Coming up February 14: the public comment period closes for the Southern California Association of Governments Draft 2012 Regional Transportation Plan and its Program Environmental Impact Report. The San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership’s legislative committee has voiced concerns about the RTP’s proposed elevated truck route along the I-60, dedicated to moving goods containers inland. In an email blast, the SGVEP says, “Congestion on the I-60 is affecting distribution and needs to be addressed but the project as originally proposed has issues that need to be addressed as well…”

The No 710 Action Committee, the Coalition for a Safe Environment, and others also object to the plan’s impacts, and argue that funds should be allocated instead to zero-emission, electrified rail for goods movement. A new RAND Corporation study Highway Infrastructure and the Economy, concludes that “In restructuring U.S. transportation policy, Congress should steer funding toward projects of ‘national significance’…’that have positive net benefits dispersed over large geographic areas.’” Eliminating thousands of diesel truck trips on urban roadways daily, which an electrified rail system would do, would have such benefits for this entire region.

Elected officials can no longer kick the can down the road, so they need to stop focusing on roads! We need to invest in projects that will improve air quality, reduce congestion, enhance public health and the environment, and provide 21st century transportation jobs. We don’t need more highways and freeways and trucks in Southern California.

The No 710 Action Committee comments on SCAG’s Draft 2012 RTP calls for funding zero-emission + electrified rail projects, and multi-modal transportation alternatives, which will reduce pollution, congestion, environmental and health impacts.

Excerpt from the letter: “We oppose SCAG RTP items associated with proposed SR-710 Toll Tunnels because they will increase pollution, truck traffic, congestion, accidents, health impacts and environmental risks in our communities and throughout the region. We oppose related plan items which have the goals of increasing conventional roadway and rail yard capacity for the same reasons…These approaches are outdated, inefficient, and harmful to the region. Better, zero emission proposals for goods movement are available now – we should not wait another 20 years.”

The letter also objects to inclusion of the BNSF Southern California International Gateway (SCIG) rail yard expansion, saying, “SCIG and related Draft Plan components are part of an overall framework which favors conventional goods movement activities that cause significant pollution and negative impacts in neighboring communities and throughout the region.”

The No 710 Action Committee sent a separate letter commenting on the SCIG environmental impact report as well. Excerpt: “The SCIG project is a mere band-aid and will not greatly improve efficiency of goods movement. It will, however, continue to depend on the obsolete method of container movement by truck…Although it has been stated that there is no room for an on-dock system within the existing stretch of land, the Ports MUST eliminate the practice of transfer by trucks to a nearby yard. This transfer process has been damaging to the communities surrounding the Ports. To increase efficiency and to remain competitive into the future, the Ports MUST completely overhaul the transfer at the docks and load directly from ship to rail.”

The Southern California Association of Governments is accepting public comments on its Draft 2012 Regional Transportation Plan, and on the Draft 2012 RTP Environmental Impact Report, through February 14, 2012. SCAG is also holding a public hearing on the plan for LA County this Thursday, February 2, 2012, in downtown LA.

Walk Bike Glendale webpage on the road diet proposal
Glendale city staff report: Proposal to Conduct a Road Diet Test Case
Sunroom Desk Notes on Traffic Safety and Road Diets
Glendale Safe and Healthy Streets webpage explaining road diets and their benefits

Streets named as candidates for the pilot include Honolulu Ave., Pennsylvania Ave., Verdugo Rd., and Orange Ave. Support this city effort to make streets safer and more usable for all! Email council members or attend and speak at the meeting.

The website’s event page now features Glendale’s Master Bike Plan Outreach meeting, Wednesday (tomorrow), January 18, at 7 p.m. in the Glendale Police Community Room, 131. N. Isabel St. Go to the website page to learn more about the bike plan, download the entire draft, or link to a page where you can make a public comment if you cannot attend the meeting.

From the Glendale Safe and Healthy Streets/Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition hosted webpage, which also includes a link to the full Draft Plan: “Officially titled the ‘City of Glendale Bicycle Transportation Plan,’ the document will determine the bicycle facilities to be built and programs to be established in Glendale for the coming years….You can help determine the future of bicycling in Glendale!…Tell your friends and encourage them to attend as well! It’s critical that the bicycling public participate in the development of the Bike Plan.”

Congratulations and thanks to the citizens who gathered to form Walk Bike Glendale and establish key coalitions (the group is now a regional chapter of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition), for their work to promote a safe and healthy walking and bicycling environment.

The Draft 2012 Regional Transportation Plan for Southern California proposes funding all municipally planned bikeways (4,980 miles), and includes 827 additional miles to establish a connected network. It calls for bringing 12,000 miles of deficient sidewalks into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and increasing cooperation with Safe Routes to Schools and other entities promoting active transportation projects. The plan’s proposals for walking and biking projects, and providing first/last mile connectivity for pedestrians and bicyclists using transit, exceed $6 billion.

“Relative reduction in vehicle miles traveled resulting from these mode shifts are estimated at approximately 7.8 million miles and 20.4 million miles for 2020 and 2035, respectively,” according to the draft plan.

The plan also focuses extensively on goods movement as a major driver of the local economy and devotes a entirely new section to jobs. It proposes freeway expansions, completion of the EIR and closure for the 710 gap, near-term dedicated truck lanes, lower emission and hybrid technology trucks, and completion of a goods-movement East-West Corridor. It ignores the sustained, long-term opposition to extending the 710 and pushes further into the future studies of multi-modal alternatives, which should receive more attention. Included at the end of the goods movement appendix is a proposal for a long-term study of electrified rail infrastructure that would eliminate the need for many trucks and additional freeway capacity, even though specific proposals such as the GRID are already circulating for new zero-emission port technology and electrified rail delivery.

Billions of dollars are allocated to road and freeway improvements, including several 710 freeway projects (from resurfacing the PCH connection to downtown Long Beach, to the gap closure EIR) in a Project List table tagged “Financially Constrained” – which means all the funds are not available. A miniscule portion of funds are dedicated to bicycling and pedestrian improvements in comparison, even as the plan focuses quite a bit on the need for more of these to reduce vehicle miles traveled and pollutants, and admits that air quality will not be substantially improved with more trucks on the road unless and until new vehicle technologies and zero-emission rail systems are implemented.

A coalition of active transportation advocates already filed this public comment. Excerpt: We respectfully request that the 2012 RTP includes strategies to significantly increase the proportion of funds allocated to active transportation so that over time, such funding reflects the proportion of trips made by walking and biking.

The draft plan was released by the Southern California Association of Governments in December 2011. Comment period for the plan extends until February 14, 2012, and SCAG will also be holding public hearings on the plan, with the LA County hearing set for February 2 in downtown Los Angeles. Check this Notice of Availability and Public Hearings for more information about how to submit a public comment, and for times/locations of the upcoming public hearings. The plan is set to be finalized by April 2012.

Active transportation advocates in Glendale and around Southern California: the time to comment on regional transportation project priorities for the next four years is now! Glendale’s Safe and Healthy Streets program, its commitment to Complete Streets design, and its Safe Routes to School grants are all evidence that active transportation planning is welcome and working here.

The 2012 SCAG Regional Transportation Plan has just been released in draft form. Below, links to this and other policy discussions about the future of transportation in Southern California, plus a plug for the 2008 book Smogtown:

Southern California Association of Governments 2012 Regional Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategy – the draft version was released two weeks ago; a final four-year plan will be adopted by April 2012. The plan calls for/estimates completion of the 710 tunnel by 2030, and also includes greatly expanded funding for bicycling/pedestrian infrastructure. See page 186 for a “public participation” visual featuring Glendale Safe and Healthy Street’s Colin Bogart. The comment period for this draft plan is December 2011 – January 2012.

The Value of Transportation Enhancements; Or, Are Walking and Cycling Really Transportation? – argues that U.S. federal surface transportation spending should include bicycling and pedestrian “enhancements” because these contribute to better, less congested roadways, therefore better mobility, as well as improved health and safety.

Retrofitting Suburbia: Updated Urban Design Solutions – discusses the problem of “under-performing asphalt” and possible solutions to overdeveloped suburban spaces.

Smogtown (and authors’ blog) – The 2008 book is a compelling history of smog in LA, and mentions times planes couldn’t land because of the smog. In today’s LA Times, there is an article about the same problem now in China. Do we want to go backwards or forwards? The history in Smogtown is a great argument against relaxing Clean Air and other environmental standards, and for zero-emission approaches to transportation infrastructure including port technology and freight movement.

Happy New Year under blue skies in Southern California!

Both worked extensively on the Glendale Safe and Healthy Streets Plan, approved by city council this April, and are now members of Walk Bike Glendale, an advocacy group that has been meeting for months now “to make Glendale a safer, healthier, more welcoming place for people to walk and bike by promoting and advocating for safe, sustainable, and efficient transportation options.”

Walk Bike Glendale aims to implement the Safe and Healthy Streets Plan, and is now pushing for formation of an official Pedestrian and Bicyclist Advisory Committee for Glendale. Embracing the tradition established when the grant-funded planning effort was underway, Walk Bike Glendale will be marching and cycling (with holiday lights on the bicycles!) in the Montrose Christmas Parade this Saturday.

Glendale is updating its Biycle Master Plan to provide a convenient, useful and interconnected bicycle transportation system that serves commuters and recreational users and is seeking community comments at two outreach meetings:

Tonight, October 13, 2011
6 p.m.
Civic Center
633 E. Broadway, Room 106

Thursday, October 20, 2011
7 p.m.
Sparr Heights Community Center
1613 Glencoe Way

More information is available at www.BikeGlendale.com.

The Gabriel River Infrastructure Development (GRID) project, a futuristic proposal to transform the Port of Long Beach into a compact, zero-emission, fully electrified super terminal served by electric freight pipelines to inland distribution centers, was presented yesterday at the National Urban Freight Conference in Long Beach. GRID is an exciting alternative to existing plans requiring more real estate and conventional truck and rail loading procedures.

The Model Design Manual for Living Streets, a joint project of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, was unveiled last Thursday in downtown LA. Focusing on street design that accommodates cars, pedestrians, cyclists and transit users, it also serves as a template for improving streetscape aesthetics, sustainability, and commercial appeal. On a parallel path, the 2012 Regional Transportation Plan being finalized includes a proposal for completing all Southern California Association of Governments bicycle/pedestrian infrastructure plans while closing the gaps between them at an estimated cost of $1.63 billion for the entire region.

Locally, the North Glendale Community Plan, which includes improvements for pedestrians and bicyclists, will be presented at the Monday, October 17 Planning Commission meeting.

The 30/10 Initiative has gone national with America Fast Forward, using the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) to leverage billions of federal dollars. Antonio Villaraigosa and other metropolitan mayors have been promoting it in Washington. At the 10th annual gathering of transportation professionals in Southern California, Mobility 21, the need to upgrade America’s transportation infrastructure was a major theme. American Society of Civil Engineers President-elect Andy Hermann presented its commissioned report Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Surface Transportation Infrastructure, showing that U.S. transportation infrastructure deficiencies cost American households and businesses roughly $130 billion. (Official infographic at this link.)

The U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held a hearing yesterday on part of President Obama’s jobs bill providing a one-time $10 billion allocation for transportation projects. CNBC’s short segment yesterday covered the issues and politics over creating and funding a National Infrastructure Bank.

An idea floated by the Infrastructurist (and repeated in the latest Transit Coalition monthly enewsletter, where this Editor read about it) is to flip the President’s job proposal funding for highways and transit – giving $27 billion to transit projects and just $9 billion to highways. The Transit Coalition supports the idea as an antidote to decades of highway expansion; another justification is the trend in urban highway teardown projects around the country.

Such forward-looking transportation ideas deserve consideration. What a shame so much money was misallocated and poorly invested leading up to 2008 and we are still paying for it in this extended Great Recession. There are several great ideas out there for improving the U.S. transportation sector’s efficiency, competitiveness, and sustainability.

In the U.S., more than 5,000 schools from all 50 states will participate. Children and adults in 40 countries, nearly 4 million people, participate worldwide. International Walk-to-School Day is promoted in the U.S. by Safe Routes to School.

Walks will begin between 7:40 a.m. and 9:00, with students and adults gathering at neighborhood locations to form “walking school buses.” Activities at their destinations will include assemblies with elected officials.

Congratulations and thanks to Safe Routes to School Coordinator Kara Sergile for organizing the largest Walk in Southern California right here in Glendale. At the September 20 Glendale City Council meeting, Sergile, PTA Council President Elizabeth Manasserian, and a group of GUSD students were on hand to receive the mayor’s resolution naming October “Walktober” – International Walk-to-School Month.

Sergile acknowledged Glendale Public Works, a co-sponsor of the event. Transportation head Jano Baghdanian was with the group and announced to council that working with Sergile, city staff have applied for and received $1.5 million in grants from Caltrans for Glendale Safe Routes to School transportation improvement projects and educational programs.

More information is available at:
International Walk to School in the USA
National Center for Safe Routes to School
International Walk to School

For detailed information on Glendale’s events, contact Sergile at 626-590-6273 or 818-637-2872.