People

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.

As someone who has been pushing hard for a "bicycling and pedestrian set aside" for Measure R funds from before it was called Measure R, I have mixed feelings about yesterday's City Council Joint Hearing with the Transportation and Budget & Finance Committees.

President Obama did triple duty last night for the re-election campaign of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), visiting three fundraisers to send a stark message about polls that show the environment committee chairman holding a single-digit lead against her GOP challengers despite a formidable cash advantage.

The Obama administration today released its final rule raising U.S. auto fuel-efficiency standards to an average of 35.5 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2016, winning plaudits from environmental groups while offering extra benefits to makers of electric and luxury cars.