Shell was prohibited by a federal appeals court from drilling new wells off Alaska's North Slope. Why? The U.S. Department of Interior failed to conduct an environmental review of how the drilling would affect whales and indigenous communities. That's the pipeline that carries oil south from the North Slope in the above pic. New York Times
Curious who is reviewing transit agencies for the incoming Obama administration? Streetsblog has the rundown. One of the team has some expertise in public-private partnerships, which is interesting given that private money is likely going to be needed for some big projects in California, most notably the proposed high-speed rail line.
The Utah Transit Authority wants to expand its "contactless" fare payment system, allowing users to use credit cards and other types of smart cards to pay fares. Finextra
Chicago could get the 2016 Summer Olympics, but is its transit system ready? The Tribune's John Hilkevitch doesn't seem to think so and points to the fact that while Californians were approving transportation-related sales tax hikes and bonds on election day, there was nothing similar on the ballot in Illinois.
A federal judge ruled that automakers -- including General Motors and Chrysler -- can't sue the state of Rhode Island for trying to adopt tighter emission standards for cars. But some auto dealers can go ahead with the suit. Associated Press
The ocean in the Pacific Northwest is getting more acidic, and scientists blame rising carbon dioxide levels. CO2 is a greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels. BBC
The federal government has been building a big fleet of flex-fuel cars that can use ethanol and other alt-fuels. Problem is, the vast majority of those 112,000 vehicles are still running on regular gas. Washington Post
An interactive map by the NYT allows you to see where the city of New York issued nearly 10 million parking tickets over the last year. The hot spots look to be be side streets between 5th and 8th avenues south of Central Park.
The majority of the United States is paying less than $2 a gallon for regular gasoline, and California could see those kind of average prices within the next few days. Los Angeles Times
--Steve Hymon
photo credit: Al Grillo / Associated Press
Congress told the Big Three automakers "no thanks" -- at least for now -- to Detroit's request to borrow $25 billion to keep their business alive. Here's CNN's story about how the chief executives of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler flew to hearings in Washington in private jets, noting that it was Rep. Brad Sherman -- local boy! -- who asked the CEOs to raise their hands if they flew commercial or were planning to sell their airplanes. No hands were raised. Surprised? Those are Ford F-150s awaiting shipment in Detroit in the photo above.
New cars are sitting around with nowhere to go at the Port of Long Beach. Press-Telegram
The one-eighth-of-a-penny sales tax increase in Santa Clara County looks as if it's going to win. The money would go to extending the BART system south to San Jose from the East Bay. A story in the Mercury News contemplates what San Jose's train station may look like in the future when BART and high-speed rail are both serving the area.
Interesting week for BART: A woman also delivered her baby on the platform of the San Leandro station. Mercury News
From the Department of Space Transportation: Kudos to the Houston Chronicle copy editor who wrote the headline "Water recycler not quite right, works in spurts" about NASA's difficulty getting its urine-to-drinking water system to work aboard the space shuttle.
 L.A. Times editorial board member Dan Turner's favorite car at the L.A. Auto Show this week: the Honda CR-Z (at right). "It makes the hover-vehicles soaring between skyscrapers on the planet Coruscant look like antiques; imagine a white shark that has swallowed a bright purple video-game console and you get the general design concept," Dan writes. If you don't know the significance of Coruscant -- capital of the once-mighty Republic -- then you might as well go back to Dagobah, as far as I'm concerned. That's Coruscant in the background in the photo below; Sen. Palpatine is at right.
The Times' editorial board says it's a big mistake by the city of Los Angeles to spend money renovating the Bradley Terminal without first moving the north runways farther apart.
 Sue Doyle in the Daily News writes about some Valley residents calling for the Orange Line busway to be converted to light rail. It's just talk at this point, but Sue also notes that efforts to speed up the slow-as-syrup bus (14 miles in just 40 minutes!), such as adding express service or syncing lights to favor the bus, have gone nowhere. The issue might be a good one for a member of the L.A. City Council interested in accomplishing something on the mass-transit front. Yes, I know. I wrote that just for fun.
Lack of money is just part of the problem when it comes to building infrastructure and transportation projects in the United States, writes the New York Times' David Leonhardt: It's hard to exaggerate how scattershot the current system is. Government agencies usually don't even have to do a rigorous analysis of a project or how it would affect traffic and the environment, relative to its cost and to the alternatives -- before deciding whether to proceed. In one recent survey of local officials, almost 80 percent said they had based their decisions largely on politics, while fewer than 20 percent cited a project's potential benefits.
You've probably seen all those ads by oil companies touting their new green initiatives. Not getting as much p.r. are their efforts to extract oil and gas from tar sands in Alberta, Canada (above), a process that one environmental group calls "the most destructive project on Earth." Grist
Fun Curbed LA item on historic photos posted online of Los Angeles traffic from the archives of Life magazine. "Among the highlights are photos of 1940's and 50's Los Angeles before it was ruined by traffic and ungodly shadow casting skyscrapers. Oh wait. We're not sure that Los Angeles ever existed except in the minds of cranky old people in the Valley," writes JWilliams.
-- Steve Hymon
Photos (from top):
Ford trucks: Spencer Platt / Getty Images
Honda CR-Z: Ian Langsdon / EPA
Coruscant: Lucasfilm
Tar sands: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times
A bus rapid transit project opened last month in Cleveland and get this -- the local transit agency sold naming rights for the "HealthLine" for $6.25 million for 25 years to the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals. In a review of the line published Sunday in the Plain Dealer, writer Steve Litt says the bus line has turned Euclid Avenue "the city's once-crumbling Main Street into a well-designed image of hope and renewal." The 7.1-mile line cost about $200 million and was built instead of a light rail line. Hat tip: Streetsblog Los Angeles.
Speaking of big streets...it's hardly a secret that Lincoln Boulevard in Santa Monica and Los Angeles is super ugly, even when compared with some of the Southland's other wretched commercial thoroughfares. Now a group counting billboards along Lincoln have counted 85 billboards in a 4.2-mile stretch in the 11th City Council district -- a high concentration even by L.A. standards. Curbed LA
 Gas prices? They keep falling, pretty much everywhere. At right is the latest chart released Monday from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Some news from my hometown: voters in Cincinnati this month banned the city from installing red light enforcement or speed enforcement cameras by a 51% to 49% margin, according to the Hamilton County Board of Elections. The City Council had earlier declined to install them, but this was icing on the cake for camera opponents. Two other Ohio cities are now looking at taking the issue to voters, according to the Newspaper, a site dedicated to battling the cameras.
Amtrak ridership hit a new high in California, with 5.5-million riders on the three lines in the Golden State during the 2008 fiscal year, according to Caltrans. Attentive readers will recall that the California High-Speed Rail Authority is predicting more than 65 million riders annually if the system is built.
Remember the roadless rule that President Clinton signed before leaving office in 2001? It protected 58.5 million acres of national forest from road building, but President Bush quickly reversed it. In the time since, there have been contradictory court rulings and the rule remains up in the air. Bill Schneider at New West makes the case that President-elect Obama should make the rule the "law of the land" and enumerates the reasons why.
In Texas, the insurance carrier Mile Meter recently began offering pay-as-you-drive insurance, which offers lower rates to those who drive less. Environmentalists (here's the Environmental Defense Fund's release) are pushing the idea because they see it as a major incentive to drive less. Similar policies can be bought in a few other places around the United States and pay-as-you-drive is coming to California, as this recent Times story explains.
--Steve Hymon
photo: Cleveland Regional Transit Authority
The jugglers took the opportunity during a red light to perform in Skopje in Macedonia on Thursday. We so need something like that here in La-La Land.
Here's the transportation program President-elect Barack Obama proposed during his campaign. Lots of talk of improving infrastructure, mass transit and Amtrak. He's going to get his chance almost immediately: his administration will get to oversee the massive federal transportation bill that Congress will tackle in 2009.
Measure R was apparently approved by Los Angeles County voters on Tuesday (the Registrar still has votes to count and doesn't seem to be in a hurry to count them). Alan Mittelsteadt backed the measure and wrote this provocative little ditty before the election: "In reality, R’s main flaws are lack of ambition and courage and failure to promote a public-transit-only spending plan. Too many road projects are included in a calculated way to make voters everywhere believe their neighborhood somehow will benefit."
It's a very fair point. There are nearly $8 billion going directly to road projects in Measure R.,Maybe that needed to be there to secure passage. But it's also enough money to perhaps get the subway to the actual sea (as opposed to UCLA) or build the second subway line from Hollywood to Beverly Hills, which would greatly benefit riders from the eastern San Fernando Valley.
A provocative entry at the Living in Los Angeles Without a Car blog on the passage (thus far) of Measure R: "But is it too little, too late? I'm glad that people who live here have finally come to the realization that the city absolutely needs more public transportation to function, but most other American cities grew up with their public transportation systems in place. Granted, LA is not like most other American cities ... it did not follow a traditional development pattern and its footprint dwarfs most other metropolises (metropoli?). So any additional transportation infrastructure is destined to be a development challenge. But I am glad that we have a plan now ... and if we can make it work with the new limitations that this murky economy presents us, then Los Angeles will truly become a city of the 21st century."
Looks like more than 70% of the mass transit-related taxes or bonds on the ballot on Tuesday passed according to a tally by the Center for Transportation Excellence.
I was a guest on Larry Mantle's Airtalk program on KPCC on Thursday, talking about Measure R and Prop 1A. Also guesting was Quentin Koepp, the chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, who said it would cost $32 billion to take the line from Anaheim to S.F. and said that the federal government would kick in another $9 billion to $18 billion. Okay. He also said there would be no right-of-way issues, ridership would be more than 65 million (more than twice what Amtrak currently has) and would not answer a listener's simple question about where the rail equipment would come from.
This one is a few weeks old but worth mentioning: earlier this fall Caltrans broke ground on a project to widen U.S. 395 to four lanes between Manzanar and Independence in the Eastern Sierra. I wrote earlier this year that widening of the road has been in the works since the 1950s -- and there are still a couple of big stretches to go.
Remember those dreams of an ethanol-fueled nation? Maybe not. Up-and-down corn prices and slumping demand have hit the industry and one big producer just filed for bankruptcy. New York Times
As of Thursday, gas prices were on the cusp of falling below $2 a gallon for regular in a few states, according to AAA.
London is trying something new: it's about to allow motorcycles to use bus lanes, which regular cyclists also use, for an 18-month trial period. Cyclists are against the test, transportation officials say it will ease congestion and make the roads safer. BBC
Toll lanes in the Inland Empire? Officials in San Bernardino County are exploring the idea for the 10 and 15 freeways. Press Enterprise
--Steve Hymon
photo: Robert Atanasovski / AFP/Getty Images
Being a pedestrian in India can be scary stuff? The above report by Al Jazeera features some Frogger-like shots of people trying to cross the road amid speeding traffic. There's all sorts of factors at play, the basic problem being that rules of the road are apparently optional to many motorists.
Citizens are trying to limit commercial growth in Santa Monica because traffic is bad enough. But Measure T may not work, says an article by Nate Berg on the Planetizen website, because growth may just be shoved over to neighboring cities and such citizen initiatives sometimes lack the nuances needed. The big question is whether Measure T would improve traffic if it passes -- and many opponents, not surprisingly, are skeptical.
 A guy named Steve submitted the photo to the right to The Times' Your Scene feature. He only said it's along Highway 201.
Flying Pigeon LA held a Measure R debate that you can watch on its website. It's extremely refreshing to hear someone besides politicians talk about the pros and cons of the measure.
The latest in mass transit advertising? Digital ads on the side of a bus, say Chicago transit officials. I kid you not. Chicago Tribune
Remember President Bush? Turns out he's still in office, and so are his appointees at the Bureau of Land Management. The agency has recently determined that a pair of canyons that could qualify to be wilderness areas are better used for oil and gas drilling, meaning lots of trucks and likely new roads rumbling in and out of the area. The rub: the agency found just the opposite back in 1999. Washington Post
General Motors is on the brink and it's no secret why: executives for the past 20 years kept pushing the company to produce giant SUVs that reaped the company $10,000 in profit or more per vehicle. At one point, a plant in Janesville, Wis., was retooled to build SUVs and was at one point producing 250,000 vehicles annually. You can probably guess the rest. Most of the factory's workers have been laid off and the rest are on the way out. And what do executives of GM have to say? They never expected gas prices to shoot up the way they did. So sad. The New York Times story by Bill Vlasic and Nick Bunkley focuses on the Janesville plant.
And about those new bag searches on the Washington Metro theater? Security theater, says one expert in an online chat with Washington Post readers. The expert also says it will likely make the system less safe because of the time and resources consumed by the searches.
Among the many reports released by the U.N. is one looking closely at cities. Among the findings are that cities in developed countries are growing by three million people a week. Also, cities need to do something about greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. No surprise there. NYT's Dot Earth blog
-- Steve Hymon
A few transportation-related stories that caught my eye this last week...
The above video won first place in a recent contest to produce a short that would inspire the next president (although President Bush is certainly welcome to watch!) to do something about climate change. As regular readers know, the transportation sector contributes about one-third of the United States' greenhouse gases. Source for the video: Climate Matters-1st Place from Brighter Planet on Vimeo. You can see other videos at http://vimeo.com/climatematters.
Will the financial mess that embroiled American International Group result in service cuts for Metro? Maybe. My colleague Martin Zimmerman and I wrote a story last week explaining how AIG was the middleman in a complicated deal in which Metro (a.k.a. the MTA) sold off much of its equipment to investors and then leased it back. Problem is, AIG's bond rating has slipped and Metro needs a new middleman, a dilemma that could potentially cost it millions of dollars. In a follow-up to The Times story, the Washington Post reported that the the Washington Metro system could lose $400 million because of similar deals. The Post notes, as did we, that the Federal Transit Administration approved the deals -- deals, it should be stressed, that were designed to give the investors who bought the buses and rail cars a big federal tax break.
What's one way to improve traffic? Close a street, according to a new study by researchers in Korea and the United States. If motorists have too many choices, they'll be selfish. Shutter a street and mathematics says traffic could actually flow more efficiently. Don't believe it? Check out the story in the Christian Science Monitor.
Yes, someone out there is trying to make shoes that produce electricity -- so you can power your iPod or whatever else you see fit. Japan Probe blog
Officials in Seoul said they're going to build 129 miles of bike paths reaching all corners of the city -- and they're going to do it by putting some roads on a diet and narrowing them. AFP reports via Google News. I proposed a road diet for Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock this week. The result: One reader e-mailed to let me know I made him retch.
Dream of visiting a national park to breathe in that nice, fresh air? Think again. Two environmental groups have sued the federal EPA for failing to force states to clean up the air over parks. The source of the haze is vehicles and power plants, to name two. Associated Press via the AZcentral website.
Funding for transportation is thin and getting thinner. Even those who say people should get out of their cars do a lot of driving themselves. Where will money come from for transportation? What may inspire people to actually get out of their cars? Well, what if every single mile you drove was tolled, something that will be increasingly possible because of developing technology. Matt Rosenberg takes a look at NewWest, in a post originally published by Crosscut. Great read.
— Steve Hymon
A few stories that caught my eye over the past week...
Very smart story in the Idaho Statesman by Rocky Barker about who the next Department of Interior Secretary may be. Excerpt: He would manage more than 600 dams that bring water to 31 million Westerners and irrigate 60 percent of all the vegetables grown in the United States. He would be in charge of the fate of 1,265 threatened or endangered species. He would be responsible for 68 percent of the nation's oil and gas reserves and millions of acres of federal mining lands. The next president’s choice for Interior also will sit on the Cabinet, discussing the major issues that face the nation and the world.
The current Interior chief is Dirk Kempthorne, by the way. Barker reports that Rep. George Miller of California may be a candidate if Sen. Barack Obama wins. The job also entails overseeing the National Park system. The above photo is of Glacier National Park in Montana.
Motorists in Chicago are driving less. Yet traffic is just as bad as always, maybe even worse. How can that be?, asks Trib columnist Jon Hilkevitch, reviewing a new traffic study in the Windy City. Turns out local roads were so saturated to begin with that even removing a few vehicles hasn't helped much. Nor have some major construction projects and continued suburban sprawl.
The chief of the BART rail system in the Bay Area thinks passengers should be allowed to have coffee on the trains -- if they buy a special cup. BART staff throws cold water on the idea, citing the cost of cleaning up spills and extra police that will be needed to patrol coffee drinkers. Yes, I'm serious. Fun story from KTVU and just to make my bias clear I'm with the chief on this one and I'd be willing to fork over some dough for the special cup.
Zach Behrens at Laist wrote a great little ditty on the fact that more than 100 fire hydrants in Los Angeles have blown their tops in recent weeks, sending some impressive towers of water into the air. You guessed it: most hydrants blew it after getting bonked by a car.
The U.S. EPA released its list of most fuel efficient cars this past week and take a stab at which model was No. 1. That would be the Toyota Prius, reports Grist. Hybrids dominated the top four slots, but the Smart managed to grab fifth place. Jeep Cherokee -- with 11 mpg in city and 14 on the highway -- was among the worst.
A longer read comes from NYT's Key Magazine, where Mark Oppenheimer writes about the block where he lives in New Haven, Conn., and tries to figure out what makes it such a great block to live. The answer is complicated. Residents are a variety of ages, there's a lot of kids, the sidewalks are wide enough to accomodate people walking side-by-side, the homes have porches and people use them, a nearby street handles much of the area's through-traffic and preserves the quietness of his block. Great article.
I love reading stories about ambitious mayors. Take, for example, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He wants a third term in office and is trying to change the law so that he can run again and do more green stuff in the Big Apple. Interesting contrast with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who turned down a chance in 2006 to get his office included in Prop R, the City Council's successful effort to provide themselves more time in office. Perhaps the mayor here has plans to go somewhere (Sacramento?). And, speaking of ambitious mayors, there's Indianapolis' Greg Ballard, who wants to build 200 miles of bike lanes at a cost of $50 million or more. The city doesn't have the money, but Ballard is going to seek private dollars for the plan and the Indianapolis Star editorial board gives him a deserved pat on the back for his worthy ambition.
--Steve Hymon
photo: Allen Schaben / LAT
 A few stories that caught my eye in the past week....
At the big auto show in Paris, Smart Car debuted an electric-powered model that can travel 150 miles on a charge. Company officials say you may see them tooling around the U.S. by 2012, reported Popular Mechanics. Meanwhile, President Bush signed a bill that will provide a $25 billion loan to the struggling U.S. industry that apparently wasn't being very smart when it came to the kind of vehicles being produced the last few years. The current gasoline powered Smart Car gets 36 mpg, according to the U.S. EPA.
U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Mary Peters is proposing new federal rules to ensure that motorcycle helmets live up to government specs. On her blog, Peter says she's a rider and is concerned that motorcycle fatalities have more than doubled since 1997.
Prop 1A, which proposes to issue $9.95 billion in state bonds to start a high-speed rail line in California, picked up an endorsement from the L.A. Times editorial board this week, saying the state needs to continue to innovate and find a way to get people out of their cars:
"The measure isn't as big a risk as it would be if the state were footing the entire bill. The "backbone" segment from Los Angeles to San Francisco is projected to cost $33 billion, with about 75% from federal and private sources. Until those funds are secured, the state won't issue most of its bonds."
Meanwhile, the Santa Cruz Sentinel editorial board came out against Prop 1A. The Sentinel thinks the time projections and low ticket costs are a bit rosy:
"The promise of high-speed rail service seems to good to be true, and that's a problem with Proposition 1A on the November ballot. We like the concept, but the details leave much to be desired. We think voters would be wise to send this back for re-engineering."
Americans continued to drive less for a ninth straight month, reported Reuters, citing data through July. That's paying off here: the cost of some tolls are dropping on the 91 express lanes, reports the Orange County Register. There's less demand, so there's more supply.
In New York, MTA officials are experimenting with double deck buses, although low-hanging tree braches continue to be a problem on one route, reported the New York Times. The bus seats 81 and is taller and shorter than the big articulated buses that Metro uses here in Los Angeles County.
 The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles banned 2,000 of the dirtiest big rigs this past week, as detailed in a story in The Times. Meanwhile, the U.S. EPA -- at the request of Texas officials -- downgraded Houston's smog problem from moderate to severe, giving the region nine more years to clean it up, reported the Associated Press. The only other region to be classified as having a "severe" smog problem? You guessed it: the greater Los Angeles area.
Not to sound like Debbie Downer, but some scientists and wildlife advocates are saying that one-third of the world's species will disappear by 2100 because of global warming, reports AP via Yahoo News. Scientists at a conference in Florida said it's critical to create pathways to allow wildlife to move between habitats, while another scientist predicted one species, the American pika, is almost certainly doomed. Pikas have extremely high metabolisms and live in alpine environments that help keep them cool. But such environs may shrink, leaving the pika nowhere to go but extinct. There are some pikas still in the Sierra high country, by the way.
Of course, I don't need to tell Bottleneckers that the transportation sector is responsible for about one-third of the United States' greenhouse gas emissions.
--Steve Hymon
Smart car photo: Joel Saget / AFP/Getty Images
pika photo: J. MacKenzie / Pikaworks
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