Around the transpo-sphere, Sunday edition

Continuing this weekend's tour around transportation-related issues....

Sen. John McCain has said that Teddy Roosevelt is his kind of Republican president, in part because of Roosevelt's record on conservation. High Country News, the environmental newspaper, takes a look at McCain's record and finds early promise in McCain's legislative record when it comes to the environment, but little to praise of late, and his score from the League of Conservation Voters is a 24 out of 100. HCN notes that McCain deserves credit for helping two wilderness bills through Congress that helped set aside thousands of acres in Arizona for roads and other threats and he helped reduce flyovers of tourist aircraft from popular trails in the Grand Canyon (at right), but he's taken to task for not curbing uranium mining and helping protect a threatened river. One issue the article largely skirts is that McCain has -- at least in his public statements -- taken climate change more seriously than many of his Republican counterparts in Congress. Still, the article is worth reading, given that McCain represents a Western state with a diverse geography and vast public lands, the same attributes that make the Western U.S. such a unique place.

The first presidential debate on Friday night focused on the economy and national security. The word transportation wasn't used, according to the transcript, although the word infrastructure came up once, when Sen. Barack Obama quickly mentioned the need to rebuild roads and bridges.

One of the fresher reads on the campaign comes from the Australian, an online newspaper that takes the view that both McCain and Obama are touting their fair share of bad ideas. They criticize Obama for his statements in support of ethanol -- which the paper says is basically pandering to Midwestern corn growers -- and McCain gets criticized for trying to drill the nation's way out of high oil prices.

El Paso joins the list of cities that want a streetcar, reports KVIA. It's seen as an economic development tool, officials say. L.A. is also on the list of cities suffering streetcar envy, courtesy of Portland, Ore.

The week around the transpo-sphere: tunnels, speed cameras and bike sharing

Hope you're having a good weekend, Bottleneckers. A few things that caught my eye recently...

The New Yorker had a wonderfully long story about Herrenknecht AG, the German firm that specializes in tunneling for highways, railroads and utilities. The firm is currently involved in some epic projects, including a tunnel under the Alps and some big digs in Barcelona for a subway expansion. There's also a local angle, as Herrenknecht AG dug the twin tunnels under Boyle Heights for the Gold Line expansion to the Eastside (one is shown above). Besides the engineering audacity involved in some of these projects, the article left me impressed with the willingness of some countries and cities to support infrastructure projects. Unfortunately only the abstract of the story is online at the New Yorker website, so try to beg the Sept. 15 issue off a friend.

If you're headed on a road trip to Arizona anytime soon, be warned: the state is going ahead with Gov. Janet Napolitano's plan to greatly expand the use of speed enforcement cameras. The deployment is rolling out, reports the Associated Press, and many of the cameras are installed in vehicles, so they can be moved around the state. Speed cameras have been rebuffed several times by the Legislature in California, but I suspect it's just a matter of time -- and a big enough deficit -- until someone here decides there's a mountain of revenue to be had.

Damien Newton, of Streetsblog Los Angeles, dropped by City Hall the other day to hear the City Council talk about implementing a bike sharing plan -- the kind that Councilwoman Wendy Greuel thought was neat at the Dems' convention in Denver. From the looks of things, nothing really happened other than a discussion. I covered City Hall for three years, and that's usually how it goes: pols meet, pols talk, pols adjourn meeting.

While on the subject of Mr. Newton, he did a fine post on the little-known fact that you need to license your bike to ride in both L.A. and Santa Monica -- and you can get ticketed if you don't have one. So, let me get this straight. In L.A., a city that has completely dropped the ball in so many ways when it comes to providing biking facilities, they're making people get licenses? I didn't know this and have now moved several city officials into the top 10 of my call list on Monday morning. I look forward to their explanation for this outrage.

Google Transit expanded to New York City, reports the NYT. We're still waiting for the MTA and Google to reach some type of peace accord here. Tick tick tick....

Washington state was the first to ban text messaging, but the Seattle P-I reports that just two tickets have been reported in Seattle courts. There's only been a few dozen on a statewide level. As for Californians like you and me -- the law that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed this past week takes effect Jan. 1. Put down your phones and do what we did in the old days and play with your radio instead.

--Steve Hymon

Freeway tear-downs: Ramping up, Sept. 26

Freeway tear-downs?: I usually don't like lists, but I do think this one from the Congress for the New Urbanism is pretty good -- it's their top 10 lists of freeways that should be torn down to make way for more people-friendly streets. No L.A. freeway made the cut, however.

The top five:

1. Seattle , WA . – The Alaskan Way Viaduct (shown above)
2. Bronx , NY – Sheridan Expressway
3. Buffalo, NY – The Skyway and Route 5
4. New Haven, CT – Route 34
5. New Orleans, LA – Claiborne Expressway

Metrolink: The Board of Directors meets today in L.A. to consider the long list of safety recommendations offered to them by the MTA Board. On the list are adding a second engineer, installing anti-collision technology and possibly installing seatbelts. My colleague Jeff Gottlieb is covering the meeting; a full online story on yesterday's MTA meeting is on The Times' California page.

State budget: MTA CEO Roger Snoble said at yesterday's MTA meeting that the state budget cut about $130 million from transportation programs around L.A. County. Only $130 million? The boys and girls in the Leg must have been off their game this year.

Blog schedule: I'm off today, back Monday. Light posting in the meantime.

--Steve Hymon

photo: Cheryl Hatch / AP

It's official: Measure R going to voters in L.A. County

BREAKING NEWS: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed AB 2321, the bill allowing the Measure R election to go forward on Nov. 4. That's the half-cent sales tax increase to pay for more mass transit and road improvements.

Proponents of the measure say the sales tax would raise $30 billion to $40 billion over the 30-year lifespan of the tax. To pass, the measure requires approval of two-thirds of voters. The current sales tax rate in L.A. County is 8.25%, already one of the highest in California.

Los Angeles County voters have approved two prior half-penny increases for mass transit -- one in 1980, the other in 1990. But those hikes came only after voters had rejected other mass transit taxes or bonds in the 1960s and '70s, thereby delaying the construction of more mass transit in Los Angeles and surrounding areas.

Among the big-ticket items that Measure R would fund are a subway extension, the Expo Line from Culver City to Santa Monica, an extension of the Gold Line deeper into the San Gabriel Valley and a variety of road  improvements. Fifteen percent of the revenues would be returned to cities in the county to spend on their own transit projects.

It remains to be seen how much of a political battle will develop around the sales tax. Three of five members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors -- Mike Antonovich, Don Knabe and Gloria Molina -- have come out against the tax because they believe the money will not be evenly distributed around the county. And some officials in the San Gabriel Valley are upset because they believe money designated for the Gold Line and other projects will not have enough protections and that it will later be diverted to other projects, such as the subway.

The sales tax is being pushed by, among others, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who will be overseeing the campaign and directing the fund-raising. Villaraigosa ran for mayor in 2005 on a platform of completing the subway to the sea. Measure R would set aside $4 billion for the project, enough proponents say to get the subway as far as Westwood.

Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) sponsored the state bill and helped it survive the Legislature, where it almost died on several occasions as politicians fought over what projects would be included in the bill. I just got off the phone with Feuer and he predicted success for the campaign for one simple reason: "There are very few elections," he said, "where voters have such personal daily contact with the issue."

--Steve Hymon

New view of Metrolink crash

Mike Wiederkehr, who was on the second car of Metrolink train No. 111 on Sept. 12, recently sent The Times this photo he took just moments after the crash. In an e-mail, he wrote:

"When I exited the 2nd car of the Metrolink train that wrecked, I instinctively went forward with a couple of other passengers to see what we had hit and check on the first car. When we saw the devastation of the first car and realized it was on its side we knew we could not assist those passengers, and when we realized there was a fire we decided it was best to warn everyone that could move to leave the train. I don't know why, but I took these photos with my cell phone moments after the crash. They may be the first ones taken of the wreck."

In a phone conversation with Mike a few minutes ago, he said that he sent us the photo as a public service (he's not being paid), adding: "I just want to thank all the nameless heroes I witnessed extending care to the many victims."

In our brief talk, Mike and I agreed, too, that the photo illustrates exactly why it's important right now to ask many hard questions about what precautions can or should be taken in the future to prevent another crash like this one. Mike, 51 and a resident of Thousand Oaks, says he has been riding the train for 15 years and has held a Metrolink monthly pass in every month but one in that time.

-- Steve Hymon

Photo: Mike Wiederkehr

Metrolink officials open to braking devices

I'm at the MTA Board meeting in downtown Los Angeles, where Metrolink officials are testifying about the Sept. 12 crash. Under questioning by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Metrolink Chief Executive David Solow has said the agency is open to installing automatic train stop devices that could halt trains that run red signals. It's not the state-of-the-art system being sought by federal officials, and Solow would not say if it such a system would have prevented the Chatsworth crash. But he did say that ATS systems could slow trains before accidents. More later.

--Steve Hymon

Cal State Long Beach Gets Smart

Neat announcement at Cal State Long Beach this morning: the school has arranged a deal so that students can continue to ride Long Beach Transit buses for free. All they need to do is swipe their student identification cards at the farebox.

If I'm not mistaken, there are some other area colleges offer similar deals. Students at Santa Monica College can ride Big Blue Bus line No. 11 for free and I know smart readers will leave other wise colleges who do this on the comment board. If you work for Pasadena City College and are reading this item, read it again and take copious notes.

--Steve Hymon

Press release from Cal State Long Beach after the jump:

Guess the city behind that veil of smog

The photo was taken Sept. 16. I was looking at some pics in The Times' database and it caught my eye precisely because I didn't think it could be smog. It is.

The name of the city is after the jump.

All aboard for the lawyers

Ed Pfiester of Hildebrand & McLeod & Nelson, one of the attorneys representing victims in the Metrolink crash in Glendale in 2005, plans to host two “town hall meetings” in Simi Valley on Tuesday to advise potential claimants how to go about seeking compensation. The sessions are planned for 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. at the Residence Inn by Marriott in Simi Valley.

Pfiester told my colleague Carol Williams that he's doing this because so many other lawyers are seeking clients who were in the Metrolink crash and not all of those attorneys are reputable or experienced. Pfiester has many years experience suing railroads and the fact that the Metrolink train blew a red signal in Chatsworth suggests the agency has some explaining to do in the horrible crash that killed 25 and injured many others.

But I also think it's fair to point out that using a gentle phrase like "town hall" sure sounds better than another phrase that may come to mind: trolling for clients.

--Steve Hymon

Anti-collision devices and Measure R: Ramping up, Sept. 25

Rail safety: The Metro (a.k.a. MTA) Board is set today to discuss a broad motion calling for several upgrades to Metrolink, including faster installation of anti-collision devices and an extra camera in the cab of locomotives. The U.S. House of Representatives also approved a rail safety bill Wednesday that requires anti-collision devices to be installed by 2015 and provides more than $12 billion in funding for Amtrak over the next five years.

Today in Measure R: The Coalition for Clean Air is the latest group to support the half-cent sales tax increase proposal in Los Angeles County. Of course, the election is still not official until Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs a bill, AB 2321, authorizing it.

Speaking of Measure R: The campaign for Measure R has set up shop in Century City and the website will soon debut, says Mather Martin, the campaign manager. The fundraising committee is called "Yes on Measure R Los Angeles" but no donations are yet showing on the Cal-Access website. Ace Smith, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's go-to guy on election strategy, is running the Measure R campaign, and Denny Zane, the former Santa Monica mayor who is exec director of the Subway-to-the-Sea Coalition, is also working for the campaign.

--Steve Hymon