Melanie Curry

Climate Plan, a coalition of more than fifty nonprofits working on California climate policies, released a report [PDF] about what we've learned from S.B. 375, one of California's policy efforts to grapple with climate change. The coalition held a day of presentations in Sacramento on Monday to celebrate the release. Presenters—people who've been working in state and local agencies and advocacy organizations—confirm that we've learned quite a lot, that planning practices in California are changing, and that there is still more work to do to achieve state goals.

Contra Costa County voters are considering whether to tax themselves to pay for transportation, and the plan accompanying the measure has a few potentially game-changing aspects. That doesn't mean that sustainable transportation advocates all support it, however.

Today the Strategic Growth Council approved 25 projects for funding under the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program. All of them combine affordable housing development and transportation improvements for either transit, walking, biking, or a combination of all three modes.

The most recent cap-and-trade allocation bill, A.B. 1613, allots $10 million to the Active Transportation Program. The money comes with a few strings attached. Any projects funded by cap-and-trade have to show that they reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Also, the money must be allocated by 2018 and spent by 2020.

Today is the deadline for California Governor Jerry Brown to sign or reject any bills passed by the legislature this session, so there has been a flurry of activity in the last few days. Here's a quick look at few freshly signed laws pertinent to sustainable transportation and the climate.

The California High Speed Rail Authority released three simple animations showing possible routes for the Palmdale to Burbank section. The animations appear on separate maps, so it's hard to compare them side-by-side, but they give a pretty good idea of how very, very long the proposed tunnels are.

California Governor Jerry Brown just signed major new climate change legislation, and people will be grappling for a while with what the new laws will mean on the ground—and how California will be able to achieve its new greenhouse gas reduction targets. Tomorrow, several state agencies will be tackling the question of how to reach those targets in the transportation sector—Streetsblog will have more coverage of that later.

The California Bicycle Coalition launched an unusual campaign this week to inform local leaders that building protected bikeways is not only allowed, but encouraged.

The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) is updating CalEnviroScreen, holding a series of workshops and webinars starting this week and continuing throughout September—see the end of this post for locations and details. The first one takes place in Los Angeles this evening.

Caltrans crunched four-year-old collision data from the California Highway Patrol and found that nearly twenty percent of traffic-related fatalities and severe injuries are speed-related.