Reading the Newspapers so You Don't Have To

Governor Looks at Cutting Transportation Funding (Times, Sac Bee, CA Progress Report)

Some of Those Cuts Already On Paper (Capitol Weekly)

Midwestern States Join LA in Fighting Emissions/Climate Change (Imperial Valley News)

I-5 Tunnel Reopened (Daily News, Times)

Thousands of Articles on LA Auto Show (Google)

CA's Congressional Delegation May Kill High Speed Rail from Bay to LA (Planetizen)

Federal Transportation Funding Bill In Limbo (AP)

The Subway Formerly Known as the Purple Line (MetroRider)

Two LTE's Supporting Expo Line (Times)

Update on Two Transit Fare Increases...

Metro and LADOT eliminating free transfers on Metro Monthly Passes: Thanks to Bart Reed of the Transit Coalition for tracking this down. As StreetHeat reported last week, the free transfer between Metro and Dash buses downtown will be eliminated on January 1, 2008 as part of Metro's roll out of the TAP cards. However, its going to be awhile until TAP is online on either LADOT or Metrolink buses. The TAP conversion target date for LADOT is late 2008 and Metrolink's is still to be determined. If you're concerned about the decision to eliminate this transfer, why not tell the boss at Metro about it?

Foothill Transit Fare Hike: We know that not many, if any, readers of this blog take Foothill Transit into the city. However, since our Governor believes that the way to a greener future is better cars and less congestion (not less cars and more transit options), we can bet that similar fare hikes are coming across the board.

There was some "good" news from Foothill Transit's executive board. The somewhat draconian increases scheduled for seniors and the disabled taking monthly passes was reduced by 20%. Apparently the record amount of complaints, first reported here, helped trim the increase. The Foothill Transit Governing Board will vote on these plans this week.

Congress To Vote on Energy Bill Tomorrow

A note from a friend of mine in the clean building industry.

Hey kids, I generally don’t do this and I am obviously a bit biased here, working for a solar company, but in the interests of appearing productive when they have not been while still making sure they get their full 3-4 month vacation, Congress is poised to make sure they pass an energy bill that really does nothing about the energy problems in this country. The vote is scheduled for Friday.

It continues lavish subsidies for the very rich industries of coal, oil and natural gas, additional support for biofuels (many of which are not really very eco-friendly), but no support for renewable forms of electricity such as solar, wind, and geothermal.

Given how low an opinion many have of the political system, I know you might think this is a waste of time, but as this is most likely an area where they will not cave to whatever President Bush wants (who does support renewable energy to an extent), public opinion will matter.

So if you believe non-polluting forms of energy makes sense for a variety if reasons (keeps money away from oil-producing dictators and sponsors of terrorism, don’t want climate change, cleaner air to breathe, keeping the US in a new tech and manufacturing sector, etc), take 5 minutes to call your local Senator or Congressman to tell them to continue to support renewable energy production tax credits.

It’s easy to find through the following link (they give a simple script if you want as well). http://capwiz.com/re-action/callalert/index.tt?alertid=10534241&type=CO

Feel free to pass it along and thanks for listening.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving,
XXX

Reading the Newspaper So Late in the Day That You Probably Have Already Seen These Stories

...Sorry for the delay, hotel connection problems again. Hey, if MetroRider can go to Europe, I can certainly go to LA.

Locals Contend City Wants to Speed Up Traffic on Residential Street (Daily News, West Hills Safety Blog)

Dodgers Stadium Shuttle Coming Soon? (Daily News)

Green Cars on Display at Car Show (Times, Press Release)

Zipcar and Flexcar Take a Bite Out of Car Ownership (Times)

TV News on LA Life Without a Car (ABC 7)

Emerald City Blog Looks at E-MetroLink (Times)

NYTimes Writer Lauds Patriotism of Gas Tax (New York Times)

Another NYT op/ed Mocks American Ignorance on Climate Change (New York Times)

LA First impressions

Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to give my impressions, as a new Angeleno, on LA's transportation system. Today, I'll look at roads and car transport. Later this week, I'll give my pedestrian impressions, both in my neighborhood and in the downtown. A little later I'll do some analysis of the transit system (using a scorecard I'm stealing from my friends at Blogging the Region). Lastly, once my new bike gets a clean bill of health from the bike kitchen, I'll write on LA's kleve of bikeability.

The other posts in this series will all have graphics. Sadly, I can't take pictures while I drive, unlike some people.


To mock LA as being the car culture capital of North America is almost a cliche at this point. But what I've seen so far makes me believe that you can't say enough bad things about Angeleno's car commuting habits. A drive from my house (just north of Beverly Blvd. a mile west of the Grove)to the Foothill Transit fare hike meetings takes over two hours and twenty minutes at rush hour. A drive from the ventral library to home takes 40 minutes (using the 101 to Melrose) while the same trip using surface streets takes about an hour and fifteen minutes. Lets not even talk about my trips to Woodland Hills to see my brother.

But maybe its a good thing that I couldn't drive faster than a couple of miles an hour. The highways (and surface streets) are in terrible condition. Even zipping along at 20 miles per hour, the car was shaking like I was back in high school driving my Isuzu I-Mark.

The question I really have, and this is for the people that commute by car on a daily basis, are you people nuts? What advantage is there to living in one of the greatest cities in the world, with beautiful weather 350+ days a year if you're going to spend months of that year sitting in traffic? If you don't have access to transit or a safe bike route, may I suggest living closer to where you work or to a transit line?

Los Angeles is the national leader in percentage of commuters who commute by car. Sadly, my initial investigation into how the state/city/country spend their transportation dollars (much more on that after Thanksgiving) it looks like car will remain king in the area unless there's a major shift in funding priorities. Given the statements of out leading presidential candidates, and that our governor is doing nothing to stop fares from increasing, it seems that I shouldn't be holding my breath.

Streetsblog update on Peter's anti-bike comments

Streetsblog has an update on Transportation Secretary Mary Peter's attempt to remove her foot from her mouth in regards to cyclists and bike lanes. Some may remember her comment right after the Minnesota bridge disaster that, "10 percent to 20 percent of the current spending that is going to projects that really are not transportation, directly transportation-related. Some of that money is being spent on things, as I said earlier, like bike paths or trails."

For more on the"apology", you can see the rest of the story at streetsblog.

If you thought the D's were bad

Wait until you get a load of their opposition.


Mayor Giuliani's website doesn't even mention transportation, much less anything related to reform. Its amazing to think that someone could be mayor of the transit capital of America and not see America's automobile dependcy as a worthwhile campaign issue. Yet its not a part of his much bally-hooed 12 commitments nor his campaign in general.

Governor Mitt Romney has nothing resembling a transportation or greenhouse gas reduction plan. Now granted, I didn't spend too much time on his website since it repeatedly froze my computer, but all I was able to find was some language about reducing our dependency on foreign oil and ANWAR.


Senator John McCain is the leader in the Republican field simply for recognizing that global warming exists. He doesn't have any specific plan, but at least he's not talking about ways to increase our oil supply. He does mention alternative energy and better technology, but that's where he ends.

So, so far no major candidate of either party has really put much thought into how to improve our transportation system and the link between transportation and greenhouse gasses. Of all of them, only Clinton and Obama offer any specific changes in policy. Of those two, only Obama's plans seem as though they could make a major difference. Hopefully, as time goes on, the candidates will broaden their positions and give us something with more substance to analyze.