Santa Monica

(editor's note: There are a couple of great videos after the jump.)

Tomorrow and Sunday will mark the Fourth AltCar Expo & Conference in Santa Monica.  Admission is free and directions can be found on the AltCar's website.

Alert Reader Johnathon Weiss pointed me to a story in the Santa Monica Daily Press, and posted on the Times' LA Now Blog, about the impact the narrowing of Ocean Park Boulevard on traffic and safety in Santa Monica. In 2007, after a series of crashes involving cars and pedestrians, the city of Santa Monica decided to narrow the four lane.  The Daily Press explains:

The Big Blue Bus is proudly sporting ads boasting of a new airport service.  The new route provides quite an increase in service coverage for the agency because they aren't talking about service to the local airport in Santa Monica or to LAX; but service to the airport in Houston.  Remarkably this service will cost riders only $15.  What a bargain!  I wonder how many stops there will be along the route.  If they'll stop in Vegas, I bet a lot of Angelenos will be interested.

Recently, the City of Santa Monica completed a series of speed surveys on it's streets, as required by state law.  The result might be a surprise to people that have followed the inability of the City of Los Angeles to maintain lower speed limits when these surveys are done.  In Santa Monica, fourteen street locations are seeing their speed limits lowered while speeds will be increased in only two areas: on Colorado Avenue between Ocean Avenue and Lincoln Boulevard and on Second Street between Wilshire and Colorado.

It finally appears as though the Expo Bike Path, the path that is going to run parallel to Phases I and II of the Expo Line is going to be built.  After the Expo Construction Authority punted on taking the lead on the project earlier this year, leaving the federally funded path to Los Angeles, Culver City and Santa Monica to complete the environmental reviews; it appeared the path might not happen.  After all, if construction couldn't begin by the time Phase II of the Expo Line began construction, the path would become unaffordable.  

Tomorrow, the Expo Construction Authority will vote on a "Final" route for Phase II of the Expo Line that will undergo an environmental study before final design and construction.  The staff has recommended, and the Board will almost assuredly follow their recommendation, that the they move forward with option "LRT-2" or in layman's terms a light rail option that will run down the existing right-of-way before turning down Colorado Avenue towards the coast. 

Despite the elimination of transit subsidies from our Greenhouse-Gas-Battling Governor and the Democratically controlled state legislature, Metro is pushing forward with plans to expand and improve bus service thanks to increased funding from Measure R.  A report to the Metro Board's Measure R committee shows that just because the state has bowed out of the transit funding game, all is not lost for those who supported Measure R because they wanted better bus service.