Caltrans

It was the California State Assembly's turn to review the recent State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI) report on Caltrans at a Transportation Committee hearing Monday.

With a recent report calling out the need for Caltrans to focus less on building highways and more on letting cities build people-friendly streets, state legislators have an eye trained on the agency's progress towards reform.

Caltrans needs to stop focusing so much on moving cars and let cities build safer street designs with protected bike lanes, says a new report commissioned by Governor Jerry Brown and CA Transportation Secretary Brian Kelly.

The massive Gerald Desmond Bridge replacement project—y'know, that pocket-change $1B, 1.5 mile roadway project that will sit perched above the Long Beach Harbor—has shadowed a smaller bridge project on Terminal Island: the Heim Bridge replacement project.

I was just 100 yards into CicLAvia to the Sea, when I heard the loud "pop." It wasn't just a broken tube, but my entire rear tire looked as though it were chewed up by some sort of monster hiding in the asphalt.

(Editors note: Gloria Ohland was on the team that completed the LA TOD study for LA Metro and the City of LA, and was also involved in the U.S. DOT study that compared the GHG emissions of TOD to other development.)

Sometimes, the news comes to you from several directions at once, and you have to pull the pieces together to see the bigger picture. Such a thing happened yesterday, when three seemingly unrelated story created the perfect tapestry of cause, symptom and effect.

Though it may seem esoteric, one of the biggest impediments to designing streets for people is the over-reliance on design standards that have long privileged movement of vehicles over any other consideration on the streets. That's why advocates cheered when U.S. DOT Secretary Ray LaHood published a policy paper recently that, at least in word, placed bicycles and pedestrians on equal footing with motorists.

I was somewhat heartened last week when coverage of the massive I-405 Sepulveda Pass Widening Project actually mentioned the amazing amount of highway vehicle congestion that will be created by the project over its estimated three year construction phase.  However, I waited to write about the press coverage because I was hopeful that some writer would actually make the connection that the this project could actually create more congestion over the course of the construction than will be "relieved"before induced demand helps fill those new travel lanes back up.  Unfortunately, there is no such luck.  The news coverage ranges from, "traffic is going to be awful but at least everything is going to be so much better when it's done" to "traffic is going to be worse than they're saying because the government is always wrong about these sort of thing."  Unfortunately, nobody is taking on the government's claim that the project is going to permanently reduce congestion in the corridor.