Santa Monica

Sadly this week marks the second fatality of a bike rider in Santa Monica this year (following the recent death of Antonio Cortez). This raises the Santa Monica traffic death toll to at least four that I am aware of in 2012, counting two prior pedestrian deaths this year.

Two weeks ago I started a conversation about traffic in Santa Monica.  That first post stirred up quite a bit of commentary and criticism. I expected this given my deviation from the playbook of many other local columnists: using populist rhetoric to complain about traffic congestion as a universal evil, with no viable proposals of what to do about it. When a "solution" is suggested, it's often something along the lines of "don’t build anything ever, unless it is building more parking garages" (which actually attracts more car trips).

Last week I started a multiple part series on traffic, and the myths that surround it in Santa Monica, promising a part 2. That is still coming, but I am holding it for next week's column to focus on recent developments concerning what had been proposed as a car-free mixed use apartment building at 401 Broadway.

If you were to summarize the biggest complaint of Santa Monicans and many Westsiders in one word, that word would probably have to be traffic. With no other subject but auto-traffic congestion do I encounter so much heated rhetoric, nor as many entirely contradictory messages about what’s causing it and what to do about it. So I thought it would be helpful to address some of the most common things I hear but which I feel are misunderstandings of how traffic really works.

It is not without a tinge of irony that parking structures, the enablers of all the excessive car traffic I so despise in urban life, are often some of the best places to get beautiful views of the city. Tourists flock to the hotels along Ocean Avenue and the bluffs of Palisades Park, to catch the stunning Pacific sunsets, but if you want to look at our own work as a human civilization, your better off catching the elevator to the top deck of Parking Structure #5. For better or worse, our parking structures are our grandest works of civic architecture, towering far above any other public buildings in Santa Monica.

Santa Monica’s transit service, the Big Blue Bus, has been in a bind for a while now due to declining revenue from the state throwing off its budget. Many transit agencies have been dealing with similar shortfalls and forced to make tough choices. Unfortunately In many cases that has resulted in trimming routes or dropping service frequency at the very moment that demand for transit service is growing.

Santa Monica has been steadily rolling out more and more smart meters throughout the city with sensors for tracking when spaces are occupied. Nearly every paper in town has been writing about these installations, and the various policy tweaks and new features that accompany them.

Following recent street repaving along Montana Ave., you may notice preliminary markings that are a little different than what was there before.

Santa Monica city staff presented the beginnings of the developing Bergamot Area Plan to the Planning Commision Wednesday night for feedback, offering a promising look at what Santa Monica’s eastern transit oriented district might feel like. As part of the implementation of the LUCE general plan, a number of specific plans are being created involving their own public outreach process. Several large workshops were completed for the Bergamot area in recent months, offering direction that is shaping the drafting of the document.