projects don’t face CEQA lawsuits, but do, as LA Curbed reported, basically pay extortion money to NIMBY groups for that privilege, and (b) the potential of a CEQA lawsuit (or other zoning/permitting nonsense) is enough to scare off many urban redevelopment projects, especially small-scale projects that would produce a fine-grained urban fabric.

    280: why stop at Mariposa? Just go all the way back to Chavez & replace it with an arterial boulevard. SF is a lot like Manhattan in that it is the end of the line for everything; basically nothing should be going through the city. To the extent that there is northbound traffic between the Peninsula and Marin, a lot of it is due to the perverse incentive that if you take the 280 or the 101 to the Golden Gate, you don’t pay a toll, but if you go around the Bay to the Richmond Bridge, you do pay a toll. As for the rail yards at 4th and King, I think it would be a bad idea for CalTrain to give any of them up. You want storage near your main terminals. If the yards are pushed further away, that drives up operating costs and the deadhead moves start to foul up revenue service. If you don’t believe me, look at the MBTA, which has to deadhead trains to a yard 10 miles outside Boston. The lack of storage near S Station has been an ongoing issue for years.