Transit Advocacy

The MyFigueroa team will be presenting all their images and renderings at the Andrew Norman Hall Orthopaedic Hospital at 5:30 pm on April 9th. Get the event details at the MyFigueroa website. Of course, we'll be Live Streaming at Streetsblog TV. Bookmark our event page now.

Here are tidbits and some updates on transportation happenings in our region.

Thanks to the timely arrival of Damien's adorable package of sugar and spice and all that is nice, I was asked to take his place on a panel at the Railvolution conference.

Just over a month ago, planners, advocates and political leaders from around the country descended on Long Beach for the annual "Pro Walk/Pro Bike Conference" to plan the next steps in the Livable Streets movement. This week, Los Angeles takes its turn on center stage as host of Railvolution, and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was there to roll out the red carpet.

The Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo Rail Corridor Agency (LOSSAN) is a joint powers consisting of various rail operating agencies and stakeholders who (as stated in their outreach material) seek to increase ridership, revenue, capacity, reliability, and safety on the coastal rail corridor from San Diego to Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo served by Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner along with the Coaster and Metrolink.

The issue of whether or not Measure R+, our temporary name for a proposed ballot initiative to extend the 2008 transportation sales tax, will be on the fall ballot will be much clearer in a couple of days.  The Metro Board of Directors will vote on whether or not to place the initative on the fall ballot this Thursday.  The initiative still needs the approval of the State Senate and the Governor's office, but if the measure passes muster on Thursday, it will most likely go before the voters.

(Update: I received a question on why we published the name and address of the angry homeowner, questioning whether or not he qualifies as fare game to be signaled out by name.  I chatted with a friend of mine who doesn't have a stake or opinion in the issue of how UCLA decides when to keep its transit stops open.  He advised me that it wasn't illegal, but that we should have contacted him for a quote if we were going to feature him so prominently.  It was my call to leave his name in so any blame/fallout should fall on me, not Juan.   I just removed his name, address and references to his employment from the story and comments.- DN)

Today, Walk Score -- developer of the popular method for evaluating neighborhood walkability (and filling out NCAA tournament brackets) -- announced its first ranking of cities by Transit Score, a measure of the "usefulness" of a city's transit system. On a 100-point scale, New York and San Francisco took the top two spots with scores of 81 and 80 respectively, while Boston (74), Washington D.C. (69), and Philadelphia (68) round out the top five (see the full rankings).

In recent weeks, regional transportation agencies in Southern California have made some slow moves towards embracing a more sustainable transportation network throughout the Southland.  Local "Metropolitan Planning Organization" the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) is poised to pass a long term plan that would dramatically increase bicycle and pedestrian funding while its sister agency in San Diego passed the first regional funding plan complying with the state's ground breaking greenhouse gas emissions law SB 375 which mandates improvements in air quality with reductions in vehicles miles traveled.