People

At a meeting of business leaders earlier today, Mayor Villaraigosa officially announced his plan, previewed earlier today in the Times, to aggressively pursue private and federal funds to complete all rail projects included in Measure R within ten years.  Villaraigosa has often talked about completing his favorite project, the Subway to the Sea.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) today unveiled his plan to take an incentive-based approach to distracted driving as Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood testified on the Obama administration's campaign to end the use of electronic devices behind the wheel.

Halfway through this afternoon's rally in support of a new federal transportation bill, there came an accidental but telling moment. A group of tourists, attracted by the hundreds of orange flags planted in the National Mall for the rally, walked through the event and whispered questions to attendees about its purpose. Once their curiosity was sated, the group lost interest and ambled away.

Last weekend, in the wake of Governor Schwarzenegger's signing of a law exempting the largest development project in Southern California since the L.A. Colliseum, the drumbeat began for more exemptions for projects that are going to be a lot less destructive to the environment.  The OC Register opines in a Saturday editorial:

Opponents of expanding the I-710 near Pasadena to connect the road to the I-210 received a double dose of bad news in recent weeks from both the courts and our environmental governor.  First, Governor Scwarzenegger, between lecturing his wife about safe driving, found time to veto Senator Gil Cedillo's legislation that would have required any highway expansion in this area to take the form of a tunnel.  Second, a state court ruled against the lawsuits brought by South Pasadena and La Canada Flintridge against the inclusion of funding for the I-710 expansion in Measure R.

Supporters of cash-out-parking, the state law that requires employers of more than fifty people that offer free parking to employees to provide an equal benefit to those that don't commute via automobile, were closely watching two pieces of legislation this session. The legislation was to fill two major holes in the state mandate, and while both passed both houses of the legislature, the Governor only signed one of them into law.

California administrative rulemakers recently moved a step closer to reforming the section of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) that has compelled cities to focus undue attention on the age-old Automobile Level of Service (LOS) threshold for impacts of new projects and has led to the construction of excess off-street parking.

In a speech much anticipated by those tracking the D.C. environmental debate, President Obama today took on opponents of congressional action on climate change, decrying "naysayers" who "make cynical claims" that ignore scientific evidence of the harm caused by emissions.

(Editor's note: Originally, this was going to be a post written by Dana Gabbard about Metro placing their public Gold Line Eastside Extension documents online.  As I was writing the introduction, the story got away from me.  A deep hat tip to Dana for his help with this article and you can see the Metro presentation on the extension at the Transit Coalition Website.)