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.

The Portland Street in downtown Portland. Photo by Neighborhoods.org, via Flickr creative commons.

Downtown voters vote ‘yes’ for special tax to fund streetcar (blogdowntown) 

Seventy-three percent said ‘yes’ to creating a new tax district in downtown Los Angeles to raise at $62.5 million to $85 million to help fund a streetcar. The local funds are needed to attract federal grants that will be required to build the $125-million project. Proponents have argued that the streetcar will bring new development to downtown — the rails are a very visible infrastructure improvement and the streetcar is basically a pedestrian-enhancer. Some critics have said the benefits are being oversold. I don’t think a streetcar is a panacea for downtown; I do think that all things considered it will be a big plus.

It’s official, 1st Street bike lane will lose some of its buffer (L.A. Streetsblog) 

I think most reasonable people can agree there’s no shortage of parking for police vehicles near the stil relatively new LAPD headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. But police cars have persistently parked in the bike lane on 1st Street anyway to be closer to the building’s entrance and have now come up with a novel solution to deal with complaints from cyclists: rearrange the bike lane so that police cars get to park next to the curb and bikes have to wedge themselves between the special police parking lane and vehicle traffic on 1st Street. Really?

Will hitching posts make Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park more beautiful? (The Eastsider L.A.) 

The decorative bollards are fine. Maybe putting them on the sidewalk in front of a gas station will give the corner of Sunset and Alvarado a little more class. As far as making Sunset Boulevard shine through this area, I think a street median is what’s most needed. Oh — and lose the strip malls.

Muni plan to appease North Beach (San Francisco Chronicle) 

The Central Subway project will extend one of the Muni lines into Chinatown. Now there’s talk of extending the line further — all the way to the popular North Beach area — in order to find a better place to dig a hole to get the tunnel boring machine out of the ground. A train station near Tommaso’s sounds good to me.