Roger Rudick

The Rail~Volution conference at the San Francisco Hyatt concluded yesterday with three hours of presentations and break-out meetings about California High-Speed Rail. The focus: how to build the communities we want around HSR stations in Los Angeles, San Jose and Fresno. An important part of that was to learn from the experts: the French designers who have already developed and built beautiful, place-making stations in Strasbourg, Lille and other cities in France.

Yesterday evening, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) held a discussion about diversity as part of its "Bike Talks" series at the Sports Basement Grotto on Bryant Street. Janice Li, Advocacy Director for SFBC, moderated a panel comprised of Lateefah Simon, President of the Akonadi Foundation, Tamika Butler, Executive Director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, and Renee Rivera, Executive Director of Bike East Bay.

Gabe Klein, entrepreneur, writer and former head of transportation for Chicago and Washington DC, spoke yesterday afternoon at the Oakland office of the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) about how technology can be guided to shape the future of our cities.

Wednesday evening, SPUR, the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, sponsored a talk entitled “Reconsidering Transportation to Create Better Urban Spaces” at their new downtown Oakland location. The talk focused on the history and damage done by the almost mindless adherence over the years to Level of Service (LOS) on urban spaces … Continued

(In advance of tomorrow night's presentation with Modacity about the bicycling culture of Vancouver and what L.A. can learn; we asked Streetsblog contributor Roger Rudick to write about his recent trip to Vancouver.  For more information about tomorrow's event, click here.- DN)

“We have to build an army of people who are willing to say 'enough is enough,'” said Mayor Eric Garcetti at Wednesday's MoveLA conference at Union Station, speaking of the region's traffic and pollution problems.

Smart people live in Pasadena. Some of them work for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and send probes to Mars. Others spend their days figuring out quantum mechanics at Caltech. And still others dabble in transportation. A study group formed by Pasadena's Mayor Bill Bogaard and its City Manager has a smart idea in response to L.A. Metro's study to link the stub end of the 210 with the end of the 710: instead of closing this “gap” in our freeways, rip out the 210's stub along Pasadena Avenue.

The Arts District of downtown Los Angeles is now a vibrant residential community. But the signs of its warehouse past are everywhere. Abandoned railroad spurs, peeking up from the asphalt and running down old brick streets, speak volumes about bad public policies and metrics that, even as LA struggles to rebuild its once-great transit system, persist in too much of its bureaucracy. That's exemplified in two 710 freeway studies released by Caltrans and Metro.

Wednesday night I attended the vigil for Milton Olin, a cyclist who was run down and killed by a distracted Sheriff's Deputy. The next morning, I decided to do something I haven't done in a long time: go for a purely recreational ride.

If you approach LAPD headquarters from First Street, City Hall is reflected in the windows. This was designed into the building intentionally, to remind cops that they’re not there to serve the police department itself; they’re to serve the people of Los Angeles.