Santa Monica

This Wednesday,  the Santa Monica Planning Commission was presented with and spoke on the latest draft proposals for the Transportation Demand Management (TDM) portion of the pending zoning code .  The zoning code is currently being overhauled to meet goals and guidelines in the Land Use & Circulation Element. In short, TDM measures are polices that act as deliberate carrots and sticks to reduce car trips, or average vehicle ridership (AVR).

Fostering a culture and built environment that embraces walking is at the very core of sustainable urbanism, and frankly, the human experience as the endurance adapted bipeds that we are. However I must admit looking back over my Santa Monica columns thus far, I haven't given pedestrian issues a lot of specific attention yet. In many ways Santa Monica is a ahead of the curve on walkability. That so many travel from elsewhere in the region to come walk around in Santa Monica is evidence of this fact. However some areas of the city are better served than others, and safety remains a significant concern. Pedestrians being killed or seriously injured by collisions involving vehicles looms large among the most tragic headlines annually.

This week a UCLA research team (that included our own board member and contributor Juan Matute), published their findings on life-cycle green house gas emissions impacts, energy use, smog & respiratory particulates of public transit compared with driving, using the Metro Gold Line train and Orange Line bus rapid transit corridor as case studies.

Don’t get me wrong.

Santa Monica was just awarded a bump in it's Bicycle Friendly Community (BFC) classification by the League of American Bicycling, from bronze to silver. Coinciding with that news the walkability web application Walk Score released a new round of Bike Score rankings which now includes Santa Monica, which received an average score of 82.5 (rounded up to 83), high enough to come 5th in analyzed cities. Now there are probably few people more excited than myself about the real progress being made toward normalizing bicycling in Santa Monica, but I feel compelled to maintain some skepticism toward popular systems of classification for bicycle friendliness.

One of the sub-rifts I've observed within the debates and backlashes against development in Santa Monica reflects the diverging views within environmentally conscience minds about balancing localized and broader impacts. There are people who have advocated for environmental initiatives of various kinds their entire life, who I fundamentally clash with despite also considering myself a passionate advocate environmental protection. We're seeing the same issues with completely different lenses.

The Southern California Streets Initiative, the local non-profit that staffs and edits Streetsblog Los Angeles, has voted to support local journalism outside of the city limits to Long Beach and Santa Monica. Thanks to local support from Santa Monica Bike Center and Long Beach Community Foundation, we've been able to do this without reaching into our regular operating funds.

The debate over the ultimate fate of Santa Monica Airport (SMO)  is contentious with impassioned views from stakeholders on all sides. More concerned with the state of our ground transportation, I hadn't given much thought to my own views about the local airport operations or followed very closely the prior discussions on the issue (although it's impossible to not hear some about it).

Owen Gorman and Rachel Horn, two friends who’ve known each other since their time attending Samohi, are embarking on a coast to coast bicycle tour combining their advocacy interests along the way. The two college graduates were both part of the early student led effort to host a bike to school event on the Samohi campus that became the successful Bike It! Walk It! program. I caught up with them recently to chat about their plans for riding coast to coast and about their advocacy.