Paul Krekorian

Metro's new North Hollywood station plaza is based on a historic one that opened there circa 1914

Responding to cyclist lawsuits, Councilmembers Krekorian and Englander focus on bike lanes, even though that's not where these crashes take place

I was hoping to write a couple of happy stories this week about the Metro Orange Line. The San Fernando Valley's highly-regarded workhorse Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) opened in 2005. Lately, a new pedestrian tunnel and faster bus speeds seemed imminent. These facilities would save time for the Orange Line's 30,000 daily riders.

Metro's July Board of Directors meeting took place yesterday. As usual, it was four-plus hours long, with plenty of implications for the future of livability and transportation for the region. SBLA re-caps the meeting below.

Yesterday's Los Angeles City Council Transportation Committee meeting featured a number of livability issues that deserve more in-depth attention: Safe Routes to School, bicycle and pedestrian traffic counts, parking privatization, and more. SBLA will do a brief re-cap, and will track and report on these issues more in the future.

The past week has been a dismal one for pedestrian safety issues.  One week ago, the K-Town Riders were probably peacefully planning out their ride, checking their tires, or otherwise going about their business with no idea the carnage that would be unleashed on them.  One week ago the fate of our city's red light camera program was still uncertain.  But one week ago, one of the deadliest intersection in the city still didn't have a traffic light.

It seems as though it were just yesterday, but in fact was almost a year and a half ago, that we were first discussing which candidate would replace Wendy Greuel as the City Council Member for the 2nd Councilmanic District, located mostly in the Valley.  Streetsblog sent surveys to each of the 10 candidates in 2009, eight of whom responded.  Paul Krekorian, who won that election and is running for re-election this year, answered our survey.  His only opponent this time, Augusto Bisani, finished 10th in that election and did not.

The move to speed up Los Angeles' streets continues unabated.  Less than a week after hundreds of people gathered at the L.A. StreetSummit to discuss how to tame traffic and make Los Angeles' streets more livable, the City Council Transportation Committee is expected to hear, debate, and pass three speed limit increases in the San Fernando Valley at 2:00 p.M. this Wednesday in City Hall.  In a way, its kind of a sobering crash back to reality.  After a week of being reminded of what could be, activists are back to where we are...fighting speed limit increases that represent the exact opposite kind of thinking to what we talked about all weekend.