Here’s the news release from the Urban Land Institute’s Los Angeles chapter, which is hosting the event:
Tag Archives: transit oriented development
Transportation headlines, Wednesday, May 9
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 Headlines blog, which you can also access via email subscription or RSS feed.
Kids love Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus. Photo by Joel Epstein/Metro
A first look at the Orange Line extension from Canoga to Chatsworth (Los Angeles Streetsblog)
Streetsblog’s Damien Newton takes a ride on the soon-to-open Metro Orange Line Extension. Newton’s article features a nice video of the trip he took along with a group of Brazilian journalists touring and reporting on American bus rapid transit. The Metro project, ahead of schedule and under budget, is expected to open in June.
Grimy Centinela/Pico corner getting Expo-adjacent apartments (Curbed LA)
Transportation reporter Neal Broverman writes that “Metro might want to take a bow when West LA’s latest mixed-use project comes online.” The 95-unit ADC Realty Group development is being built on what is currently the home of a Rent-a-Wreck location. The $11.15-million project is only three blocks away from the planned Metro Expo Line station at Olympic Blvd and Bundy Drive in gridlocked West Los Angeles.
Recap of other Metro Board actions taken today
Here are some other actions taken by the Metro Board of Directors at this morning’s meeting:
•(Item 31) The Board approved a motion by Metro Board Chair and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to study and recommend a variety of improvements to Metro Rail and busway stations, including:
1. Find ways to upgrade access to Metro stations through better signage, crosswalks, sidewalks, bike signals, bike parking and more streetscape amenities.
2. Evaluate and suggest upgrades to security systems for park-and-ride lots used by Metro patrons.
3. Evaluate options for reducing noise at Green Line stations in the median of the 105 freeway.
Transportation headlines, Friday, Feb. 3
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 Headlines blog, which you can also access via email subscription or RSS feed.
Culver City Council acts fast on transit-oriented development site (Los Angeles Wave)
In the wake of the dissolution of redevelopment agencies statewide, Culver City moved quickly to make sure it could still convert an Expo-adjacent property into transit-oriented development. After soliciting proposals from a half-dozen developers, the city elected to go with Lowe Enterprises, which offered to purchase the five-acre property for $23 million and share some profits with the city. According to a letter sent out to developers, the project must “include a mix of housing, office, retail and restaurant use surrounding a large central open space amenity and connect seamlessly with the new [Culver City Expo Line] station.” Also of note: Lowe is proposing to build 1,500 parking spaces, which seems like way too much for a TOD.
California lawmakers keep school buses rolling (L.A. Times)
Gov. Jerry Brown had effectively eliminated nearly $250 million in state support for school bus operations as of January in order to close an emerging state budget gap. But the state legislature has stepped in and restored funding in response to an outcry from educators and families. The Times notes that this is particularly significant for small and rural school districts for which the state funding was a lifeline connecting students to their schools.
Editorial: In the House, a transportation train wreck (L.A. Times)
As we mentioned in yesterday’s legislative alert, the proposed federal transportation bill in the House of Representatives could critically undermine federal support for public transit. That’s how the L.A. Times editorial board sees it too, and they’re having none of it. Here’s a particularly strongly-worded part:
…[the bill] is less a serious policy document than a wish list for oil lobbyists, and its funding proposals are so radical that they have been decried even by such conservative watchdogs as the Reason Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Taxpayers for Common Sense.
A health promoting L.A.
CicLAvia - October 2011 (Photo Credit: Joel Epstein)
An article by Jane Brody in Monday’s New York Times explores how some developers, urban planners and public health researchers are taking a different view of sprawl versus thoughtful urban infill development. Brody cites the work of UCLA researchers and others suggesting that in creating car-centric communities we may be fostering obesity, poor health, social isolation, excessive stress and depression.
Researchers with UCLA’s Designing Healthy Communities program believe that, if built right, cities can help develop and foster our mental and physical fitness. Take for example the statistic that in 1974, 66 percent of all children walked or biked to school versus 13 percent in 2000. Explains the program director, “People who walk more weigh less and live longer… People who are fit live longer. People who have friends and remain socially active live longer.”
Rates of obesity and diabetes in L.A. County are nothing to be proud of while the asthma rates among children living near LA’s freeways and industrial areas, often one and the same, remain considerably higher than those in most rural and suburban areas.
The UCLA researchers support their call for a new, healthier urbanism by pointing to the usual illustrations of forward thinking and health promoting urban planning including New York City’s aggressive push to expand its miles of bike lanes and improve the public’s access to parks, and Copenhagen’s transformation in a generation into a more livable and extremely bike-friendly city. They also point to promising efforts, which Brody describes in her piece, including:
- Metropolitan Atlanta which plans “to create an urban paradise from an abandoned railroad corridor over the next two decades, with light rail and 22 miles of walking and biking trails;”
- Lakewood, Colorado where ”an abandoned shopping mall… was converted into housing, businesses and play areas;”
- Syracuse, New York which “is converting an old saltworks district into a mixed-income, energy-smart housing and business area, giving residents easy access to work and recreation;” and
- Elgin, Illinois “where an island park was created in the middle of the rejuvenated Fox River and a former Superfund site known as auto dealers’ row is now Festival Park… A Bikeway Master Plan will eventually connect all the neighborhoods, and easy access to the river has spurred investment.”
L.A. has similar “successes” to point to including CicLAvia, new rail and bus stations and transit-oriented development. But if we want to rebuild the city as envisioned by the UCLA program, it may not be enough to say urban living is better with these amenities. The improvements will need to be demonstrated through quantifiable research. The Designing Healthy Communities program which aims to offer best practice models to improve public health by re-designing and restoring the built environment is very much a companion piece to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s Project RENEW with its focus on policy, systems, and environmental change to improve nutrition, increase physical activity, and reduce obesity. The UCLA researchers’ findings and recommendations, if supported by the data, are an advertisement for transit, transit-oriented development and the complete streets principals that encourage walking and biking rather than driving. Brody’s article and the UCLA research, even as a work in progress, are worth a read and consideration by the region’s policymakers and planners.
Urban Land Institute advisory panel shares vision for Union Station area
A crack team of urban design and development experts from the Urban Land Institute (ULI) descended on Los Angeles last week to help Metro and the city of L.A. develop its vision for the area surrounding Union Station. After several packed days of interviews and site visits, the panel presented its findings this morning to a crowd of community members, local elected officials and planners who gathered at the Tateuchi Democracy Forum in Little Tokyo.
Attentive readers will recall that Metro bought Union Station earlier this year, along with the rights to build roughly six million square feet of development around Southern California’s largest transit hub. Since then, Metro has begun soliciting concepts from a number of design firms for a master plan for the Union Station property itself.
The ULI panel’s job, then, was to help Metro envision how a present and future Union Station can better integrate with the surrounding areas of Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Olvera Street, the Arts District, the Civic Center and the Los Angeles River.
Each of the panelists presented different components of the vision, so rather than summarize what each said, here’s a distillation of some of the key points, and hopefully we can post the PowerPoint presentation later on:
Continue reading
What’s happening at other transit agencies?
The Tappan Zee Bridge carries Interstate 87 over the Hudson river. Image via flickr user waywuwei.
Good question! This weekly post features news from other transit agencies and planners from around the world. Did we miss a good story? Let us know in the comments.
Tappan Zee Bridge plan a dud without public transportation
The decade-long process of deciding how to replace New York’s Tappan Zee Bridge has been long and arduous one, so much so that Kate Slevin called it “a civics lesson in how not to do a transportation project,” in an editorial for the Lower Hudson Valley Journal News. The public consensus seemed to be that any replacement should have a transit component, and that bus-rapid transit would suffice until funding could be amassed for a rail line. It appears, however, that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to fast-track a proposal with no transit option, despite projections that the BRT system would have roughly 50,000 riders each day.
Kudos to Kazakhstan
The first subway in the central Asian republic opened last week in the country’s largest city, Almaty. Planning for the 5.2-mile line began in 1988, the Associated Press reports, before the fall of the Soviet Union severely disrupted the project. President Nursultan Nazarbayev was on hand with thousands of residents for the opening ceremony.
Transit-oriented development along the Gold Line — present and future
Very interesting video released yesterday by the Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority on new development along the downtown L.A.-to-Pasadena Gold Line, which has attracted its share of new residential development — particularly in South Pasadena and Pasadena.
As the video shows, cities along the 13-mile route of the Foothill Extension have plans of their own to create development. There’s undoubtedly space for it and many of the plans have been on the books for years — the reason the cities have been pushing so hard to get the project built.
The Foothill Extension, funded by Measure R, is now under construction and scheduled for completion in 2015. The Construction Authority yesterday gave the contractor building the main part of the line an interim notice to proceed on design and pre-construction activities.
Urban Land Institute looking for a few good TODs
The ULI is starting to plan for next year’s conference on transit-oriented development in the Los Angeles region. It’s a good and timely topic, given that transit is expanding in the county — thanks to Measure R — and there are still many, many opportunities to put more housing development near transit.
Here’s the flyer from ULI:
Click above for a larger image.
The second page of the flyer is after the jump.
Newhall Ranch’s first phase approved
The location of Newhall Ranch is noted by the dark blue pin. The three light blue pins show area Metrolink stations. Click above for a larger image.
When I moved to the Los Angeles area in 1994, proposed big residential developments were in the news all the time — and almost always very controversial because of their potential traffic impacts.
After the 2008 real estate bust, a lot of those controversies have gone away. Developers don’t have the money to build the homes, nor do people have the dollars to buy them.
On Tuesday, however, the first phase of the Newhall Ranch project — just outside Santa Clarita — got a preliminary approval from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Here’s the Daily News story. The Landmark Village phase will have 1,174 condos and 270 single-family homes, built between Highway 126 and the Santa Clara River.
The entire Newhall Ranch area will cover about 12,000 acres along Highway 126 — it’s just west of Magic Mountain. If the entire development is approved and built, it will have nearly 21,000 homes, according to the Newhall Ranch website. The development is intended to be a series of smaller “villages” — in the developer’s words.