The OC

Funding transportation projects in California is a complex and arcane process involving many players, including state and federal agencies, regional planning authorities, and local cities and counties. It usually comes with strings attached, needing to fulfill requirements of state or federal legislation or of a local sales tax spending plan. A project can start with local residents advocating for something they want, but needing to fit it to state or regional goals for planning, air quality, or transportation.

This is what happens when transportation planning focuses on moving cars instead of creating spaces for people.

On May 31, 2014, Bryan Larsen was bicycling on a crowded stretch of Pacific Coast Highway in south Orange County. He began to notice a pattern of harassment by the occupants of a large white 4x4 Ram Truck, with Texas Virginia license plate "TX 65-500." When passing cyclists, the truck would spew thick black coal-rolling exhaust.

“Been going on for a little more than 10 years,” Gonzalez said. “There’s all this frustration, being sleep deprived . . . a lot of energy expended. But once we get there- it will be like the (DREAM) ride- once we get there it’s going to be amazing.”

There was a saying my mentor Janine Bauer used to tell me when I was back fighting wasteful highway projects in New Jersey.  "The public process for highway expansion isn't over until the road is built."  What she meant was that the monied interests in building expensive highway projects won't stop no matter how often they are rebuked by oversight agencies or judges and will always find a new way to push forward.

(Last month, Huntington Beach announced a new program to offer scofflaw cyclists a chance to go to bicycle safety school in lieu of paying what can be a hefty fine for illegal cycling.  The program received some pretty harsh feedback on social media, but when I looked into it, I thought it was a pretty good program so I asked Huntington Beach Council Member Joe Shaw to write a piece for our best practices series explaining the program.  Incidently, this is Shaw's third piece for Streetsblog having written for StreetHeat, our predecessor site, in 2007 and again for Streetsblog in May of 2008.  You can follow him on twitter at @joeshawforhb)

Three years of construction.  Massive Delays. Circuitous detours. A $277 million price tag.

Earlier today the Orange County Transit Authority's Board of Directors voted, by a 14-1 margin, to cut 150,000 hours of transit service by early next year.  Believe it or not, the plan was actually an improvement from an earlier draft of the cuts had 300,000 hours of service.  The Register describes the cuts:

A brief article in today's Orange County Register reports that the OCTA, the agency that recently employed Metro CEO Art Leahy as its top boss, is seeking public input on the best way to relieve congestion on the I-405.  While this seems like an inexpensive way to get a snapshot of public opinion; I can't help but notice that the only options the OCTA is proposing involve massive road widening projects.