Streetsblog CA

The California legislature is back from spring recess and the process of hearing and arguing about bills is beginning in earnest. In the next few days, Streetsblog California will talk about some exciting bills coming up that may need your support.

At a downtown Los Angeles press event this morning in front of Caltrans District 7 headquarters, Assemblymember Mike Gatto (D-L.A., Glendale) explained two parking reform bills he recently introduced.

California State Assemblymember Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica) has set his sights on tackling the dire shortage of homes—and the resulting affordability crisis—currently facing the state.

SCAG sent a last-minute letter attempting to delay progressive updates to California's outdated environmental standards.

The Alliance for Biking and Walking just published its 2016 Benchmarking Report, which ranks states and cities on key statistics including the percentage of people commuting by bike. Every biannual report is a little bit different, as states develop their data collection and the Alliance is better able to compare statistics across fields.

The California Bicycle Coalition, aka CalBike, continues to push for increasing funding for the Active Transportation Program, which currently receives $120 million per year. The bike coalition wants the state to add $100 million to the program, which sounds like a lot but is roughly one percent of the total transportation budget—even though bike and walking trips make up nearly 19 percent of all trips made in California. The state budget planning process, in which the two legislative houses and the governor negotiate a final budget by June, is one avenue for getting more funding.

California's tax policies are at odds with its climate change policies, said UC Berkeley Professor Karen Chapple in a talk yesterday at the University of California Center in Sacramento. The current tax structure encourages big-box development and sprawl, she said, while making it difficult to build infill and high-density developments that could reduce auto dependence and greenhouse gas emissions from transportation.

Caltrans was involved in two very different bridge demolitions last week, and has posted time-lapse footage of both of them.

Since last September, Portland cyclists have been generating bike trip data via the free Ride Report app. Today, Ride Report has completed its Portland beta and is now open for use throughout the United States.