On Christmas Eve the LA Times confirmed that transportation officials plan to put a measure on the ballot in 2014 or 2016 either 1) raising the county sales tax by a half cent or 2) extending Measure R, the half-cent sales tax voters approved in 2008, beyond its 2039 expiration date. A new tax would raise the overall sales tax in LA County to 9.5%, and raise more than $100 billion. Extending the Measure R tax would allow Metro to pay down debt, thereby freeing up funding for other projects.

Move LA Executive Director Denny Zane told the Times that he hopes a portion of the new money would go toward a clean goods movement program that could help incentivize the use of new technologies like electric trucks. He said he'd also like to see investments in Metrolink and bike lanes.

Read more.

 

LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne cites city improvements including progress on planned subway and light rail lines, an expanded Union Station, Mayor Garcetti's proposed Great Streets initiative to accommodate cyclists and pedestrians and "activate the public realm," and his advocacy in Washington DC for $1.1 billion to remake the LA River — concluding that all have contributed to a sense that LA has "crossed a major divide and entered new civic territory" and that "our major streets are returning to the very center of civic life."

"Nearly every demographic trend suggests that the city's move toward a more public future is irreversible," he writes. "Simply put, Los Angeles is no longer in the business of building freeways or stand-alone houses, those twin anchors of its deeply privatized 20th-century identity."

He notes that LA has a higher proportion of renters — 52% — than any other metro area, and that most occupy multifamily buildings, which equate to increased density and mass transit use. He refers to the recent Expo Line ridership study to illustrate that Angelenos are in fact driving less and using transit more, and notes that we take more trips on transit — if bus trips are included — than residents of any other city except New York and Chicago.

Hawthorne adds that a measure to extend the Measure R sales-tax hike will likely appear on the ballot in 2014 or 2016, and if it passes — "as it probably will," he writes —and that it will accelerate work on crucial transit projects and the trend toward urbanism.

 

Link is below:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-la-now-live-expo-line-study-20131216-dto,0,5235945.story#axzz2ot5SJMvp

And she provides a link to the USC study:

http://priceschool.usc.edu/files/2013/12/Final-Boarnet-Expo-Line-Report-for-Web.pdf

 

 

A new study of households living near Expo Line stations finds that residents reduced their daily driving by 10-12 miles or 40% and tripled their train ridership — also reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by 30%. In fall 2011, researchers from USC asked more than 200 households in the Exposition Corridor, the Crenshaw Corridor and Harvard Park to track their travel habits and odometer readings for seven days. The same households repeated the exercise in 2012, when the Expo Line had been open for about six months.

The study also found that stations with more bus lanes and fewer lanes of traffic were most effective at reducing the number of miles driven and increasing the number of transit trips, according to the study. Streets with too many lanes of traffic discourage pedestrians from getting to stations, according to chief study author Marlon Boarnet, and more people are likely to use a train if bus service complements it. He says this could help inform urban design as cities across the county install bike lanes and foster development around transit.

Ridership has continued to grow on the Expo line, increasing by 40% from 2012, when the line opened, to 2013.

A new study by Victoria Transport Policy researcher Todd Litman finds that 1) the traffic casualty rate for travel by transit is one-tenth that of travel by car, 2) the per capita fatality rate for people who live in transit-oriented communities is one fifth that of people who live in auto-oriented communities, 4) crime rates for travel by transit are lower and 4) crime rates in large transit-oriented cities are lower.

Yet the perception that transit is dangerous persists . . .Read the abstract here.

 

Here's our letter. To read the LA Times editorial that we responded to click here.


 

 

David Landsel photo-documents this tour (on transit and on foot) on Huffington Post, and he writes: "Los Angeles! It is big, weird, crowded and often daunting, particularly if you are only here for a short stay. Still, you don't need a ton of time, or even a car (no, seriously) to get the hang of America's second city. With just 24 hours and a sense of adventure, you can have one of the best days ever, not only in Los Angeles, but anywhere." This tour just about sums LA up if you only have 24 hours and no car!

 

Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-37) has introduced legislation that would allow transportation agencies “to prioritize hiring local residents for highway and transit projects.” According to a press release issued by the Congresswoman’s office, the “Local Hire Act,” introduced last Friday, will make it easier to “generate jobs in the very counties and states where their transportation projects are located, while preserving competition and cost effectiveness.”

Currently, federal procurement regulations do not permit agencies, like Metro, to require bidders to establish local hiring or purchasing programs or to take such programs and local hiring directly into account in the bid evaluation process. The historical rationale for this prohibition is that the federal gas tax (18.4 cents per gallon) is collected from around the nation so all Americans and American companies should be able to be employed by any given project.

But last year the LA Metro Board voted to permit transportation agencies to establish local hiring programs in proportion to the share of a given project's total cost that is being paid for with local funds. Proponents argued that the current federal procurement regulation does not take into account the reality of how transportation projects are financed today, as in Los Angeles where most of the funding comes from a local source.

Upon hearing the news Metro Board Chair Diane DuBois said she believes this  change in federal hiring regulations would be especially important now -- given the high rate of unemployment in California and in Los Angeles County specifically, where the rate continues to hover above 10 percent.

The Local Hire Act is currently being supported by Congressmembers Henry Waxman (D-CA), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), Janice Hahn (D-CA), and Tim Bishop (D-NY). Bass represents South Los Angeles, West Los Angeles and Culver City.

Nathan Hurst writes in Congressional Quarterly that U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, favors shifting from the per-gallon tax on motor fuels to one that would be levied “upstream” at the wholesale level as a model for raising more revenue to shore up the Highway Trust Fund. “This was my idea: You get rid of the fee at the pump completely,” Boxer told participants at an American Highway Users Alliance summit in Washington last week. "but you replace it with a sales tax on fuels.”

The idea is based on Virginia’s recent overhaul of state transportation programs, where a bipartisan coalition agreed to scrap the 17.5-cents-per-gallon tax at the pump and replace it with a wholesale tax of 3.5 percent on gasoline and 6 percent on diesel. The state’s general sales tax was adjusted as well, with drivers in heavily populated areas regions of the state paying an extra 2.1 percent sales tax on gasoline to fund projects of regional interest.

Boxer told the highway users group that she's been meeting with Senator Max Baucus, who chairs Senate Finance, who is eager to include a fix for the highway fund in a broader package to overhaul the nation’s tax code. The Montana Democrat and his House counterpart, Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., are preparing tax overhaul proposals, although prospects for rewriting the tax code next year are considered dim.

Absent a broader tax bill, Baucus and Camp would still need to pass some kind of surface transportation revenue package to avoid shortfalls in the Highway Trust Fund. But Boxer said a bill that would force lawmakers to vote solely on an increase in transportation taxes would be a more difficult lift. The last time Congress raised motor fuels taxes was in 1993. The impact of inflation, a shift to more fuel-efficient vehicles and a decline in the number of miles that Americans drive have cut into the Highway Trust Fund’s buying power. The current federal transportation authorization, which expires next September, required $21 billion from the general fund to keep the trust fund solvent through next year.

Baucus has told authorizers he will be unable to cobble together a similar package of offsets to pay for a new bill. A wholesale tax could be set at levels that would raise more money and would adjust automatically for inflation. The cost would be built into the price that motorists pay.

Boxer and House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., addressed the American Highway Users Alliance as it prepares a lobbying blitz in advance of a surface transportation reauthorization next year. Shuster urged industry lobbyists to make their case for infrastructure investments before talking about the sticky issues of funding. “We’ve got to build the case to the American people that there is a problem,” Shuster said. “Don’t lead with funding.”

On the KCET blog Eric Brightwell ponders the path of the Green Line extension into Lawndale, north Redondo Beach and into Torrance's planned Transit Center. He notes the line isn't yet in the engineering phase but that things could move quickly since the Green Line would likely travel along the old Harbor Subdivision Transit Corridor right-of-way. He says the line would travel through one of the most diverse subregions, with significant populations of Canadian, English, Filipino, German, Guatemalan, Indian, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, Persian, Salvadoran, Taiwanese, Vietnamese and West African origins -- which means the restaurants are fabulous! Read more.