ansoncfit

Congestion Pricing and Anti-Sprawl Legislation

The California Legislature recently passed two awesome bills.  I’m especially excited about them in light of the Urban Economics course I took last year at Swarthmore.

SB 1422: High Occupancy-Toll Lanes

This bill authorizes LA Metro to proceed with its congestion pricing plan.  Metro plans to charge a toll for single occupancy vehicles to drive in the HOV lanes on the 10 and 110 freeways, and, as the Botttleneck Blog reports, potentially the 210 (which my Urban Economics final paper covered).  The funding for this project comes from the Federal grant that was going to fund congestion pricing in Manhattan before Albany killed it.

SB 375: Transportation Planning

According to Streetsblog, this bill is the first of its kind that

ties land use patterns to emissions and penalizes cities and municipalities that encourage development that leads to sprawl.

Now if they could just pass a budget, maybe some of this would actually become law…

Read Full Post | September 03 2008 | The Swat Fit and Transportation |

Switching to Public Transit

A fun article entitled “A couple of easy fixes and we’ll take the bus to work”

I think it has some pretty realistic and helpful suggestions for transit in Southern California.  And, anecdotes like the following:

Hector Barbosa, 41, whom I encountered twice during the week as he traveled to and from his home in Pacific Palisades and his job in Beverly Hills, said local bus lines take some getting used to.

“The problems are especially huge when it comes to the homeless and the mentally ill,” he said. “Sometimes you see people getting violent, sometimes defecating.”

Or in my case, there was the elderly gentleman who sang what sounded like pirate chanteys for about 15 minutes.

Nice…

Read Full Post | June 18 2008 | Transportation |

Metro Rail - The Future is Now

Pretty funny video from 1985:

Read Full Post | June 17 2008 | Transportation |

Spike in Transit Ridership

There’s been a lot of coverage lately about the recent increase in transit use due to high gas prices.  SEPTA Regional Rail is seeing 11% more passengers than last year.  Ridership on LA’s Gold Line has jumped 19% over last year.  The BBC recently covered the LA subway’s rising popularity.  Even Garrison Keillor is making fun of new bus riders.