Have a transportation-related article you think should be included in headlines? Drop me an email! And don’t forget, Metro is on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Pick your social media poison!

ART OF TRANSIT: Great pic from our always-lively Instagram feed.

Traffic fears guide Bergamot development debate (Santa Monica Daily Press) 

Planning commissioners take a look at the proposed Hines development — 471 residences, 374,000 square feet of office space, 14,000 square feet of retail — and debate whether that mix is right. Some commissioners fear too little housing and too much office space will just exacerbate an existing problem: too many people commuting into Santa Monica to work because they can’t afford to live there.

The Expo Line will have a station right across the street so the good news is residents or workers will have access to transit. Perhaps the real debate here should be this: what are other cities and Santa Monica doing about putting more of everything near other future and existing Expo Line stations?

Tar pits’ microfossils stir big interest from Page Museum scientists (L.A. Times) 

The Harlan’s Ground Sloth was one of the so-called megafauna that lived in L.A. during the Pleistocene. Scientists are still piecing together the smaller members of the ecosystem that thrived here more than 11,000 years ago. Drawing: Page Museum.

Very interesting. These small fossils help show the insect and other small critters and climate– i.e. lizards — during the Pleistocene Epoch ecosystem in the area around the Tar Pits. Although not mentioned, it is going to be very interesting to see what kind of fossils turn up during tunneling and excavation for the Purple Line Extension, which will have a station just west of the Tar Pits.

Urban surgery: how Wilshire Boulevard was extended into downtown L.A. (KCET)

Fascinating! Once upon a time — that time being the 1920s — Wilshire Boulevard only existed west of MacArthur Park. City officials then decided it really need to run into downtown and spent a lot of money (at least for those days) demolishing buildings between Figueroa and Grand in downtown proper and along the course of Orange Street between Fig and the park. And when money supplies went south, the city then built Wilshire across the park’s lake on a causeway. It took many years for lots along the street to fill, reports KCET, perhaps explaining why Wilshire feels so vigorous west of the park and so…kind of lacking in the area between the park and the 110 freeway overpass.