Category Archives: Transportation Headlines

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Transportation headlines, Tuesday, Jan. 17

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Here is a look at some of the transportation headlines gathered by us and the Metro Library. The full list of headlines is posted on the library’s blog.

A bullet train in Spain. Credit: AVE.

Doubts cast on high-speed rail alternatives (L.A. Times)

The state’s high-speed rail authority says that without a bullet train, California will have to spend $171 billion in new roads and airport upgrades to keep pace with transportation demand. Not so fast. Several experts say that figure is, at best, a distortion. Excerpt:

“There is some dishonesty in the methodology,” said Samer Madanat, director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies, the top research center of its type in the nation. “I don’t trust an estimate like this.”

Until November, California High-Speed Rail Authority officials were asserting that the alternative cost of highway and airport construction would be $100 billion. Earlier predictions were billions lower. When the estimate for the bullet train project recently hit $98.5 billion, the authority ratcheted the highway and airport cost up to $171 billion.

Hmmm. BTW, here’s a basic look at the high-speed rail system in Spain by the Sacramento Bee. The Spainards are watching California’s system closely – they would like to help build it.

Expo Line bike lane review redeux (L.A. Streetsblog)

Some repaving has left the bike lane along the first phase of the Expo Line in better shape than it was in October when he first rode it, reports Damien Newton. But some concrete sections of the road that were not repaved coupled with some gutter lane action leave Damien to conclude the lanes still don’t feel complete yet. Check out the pics.

Why railroads care about coal exports (Sightline Daily)

Interesting I-didn’t-know-that post with charts that shows that about 45 percent of the freight rail cars in the U.S. are hauling car. That far overshadows any other commodity — agricultural products is the second-most hauled at 14 percent. However, for a number of reasons the amount of coal being shipped by trains is on a downward trajectory.

How to stop global warming: stop breathing (Clinton Foundation)

Transportation headlines, Friday, Jan. 13

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Long Beach: bike town. Photo by flickr user Waltarrrrr

Here is a look at some of the transportation headlines gathered by us and the Metro Library. The full list of headlines is posted on the library’s blog.

Cycles and cents: One city sets out to prove that bikes are good for business (Grist)

Long Beach’s energetic embrace of bicycling infrastructure has earned plaudits from bike and safety advocates, and it has been a boon to everyone who has wanted to dust off the old Schwinn but didn’t feel comfortable riding in mixed traffic. But how has the business community responded? This article suggests that early skepticism has given way to embrace, thanks to the city’s and bike advocates’ success at explaining the bottom line benefits of supporting bikes. For one, you can park 12 bikes in the space taken up by just one car.

Chief executive of high-speed rail project steps down (L.A. Times)

As we mentioned yesterday, California High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Roelof van Ark has resigned as head of the agency, citing the desire to spend more time with his family. One member of the California Transportation Commission suggested that van Ark was a good engineer, but didn’t “have his finger on the political pulse of the state.” While some will surely see the shakeup as a sign of further tumult, a number of legislators were quoted as saying that this was a much-needed fresh start for the project.

Metropolis II at LACMA: Will a sculpture made of 1,100 Hot Wheels predict L.A.’s future? (L.A. Weekly)

Here’s my plan for the weekend: Check out the Metropolis II sculpture at LACMA. Though sculpture isn’t quite the right word, because there’s over a thousand toy cars whizzing through this model city on elevated tracks. The project’s creator, Chris Burden, envisions an L.A. of the future with auto-pilot cars criss-crossing the city at over 200 mph. Maybe the distant future. My thought: We don’t need to wait for glitzy technology to improve mobility in L.A.; some more bus-only lanes would go a long way for starters.

Transportation headlines, Thursday, Jan. 12

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Here is a look at some of the transportation headlines gathered by us and the Metro Library. The full list of headlines is posted on the library’s blog.

10 bicycling myths de-bunked (Grist)

Kind of fun post tackles the myth that cycling will make men unattractive to the ladies (among other myths). As proof, Grist cites the fact that even Kate Spade sells bikes. The thing is most women I know can find plenty wrong with me without ever considering my biking habits. Grist — a little paranoid are we?

Invest in inter-regional rail (San Bernardino Sun)

In an opinion piece, the chief of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) argues against beginning the under-funded high-speed rail project and that it would be wiser to spend $1 billion this decade expanding capacity and speeding up commuter trains in Southern California.

Restoring the ‘water’ freeway (American Planning Assn.)

A very good overview of the city of Los Angeles’ efforts to restore its namesake river. The plan is rather simple: build several regional parks along the river, which in turn could attract private residential and commercial development. My two cents: it’s worked elsewhere, it could work here and there’s plenty of room for development. The river is already a rail corridor and to some degree a bike corridor. The ingredients are there. Someone just has to figure out how to bake the pie.

Retrofitting the suburbs to increase walking (Access)

This study by UC Irvine is a dense read but its conclusions are interesting: that the single-biggest factor in getting people to walk to South Bay commercial centers was the number of businesses per acre. That’s not exactly shocking, but the study also suggests that this kind of business density needs a lot of economic support — more than the number of walkers can spend. In other words, these kind of business districts need to be accessible to motorists in order to survive — or they need to be highly-accessible to transit and other transpo modes people will actually use.

In plain English: before blokes like me suggest ripping out all the parking along South Lake Avenue in Pasadena — my local commercial district — I should consider that without the parking, many of the businesses along Lake may vanish.

Transportation headlines, Wednesday, Jan. 11

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Here is a look at some of the transportation headlines gathered by us and the Metro Library. The full list of headlines is posted on the library’s blog.

R 2 Me Too (City Watch)

Public transit supporters in Los Angeles County are excited about Assemblyman Mike Feuer’s proposal to fast-track the transit, and freeway, projects made possible by Measure R by extending the tax past its 2039 expiration date. Feuer, who carried Measure R through Sacramento, before helping win county voter support for R in 2008, realizes that Washington and Sacramento may not be ready or able to offer the loans needed to make 30/10 (America Fast Forward) happen.

BART Gets Help Coming to the Silicon Valley (San Francisco Examiner)

BART, the Bay Area’s ever expanding regional transit system, is on track to bring passengers to the Silicon Valley by 2016 following the Federal Transit Administration’s recommendation yesterday that $900 million in funding be made available for a further extension of BART. The new money would add two stations and extend the tracks 10 miles through Milpitas and down to the northern outskirts of San Jose. Congress must approve the plan, but with the Silicon Valley still the country’s leading economic and intellectual property engine backers say that will happen. The added funds will allow construction on the $2.3-billion project to begin in the spring.

Even New York’s Subways Needs to Shut Down Sometime (New York Times)

In August. in advance of a powerful tropical storm, New York shuttered its entire subway system for the first since its opening in 1904. This week, lightning stuck again when New York shut down service on the city’s workhorse Lexington Avenue train lines from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. for overdue repairs on the tracks. For late night and early morning commuters and partygoers this means finding alternative routes between midtown Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn for four nights in an effort by the transit agency to make up for years of deferred maintenance and repairs.

DC Metro’s Planned Fare Hikes Not Popular With Riders (Washington Post)

Washington Metro customers are grumbling about planned fare increases intended to help fill a $116-million shortfall in Metro’s $1.6 billion budget and would also let the agency hire an additional 1,000 workers. The unpopular fare hikes would impact almost all areas, including bus and rail fares, parking rates and the transit agency’s service for the disabled.

 

Transportation headlines, Tuesday, Jan. 10

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Here is a look at some of the transportation headlines gathered by us and the Metro Library. The full list of headlines is posted on the library’s blog. 
 
 
Bullet train should not take Grapevine route (Mountain Enterprise)  
 
California High-Speed Rail Authority staff are recommending that the bullet train follow a route through the Antelope Valley instead of trying to scale (or descend) a route along the Grapevine parallel to the 5 freeway. This isn’t a huge shock — in Los Angeles County, there’s more support for the Antelope Valley route. That includes an endorsement from the Metro Board of Directors.  
 
One Santa Fe set for groundbreaking (Downtown News)  
 
After years of planning, the 438-unit residential building adjacent to Metro’s Red/Purple Line yards in downtown L.A. is finally set to break ground. The obstacle was securing financing. The project sits on land leased from Metro and could be a boon for the eastern part of the Arts District, which IMO could use a few more pedestrians wandering about.  
 
Why downtown L.A. isn’t a beach town (KCET)  
 
Fun post that holds that Spanish law from the 1500s dictated that new settlements be located 20 miles inland near fresh water and a labor source (i.e. Native Americans). Many more details about how downtown Los Angeles came to be located where it is — not where it should have been (Long Beach!).  

Transportation headlines, Monday, Jan. 9

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Here is a look at some of the transportation headlines gathered by us and the Metro Library. The full list of headlines is posted on the library’s blog.

Hit the brakes on high-speed rail (L.A. Times)

Columnist George Skelton criticizes Gov. Jerry Brown for proposing to cut services while putting aside some money to continue with the state’s bullet train project — he thinks a time-out is needed to reassess the project. Skelton also notes that Brown’s office is still analyzing the latest business plan from the California High-Speed Rail Authority before deciding whether to sell $2.7 billion in bonds to help fund the building 130 miles of track in the San Joaquin Valley.

Subversive bicycle photos from Los Angeles (Cophenhagenize)

Nice gallery of historic photos showing that bikes played a prominent role in the L.A. transportation scene in the city’s early days.

Public support for climate and energy policies (Yale)

Interesting poll by Yale on American’s attitudes toward climate change and doing something about it. Bottom line: 70 percent of Americans believe global warming should be a “high” or “medium” concern for the President and Congress. There appears to be support for clean energy policy from both major political parties. Yet, Andrew Revkin notes in the New York Times’ Dot Earth blog that denying global warming appears to now be a litmus test in the Republican party.

Why is Twitter so popular with transportation communicators (Talking Transit)

Facebook has more users, but a recent survey found that Twitter is preferred by transportation agencies trying to reach the public. Why? The blog guesses that Twitter is popular with cell phones who like to tweet and read tweets when out and about and moving around — making them naturally interested in transportation.

Transportation headlines, Friday, Jan. 6

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Here is a look at some of the transportation headlines gathered by us and the Metro Library. The full list of headlines is posted on the library’s blog.

The above video is billed as two people meeting on a New York subway train — one with a ukelele, the other with drums. Whether strangers or not, they’re pretty good.

L.A. County voters may be asked to extend transit tax (L.A. Times)

As we posted yesterday, a bill has been introduced in the state Assembly that would allow L.A. County voters to go to the polls to decide to extend the half-cent Measure R sales tax increase past mid-2039. The money would be used to accelerate the construction of Measure R projects. The news arrived on the same day that Gov. Jerry Brown released his budget — it’s his plan to ask voters in November to increase the sales tax by a half-cent across the state. It will be up to the Metro Board of Directors to decide to go to voters with the Measure R extension. I’m guessing the big questions will be how long to extend the tax and what exactly it would pay for.

Paved, but still alive (New York Times)

An upcoming study looks at the amount of parking in the U.S. and the numbers are scary. In some areas, parking lots amount to a third of the land area. Houston may have 30 parking spaces per resident. As for the U.S., one estimate has the country with 500 million parking spaces — in other words, Rhode Island and Delaware combined.

What to do with all that space? Excerpt:

For big cities like New York it is high time to abandon outmoded zoning codes from the auto-boom days requiring specific ratios of parking spaces per housing unit, or per square foot of retail space.

These rules about minimum parking spaces have driven up the costs of apartments for developers and residents, damaged the environment, diverted money that could have gone to mass transit and created a government-mandated cityscape that’s largely unused. We keep adding to the glut of parking lots.

Crain’s recently reported on the largely empty garages at new buildings like Avalon Fort Greene, a 42-story luxury tower near downtown Brooklyn, and 80 DeKalb Avenue, up the block, both well occupied, both of which built hundreds of parking spaces to woo tenants. Garages near Yankee Stadium, built over the objections of Bronx neighbors appalled at losing parkland for yet more parking lots, turn out never to be more than 60 percent full, even on game days.

The city has lost public space, the developers have lost a fortune.

Freakanomics quorum: can Amtrak ever be profitable? (Freakanomics)

Interesting post with several writers answering the question. The prevailing view is that it Amtrak won’t be in the black any time soon; the bigger question is whether it’s such a terrible thing that the federal government continues to subsidize the rail carrier. My own two cents: 1) it’s a pretty small subsidy compared to other federal expenses, and; 2) I think there are some long-haul routes that are so slow that it’s hard to justify subsidizing them without any real talk about improving them.

 

Transportation headlines, Thursday, Jan. 5

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Here is a look at some of the transportation headlines gathered by us and the Metro Library. The full list of headlines is posted on the library’s blog.

One of the entrances to the now-gone Broadway tunnel in downtown L.A. Photo by Metro Library and Transportation Archive.

The lost tunnels of L.A. (KCET SoCal Focus)

Great article on the many tunnels that once (and still) burrowed under hills around downtown L.A. Example: Broadway between Temple and Sunset once traveled in a tunnel under Fort Moore Hill. But construction of the 101 freeway reduced the Hill to a stump and that section of Broadway is now a freeway overpass. There’s also some intererestingness involving the old Pacific Electric tunnel.

Is it time for Metro Rail to get a facelift? (L.A. Streetsblog)

Not if it’s going to look like this, IMO. Click above to see fine example of Photoshop horribleness.

After three decades, federal tax credit for ethanol expires (New York Times)

Perhaps the headline should read “after three decades and $20 billion dollars…” About 40 percent of the nation’s corn crop is used to produce ethanol and growers didn’t put up much of a fuss, some saying they’ll still make plenty of money without the subsidy. Ethanol’s chief advantage is it comes from a renewable source but enviros have long complained that producing it requires more fuel than it saves.

Development at Universal City is shelved (Daily News)

The giant studio and office complex that NBC wanted to build atop the Universal City Red Line station has been put aside due to the sour economy. The developer, Thomas Properties, and NBC blame market conditions. It would have been a lot of jobs right on top of the region’s heaviest used transit line.

Ideas for downtown: redesign 888 International Tower Plaza into a pedestrian-friendly open space (Brigham Yen)

Brigham uses his camera to document a rather dreary plaza and how it could be spruced up into something that might actually attract human beings.

 

Transportation headlines, Wednesday, January 4

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Here is a look at some of the transportation headlines gathered by us and the Metro Library. The full list of headlines is posted on the library’s blog.

The problem with naming transit stations (The Atlantic Cities)

As transit agency budgets have been squeezed by the recession, many have considered selling transit station naming rights to corporations in exchange for infusions of cash. Eric Jaffe notes that the most frequent objection to this tack centers on its “crass commercialism,” but there are bigger reasons not to like it, he says. Namely, transit station names serve a core navigational function: telling riders where they are, and “AT&T Station” in Philadelphia, for example, fails to do that.

Cycle like the Danes to cut carbon emissions, says study (The Guardian)

The European Cycling Federation has finished Europe’s first comprehensive study of the environmental benefits of cycling and the results are a big feather in the cap of the Danish. If all Europeans were to cycle the amount of the average Dane — that’s 600 miles per year — the continent could achieve as much as a quarter of the carbon reductions its seeking from the transportation sector.

Rust Belt cities: to avoid more shrinkage, protect & strengthen the core (NRDC Switchboard)

Writer Kaid Benfield digs into an interesting study [PDF] from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland that considers the importance of “a dense urban core…to the overall strength of a metro region.” Their findings? Regions that continued to grow over the last decade maintained strong downtowns, even as their suburbs grew — think Chicago and Boston. In contrast, those regions that declined overall — think Cleveland, Detroit and Buffalo — saw their central city populations decline concurrent with the rise of their hinterlands.

Transportation headlines, Tuesday, Jan. 3

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The Tournament of Roses parade on Monday brought big crowds, as usual, to Pasadena and the Metro Gold Line. Photo by Steve Hymon/Metro.

Wisconsin fans used the Gold Line to reach the big game Monday. Photo by Fernando Andres Di Zitti/Metro.

 

Here is a look at some of the transportation headlines gathered by us and the Metro Library.  The full list of headlines is posted on the library’s blog.

Pretax commuter benefits slashed by Congress (San Francisco Chronicle)

Congress went home for the holidays and couldn’t be bothered to extend a tax benefit that allowed commuters to take $230 from their paychecks tax-free each month to pay for transit passes. That amount now drops to $125 per month, the amount it was prior to 2009 when it was raised as part of the federal stimulus bill. Meanwhile, Congress allowed the tax benefit for commuters paying to park to rise slightly to $240 per month.

The recession squeeze on buses and trains (New York Times)

This opinion piece neatly sums up the conundrum facing transit agencies across the country: even as ridership has risen in recent years, funding has been in short supply — forcing agencies to cut service and/or raise fares. Excerpt:

The problem is, financing for mass transit has not kept pace as cash-strapped state and local governments limit their support. The federal government, which provides only about 17 percent of financing for transit systems, should be doing a lot more, particularly since nearly 60 percent of rides are related to work, with commuters from every income level.

Of the 18.4 cents per gallon federal gas tax, only 2.86 cents goes to public transit and almost all of the rest is reserved for highways. Although Congress has increased transit support in recent years, it is still too stingy to maintain stable services in many areas. The Federal Transit Administration has estimated that to bring all of the nation’s networks up to good repair — not expanding them, but mostly fixing what’s already there — would take more than $78 billion.

Check out the accompanying chart that shows transit trips have outpaced the number of miles that Americans are driving.

Dry weather allows Yosemite to re-open Tioga Pass (Examiner)

The weather is just plain freaky as of late. The last two winters in the Sierra brought big snows. But December 2011 was abnormally dry and Yosemite National Park took the rare step of re-opening Tioga Pass Road on Dec. 19. That has brought ice skaters to beautiful Tenaya Lake, which is usually off-limits until the road opens in late spring or early summer. Check out the video: