Streetcars, wayward luggage and trucking: Ramping up, August 15

Gripped by streetcar fever?

More than 40 cities are thinking about building streetcars to help people get around or revive floundering downtowns, reported the NYT yesterday. Among those are downtown L.A. and Cincinnati. How much does anyone want to bet that Cincy (pop. 332,000) will revive the streetcar before L.A. (pop. 4 million)?

The Cincinnati streetcar website links to another website that has three pages of photos of old streetcar tracks that remain around town or still poke up out of the asphalt. This is what's great about the Internet: you can share your obsession with the world.

As for the L.A. proposal,  Eric Richardson at blogdowntown writes about Thursday's meeting of downtown stakeholders who are exploring the idea here. Much of the discussion involved trying to find the best way to integrate streetcars with traffic on Broadway.

I just got back from Portland, the city that in 2001 brought back streetcars and helped start the current streetcar craze. I posted yesterday about the streetcars there and other transportation issues in Portland. The above photo shows the St. Charles line in New Orleans.

Number of people flying increases

People may be driving less, but they're flying more -- about .1% more in the first five months of 2008 compared with last year, according to the federal Bureau of Travel Statistics. Overall, 310.4 million took to the skies through May of this year.

As for the photo, I couldn't resist. It was taken Tuesday in Brussels, where striking workers led to a luggage meltdown at the local airport.

Everyone has an opinion

In case you missed it, Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina penned an opinion piece in yesterday's paper skewering the effort to raise the sales tax by a half-cent to pay for more transit projects.

"The measure was created by a few, primarily to benefit a few communities, when all Los Angeles County residents will be asked to pony up a higher sales tax every time they make a purchase," she wrote.

High-Speed Rail mess

I recommend reading this piece from The Times' Opinion page from the other day. It looks at the mess over which high-speed rail bond may be on the ballot, the original proposal or the one tweaked by the State Legislature. Bottom line: If you want to make something important as confusing as humanly possible, send it to Sacramento.

Trucking, the blog

I stumbled across this blog called Adventures in Trucking the other day and found some great posts from the blog's hosts, Wayne and Cindy. Naturally, they're truckers. Here's one recent entry from Wayne, inspired by a drive in California:

"I’m getting to really hate the traffic. The days of letting your mind wonder and enjoying the drive are pretty much over everywhere except the most remote areas of the country. The simple art of merging is too much of a concept for most people. If I let you on, get out of the way so I can move back over and not get stuck in the left lane. I’ve given up, unless the left lane is completely open and no one is around, I'll just stay in the right lane and force them to either speed up (the smart ones) or slow down and act like I’ve run them off the road, (the stupid ones)."

-- Steve Hymon

Streetcar photo: Ann Heisenfelt / Associated Press

Luggage photo: Yves Logghe / Associated Press

Comments

[BOB2]

RE: AB 3034 it’s been a bad year for good transportation legislation in Sacramento. About the only bright spot would be Lowenthal’s container fee bill, which, if it survives a likely court challenge, would levy a container fee which would fund the mitigation of congestion impacts from Ports, including railroad grade separation projects, for Cities cut in two by the growth in train traffic, and projects to reduce truck congestion on our highways.

A Jones bill to allow the use of Mello Roos financing which could harness some of the value added by transit oriented development to be used to actually build and finance the transit died. SB 1350 (Cedillo) which would have allowed the development of public-private franchise agreements to have private investors design, build, and operate at tolled tunnel for long stalled the 710 Gap under South Pasadena was killed by the Caltrans unions. SB-53 (Ducheny) which would consolidate the myriad of State rail programs from the controversial California High Speed Rail Authority, to Caltrans successful but often orphaned intercity program under a responsible and accountable Department of Rail, also died.

Next year, with new leadership from Mike Eng and Karen Bass, and some continuity in the Senate, without the dubious leadership of Don Perata, there is some opportunity to resurrect these measures. But while the Times laments over the fate of AB 3034, remember this too was held hostage with amendments that effectively shafted Southern California, and was significantly modified to make it palatable. And, while voters plagued with paying $4.50 for gas may vote for this, the track record of the politically dubious CHSRA still begs for fundamental reform in how we plan and build a rail system that isn’t a political trough and meets California’s needs.

Then, of course, there’s the flea circus over the MTA sales tax. The Governor’s “temporary” one cent sales tax increase, to balance the State budget, will probably doom this and other sales tax reauthorization measures around the State, even if it gets to the ballot, which daily looks more unlikely with every amendment. The failure to develop effective partnerships early on is hopefully a lesson learned, if this has to be done again in two years (and done right?).

And, finally, speaking of the State budget, there will be the, by now “annual”, raid on “voter protected” transportation funds. The legislature and the Governor are expected to borrow (steal?) a new record amount between $2-$3 billion dollars from transportation accounts which fund buses , local streets, and highway projects, to “balance” the State budget. This is a new record, on top of the nearly $5.3 billion already “borrowed” and not repaid (enough to build the entire “subway to the sea” just in State IOU’s?).

[Reddoch]

Dallas also has a very nice street car that runs north of downtown. It is very scenic and nice.

[Damon]

Santa Ana is also trying to get a streetcar built that would go between the train station and Garden Grove, through downtown. We'll see if it follow the same fate as the CenterLine.

[Dana Gabbard]

Gloria Molina is a ungrateful, witless gasbag. I hope as this measure steamrollers to victory that the contrarians left in its dust take a hit on their credibility. And I'll never vote for her again!

I have to agree with the Times editorial on high speed rail that the Legislature is a dysfunctional mess. One start to fix things would be to pass Proposition 11 on the Nov. ballot, giving an indepedent commission not elected officials the power to redraw districts after the next census. And it must be a good idea because most electeds from both partys hate it.

http://ag.ca.gov/cms_pdfs/initiatives/i746_07-0077_Initiative.pdf