Car Culture

I'd be laughing right now if I could just stop crying.

Over and over again, I hear from transportation planners and leaders at LADOT, Metro, and beyond that Livable Streets projects can't move forward because we would take away space from cars.  If you follow that view, you're basically saying that the people that use their cars are the ones doing the right things, living their lives the right way, and the rest of us are just special interests with special needs.

Blogdowntown reports that the chances that transit service comes back to Dodger Stadium are about the same as the Dodgers clearing out parking spaces for helicopter parking.  Despite a verbal commitment to the City Council last year that they would try and find sponsors for the shuttle, they refuse to talk to team sponsors and won't of course wouldn't dream of actually paying for what is essentially private shuttle service themselves. 

Earlier this month, Metro released the eighteenth in a series of posters commissioned by Metro Art focusing on the communities that Metro services. This poster of Koreatown is actually a photo collage by by local artist Kyungmi Shin that seeks to capture a day in the life of Koreatown. From Metro's press release:

The Ad Council has some new material in its campaign aimed at teenage drivers. In these spots, a comedic actor (Fred Willard in the ad above) in the backseat of a car with three teens cajoles or threatens the driver into slowing down or minding the road. The gist of the campaign, corresponding with the title of its web site, is "speak up or else" -- a name perhaps more suited to hard-hitting PSAs from overseas.

The Daily News printed a rare opinion piece yesterday that dared challenge the orthodoxy that adding lane capacity to the 405 is somehow going to improve quality of life for the people living near the widening area in Encino.  The I-405 widening project is one that the city hopes will receive stimulus funds and they have long argued that by encouraging carpooling you can better manage car growth because more people per car will lead to less cars.  Thus far, there has never been a study that has shown this to happen, but there is plenty of evidence that wider highways lead to more cars.

Yesterday, news broke that the City of Industry City Council unanimously voted to approve a plan to construct a new stadium to try and entice the Bills from Buffallo or the Raiders from Oakland.  Putting aside any arguments about whether this is a good idea, because it clearly isnt', I thought it could create a fun weekend excercise for Streetsbloggers.  If you were the transportation engineer for this project, what would your plan for this stadium be?

INRIX, a company that provides technology to help municipalities do better traffic planning, has completed its yearly ranking of America's most congested cities and found, for the second year in a row, that Los Angeles has the highest level of automobile congestion in the country.

In his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama last night emphasized his administration’s commitment to keeping the domestic auto industry afloat, while offering only a passing mention to the nation’s mass transit systems. Said Obama: As for our auto industry, everyone recognizes that years of bad decision-making and a global … Continued