Car Culture

In honor of this year's New York International Auto Show, which officially begins today, we present this very special announcement:

A Bird's Eye View of Sylmar

The California Department of Motor Vehiclesrecently updated the state's driver's manual. While much of the information is the same as the one I studiedto earn my license last fall, there is some new language involving the rights and responsibilities of cyclists and automobile drivers.

Find the Bike Parking at Chavez Ravine

In yesterday's Times, Steve Hymon discusses the changing attitude at LADOT about how best to move people throughout the city. The headline, "L.A. officials do a 180 in traffic planning" suggests that we were about to read some radical stuff. Maybe he was going to discuss Gordon Price's argument that LA needs to be more like Vancouver and plan on how to design the roads to best move people, not cars . Maybe he was going to discuss charging people to use our highways through a toll or HOT Lane system and redirect that money towards transit. Instead, this is what we was meant by a "180 in traffic planning":

Don't Worry, There's Nothing to Dodge These Days Councilmember Ed Reyes and Council President Ed Reyes have stood out recently as advocates for cyclists in recent weeks. If their resolution urging Metro and the Dodgers to work together to (re)create bus access to Dodger Stadium is succesful they may also gain praise from baseball fans. The resolution will be heard by the City Council Transportation Committe at tomorrow's (Tuesday, 2/27) meeting. That we're discussing adding bus service to baseball games is confusing to this east coaster. How can a baseball team that was partially named after a mode of transit (the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers) doesn't have any non-automobile options to get to the stadium? That no transit service of any kind exists for Major League baseball in Los Angeles is just one of many signs of how car culture has taken control of the transportation grid. In other major cities transit is a crucial part of local nine's transportation plan and in some cases transit is spotlighted by the team as the best way to get to the ballpark. Yet in L.A., one of our teams has no transit access at all and the next closest team, the geographically challenged Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, doesn't list transit as an option to travel to the ball park on the official website.