Car Culture

Ben Fried got it exactly right about the errors that riddled Tuesday's David Brooks column. Brooks was so far off the mark, though, that it's worth another look at the ways he misled readers.

Warning: Graphic video

Lookout valley residents on living on or pedestrians walking along Saticoy Street or White Oak Avenue.  In an effort to better enforce traffic laws, the Los Angeles City Council is voting on an ordinance that will raise speed limits on these streets.  Each road will see the limit increase from 35 miles per hour to 40 miles per hour because the city was lax in enforcing the 35 miles per hour speed limit.

Yesterday, the City of Los Angeles had two visitors, one from Australia, Professor Peter Newman, and another from Virginia, University of Virginia professor Timoth Beatley, to warn us that we have a lot of work to do to prepare Los Angeles for a future where our culture isn't based around the automobile.  Our visitors were two-thirds of the team that wrote the groundbreaking book Resilient Cities which outlined four potential future for modern American cities:  the ruralized city, the divided city, the resilient city and the collapsed city.  

Detroit's customer incentives have had an air of desperation for a while. With Big Three bankruptcy looking more likely every day, some dealers -- like this one in Pembroke Pines, Florida -- are venturing into liquidation sale territory (and then some).

Unwanted Cars Gather Together to Commiserate

With the president-elect, Congress and the current White House divided on how or if American taxpayers should save the domestic auto industry, General Motors is taking its case directly to the public with this video and accompanying web site. More threat than appeal, the message, in a nutshell, is "Do it, or else."