People

Over at CicLAvia's blog, Joe Linton, who is no stranger to Streetsblog readers, has an interesting article featuring a dozen "Sadik-Khan"  like projects that could, and should, be done by the city of Los Angeles before next year's Street Summit.  After her inspiring perfomance at this year's Summit, NYCDOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan promised to come back next year and see how we're doing.  To, to the city of L.A. I say, "Tick-tock city!  That's only ten more months!"

As Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood tangled with a senior GOP senator today over the White House's $500 million-plus request for its inter-agency office of sustainable communities -- a new project aimed at channeling federal energy towards local transit-oriented and smart growth plans -- an influential Democrat joined her fellow senator in raising questions about diverting highway money to the effort.

(Since leaving the LA Weekly, where she did everything from review bands to serve as transportation writer, Gloria Ohland has been heavily involved in the transit reform scene.  Most recently she worked with the T.O.D. advocacy group Reconnecting America.  You'll be seeing more of her writing here in the very near future...DN)

Maybe it's just me; but has anyone else noticed a chance in our mayor recently when it comes to discussing walking and bicycling?  All of a sudden it seems like the Mayor can't get enough of talking up the virtues of moving from place to place sans automobile.   First there was a mention in the State of the City and earlier this week on Huffington Post he touted people powered transportation as one of the best things Angelenos can do to clean up our air.

Last week, Metro Chair Ara Najarian penned a piece for The Source announcing that bicycle parking is coming to the Westlake/MacArthur Park T.O.D. at some point in the future.  It's not everyday that the Metro Board Chair responds to something written on Streetsblog (although Stephen Box and I are debating which one of us he actually responded to); so Streetsblog owes a response.

Way back on April 14, LADOT General Manager Rita Robinson spoke in front of the City Council Transportation Committee on how the department is going to deal with the city's budget crunch. Robinson delivered her usual passionate defense of the "LADOT Family" in the midst of the cuts and also brought a basket fool of amazing analogies. She compared planning in the budget crisis to working with a bad comb over, ("you think you're covered but you're totally exposed") and compared her experiences with furloughs and layoffs to a parent having to decide which of her children to feed. Oddly, her comments about the City Council having "Reality Deficit Disorder" seemed to be left at home.

Z N12

This Thursday, the Metro Board of Directors will debate and vote-on whether or not to formally support Mayor Villaraigosa's "30 in 10" program that would use federal loans to move the twelve largest transit projects contained in the 30 year Measure R sale tax program in the next decade.  "30 in 10" has proven wildly popular with transit riders and is being touted as a national model for transit agencies, yet all of the advance debate on the program from the Board can be summarized as "how can we make sure to build more wasteful and expensive highway projects quicker?" You can read the full agenda for this Thursday's meeting, here.