For Torrance light rail extension, Metro board sided with Lawndale nimbys, approved expensive difficult alternative alignment not recommended by staff. Already-delayed Torrance rail will be further delayed.

L.A. Metro, the main transit operator for Los Angeles, just voted to oppose SB 79, a law legalizing the construction of housing near stations. You can't make this stuff up. Legislators should remember this the next time they come to Sacramento begging for more money. laist.com/news/housing...

Metro presentation at SCAG this week teases major expansion of automated bus lane enforcement (!). Metro plans to use on-bus AI cameras on all bus lanes. On-bus cameras to go from 100 Metro buses to about 400. Capital cost will be included in Metro FY26-27 budget.

FTA could help but really important to have an internal engineering/planning team that is directing and interrogating what Program Management consultants are producing. And re-visiting existing standards to validate them.

Why @metrolosangeles.bsky.social has trouble doing things that help people outside of cars michaelschneider.medium.com/why-metro-ha...

It's because of the overlay of design requirements such as noise barriers, larger safety coefficients for structures (everything is bulkier), more clearances (taller viaducts), evacuation walkways etc. And the incapacity to do integrated design, so it's just a clumsy patchwork.

Read @marvistavoice.bsky.social breakdown of Metro push to gut state law (SB79) that facilitates housing near transit stations marvistavoice.org/metro-seeks-...

A few observations - Many of these places are kind of dead, with vacant storefronts because there are big box stores nearby that create competition - The treatment of the street could be much more pedestrian-friendly, which would help businesses thrive - These should be mixed use with housing

Every Southern California suburb has a "main street" like this, with 1-story commercial buildings facing the sidewalk. When considering that they are in the suburbs, is this good or bad urbanism?

I have come to believe that at least every 150 years or so the government needs to be completely redone, else it just becomes too entrenched in tradition to really do anything. And it makes all sorts of silly things mandatory. Line Americans having rights based on someone’s name

Interesting wikipedia picture with painted curb extensions - most people aren'y behaving as if the painted area is intended for their use upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...

Some opposition is now couched in SB79 - but these folks already were anti-transit, long before SB79. Major Metro lines always got/get flack from nativist nimbys. Examples: Beverly Hills sued the f*** out of Metro to kill the subway. Suburban Westsiders fought Expo. It's not SB79, Jake.

Metro staff say they are pushing for several changes to SB79 - including entirely exempting L.A. County from SB79 because it's not needed because L.A. is already doing the transit thing so well! [That's *not* a quote, but that's more-or-less the gist of what Metro legislative staff said]

He’s baaaack And big mad!!

it's absolute redline that dems must not agree to anymore DHS funding to keep the government open are they considering this???

I don't like to cuss on this platform, but this absolutely and unequivocally fucks. UCLA is going to get a subway station and all the geriatric segregationists of Bel Air, including Ticketmaster's own Fred Rosen, can die mad.

WE WON BITCHES

At this point *whatever you want to do* -- in education, mass transit, roads, whatever -- is going to need more focus on cost control than we've had over the past 20 years.

If you’re interested in geology and everything downstream of that (mountains, deserts, hiking, skiing, climate) head on over to @transversedreams.bsky.social Been trying to post more but there doesn’t seem to be a big geology/weather community here like there was on twitter

The way this headline is phrased makes it sound like the bear has invoked squatters rights and the guy is trying to take him to court

Generally positive sign: saw a lot of California flags on houses in LA city. Imo we should do more to cultivate a Californian identity

The problem is pretty unique to this location and dealing with the Army Corps of Engineers. The path needs to run in the channel bc the surrounding parcels and streets would make running on the edges a disaster. The ACoE is very protective of the channel capacity making interventions difficult.

It's been a very long complicated process because it's involved a land swap with the UN and the UN's property is sovereign international territory

I don't like this type of curb ramp design either. But why do we end up with ones that look like this? Some aspects of curb ramp design:

This is the classic California public sector design trap: set a ridiculously high standard for something (in this case extremely low slope for wheelchairs) that requires ridiculously expensive designs that actually are actually worse for the people that standard was intended to help.

In Santa Monica, the FPPC has disqualified pro-housing Councilmember Jesse Zwick from all future housing votes. They said that because he works for a housing non-profit, he’s “conflicted” and must recuse. Pretty absurd. The NIMBY deep state strikes again. www.smdp.com/state-regula...

Ok, here's my top 5 TSP operations in Madison. Notes on each to come starting with #5 5. Peer-to-Peer (Univ. Ave.) 4. East Washington & North 3. East Washington & Mendota 2. Cap City Square Coordination 1. Mineral Point & Whitney Way

My issue is when this opinion - which is perfectly logical - ends up translating into law. Part of freedom is letting developers do bad designs and failing in the free market. Today's bad design is tomorrow's affordable housing.

US Army seems to have believed that urban blocks and reformed urban apartment blocks (“hof-style”) in North and Central Europe were doubled loaded corridors - most were not.

You do a good job of highlighting something that is often denied but obvious to everyone outside the discourse. People switch from riding the bus to driving because it’s faster end to end. That’s it.

An illustration of how L.A. City Public Works so-called "Large Asphalt Repair" works (or really *doesn't work*). Today Bureau of Street Services left an un-resurfaced ~4-ft-wide strip on a 30-ft-wide part of Hoover... in order to avoid triggering curb ramps for wheelchair access

Worse, they say that 5.8 lane miles of new roadway is only 0.0062% increase compared to the regional network. I think most people would assume they are speaking to the local roads around LAX 5.8 divided by 0.0062% is over 90k lane miles That's 3x all the lane miles in the City of LA!!!

I don't write in first person much at Streetsblog, but the city's so-called "large asphalt repair" really gets my goat

I think we will see a perpetual tightening of safety rules with automated cars.

I think it would be possible to write a dissertation about the diverging philosophies of traffic management between Europe (or in general Vienna convention countries) and North America, just by starting from the fact that this road sign, i.e. "priority road", does not exist in North America.

Within the course of a week, we won a major cancellation of a no-good transportation project (ONT Tesla Tunnels) and averted a no-good cancellation of a major transportation project (C/K Line to Torrance). I also don’t know how I do this. I am so far deep within the transpo advocacy world.

Following the beginning of the design process in October, a few segments within the WSCCOG bus network, where other agencies are implementing transit improvements, are recommended for removal from the project scope.

This morning, I was invited on the LAist's AirTalk with Larry Mantle where I debated Robert Gummer (Deputy Chief of Metro Security) about LA Metro's unauthorized 5-year suspension of fare enforcement. You can listen to the full segment here (segment 5): laist.com/news/remembe...

no, I don't follow your tortured Kpop Demon Hunters analogy in outlining current geopolitical tensions with China, North Korea, and Japan, actually

I think this The Point. In most of Europe the municipality is the the one body that concentrates the powers and political accountability for all these stuff, so they have a better understanding of the trade-offs and are more responsive and aware of the big picture.

I dont think we've been challenged to think about signals from a transit perspective. You have to find the handful of engineers who work on signals, have a stake in transit operations, and are willing to try new things.

The absurdity is that there is space here! But they shaped the island to provide super wide turning radiuses for left turning cars! It's just that everything in the current road design practices is engineered to make TSP or anything that is not the 3-4 phase vanilla suburban traffic cycle impossible

BSS and City Council have been promoting the “ #LargeAsphaltRepair “ crap pretty heavily since July

Residents per signalized intersection: Netherlands: 3,300 bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/t... NYC: 630 www.nyc.gov/html/dot/htm....

See, I think so many of our problems in North America re transit come down to ignoring that speed is REALLY important. I *don't* think its hard to believe that *getting places quickly* is peoples top priority! This is especially true because most people have access to a car!

Short curbs shock and disgust the humble 3 acre curb ramp enthusiast (San Diego)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of... Found this after a search bar typo. Shockingly long; notes of "recordkeeping" and "globalized maritime trade networks" wafting off

A clarification on this week's #MeasureHLA hearings. A few people were wondering why I appealed "good" projects: Hollywood Blvd protected bike lanes, Roscoe bus lanes, San Vicente & Mission Rd bike lanes, etc. Well... it's complicated...

For all the discourse over Bay Area inequality, LA is on a totally different level