CAHSR Funds In Jeopardy, California Streetcars, End Of Automania, New & Notable Titles, Parking Management, Bus Lane Cameras & More

All Economics Is Local: The Straits Of Cities And Counties Are Hurting The Recovery ("The National League of Cities thinks nearly 500,000 workers in local government will lose their jobs in the current and coming fiscal years.")
The Economist

California Beckons High-Speed Rail Despite Midterm Derailment In Funding
The City Fix

California Cities Desire Streetcars ("The streetcar bandwagon, which has picked up dozens of cities nationwide, including Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, and Santa Ana, is fueled not only by nostalgia but also by new attitudes about both urbanism and transportation planning.")
California Planning & Development Report

Commentary: Building A High-Speed Future: 220 MPH, And No Pat-Downs
McClatchy

Confessions Of A Recovering Engineer (Despite years of training and precedent, a traffic engineer questions whether we are actually creating bad and unsafe streets)
Strong Towns

Crenshaw Maintenance Facility Site Open House (December 1)
StreetsBlog LA

Editorial: $80M Legal Spree By MTA
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

E-Mails Reveal Clashes Over High-Speed Rail Project: Two Board Members Also Have Other Transit Responsibilities. Do Their Multiple Roles Enrich The Board Or Set The Scene For Conflicting Interests?
Los Angeles Times

The End Of Automania ("Are Americans as car crazy as they were in the '70s?")
New Republic

Go Metro To This Year's Hollywood Christmas Parade
Beverly Hills Courier

Gobbling Less Gas For Thanksgiving: How Clean Cars Can Save Americans Money And Cut Oil Use (15p. PDF)
Environment California Research & Policy Center

GOP House Aims To Take $2 Billion Back From California High-Speed Rail
San Jose Mercury News

Great Los Angeles Walk: Car-Free Urban Adventure
Southern California Public Radio

Interview With Jarrett Walker, International Transit Network Planner, Part 1 and Part 2
The Source

Irvine's iShuttle To Be Funded Through Exchange With OCTA
Orange County Register

Join Southern California Transit Advocates For Black Friday
MetroRider LA

Metro's Conan Cheung Updates On Next 18 Months Of Service Planning
StreetsBlog LA

New And Notable: Sprawl Repair Manual, Republic Of Drivers & Urban Mass Transit's Life Story
Metro Transportation Library Primary Resources Blog

Opinion: Should We Hope Congestion Gets Worse?
New York Times

Parking Management: A Contribution Towards Liveable Cities (50p. PDF)
Sustainable Transport

Paying At The Pump For Oil Wars: A Plausible Option?
StreetsBlog DC

Political Gridlock Railroads High-Speed Trains
Fortune

Post-Cornfield: LA State Historic Park Actually Moving Forward?
Curbed LA

Smile: You're On Bus Lane Camera
New York Times

"Subway To The Sea" Shouldn't End 3 Miles From The Sand: But Given The History Of Transit Planning In Los Angeles, It's Actually Kind Of Fitting - There's Already A Train To LAX That Doesn't Go All The Way To The Airport
Los Angeles Times

A Tale Of Two Light Rail Lines ("A rather startling contrast can be made between the two approaches that are being pursued by the Exposition Construction Authority and the Metro Crenshaw Corridor/LAX Team with respect to community input and land use decisions relative to the two light rail lines they’re designing and constructing.")
CityWatch

Trains, Planes, And Pollution (infographic)
Think Progress

Transit People's Free Advice For Mayor, Metro On Free Transit Passes For Field Trips
StreetsBlog LA

The Use Of Archive Data For Planning And Operations Performance Measures (webcast : December 2)
I-95 Corridor Coalition

We're Ready To Roll! ("Please save the date to join us as wel roll out our new state-of-the-art Hyundai Rotem Rail Cars at the Whistle Stop Debut!" Dates and times listed, including Monday, December 6, 8:00a.m. at Los Angeles Union Station)
Metrolink

The Westside Subway: Welcome Back, Epstein
Huffington Post

What A Time-Lapsed Busy Subway Yard Looks Like (video)
Infrastructurist

Gold Line Maintenance Yard, Replacing The Gerald Desmond Bridge, Is HSR "Techno-Glamour?," Walk Score's 2,500 New Cities & More

8 Ways To Create Better Streets In Eagle Rock
Eagle Rock Patch

The Allure Of Techno-Glamour ("High-speed trains exemplify autonomy and grace, sliding along effortlessly, with no visible source of fuel. To a stressed-out public, they promise an escape from traffic jams—and, at least until the first terrorism scare, from the hassles, intrusion and delays of airport security.")
Wall Street Journal

Artist Chris Burden Building Little Freeway Network For LACMA
Curbed LA

Beyond The Triple Circle: Design Alternatives For Traffic Lights
Los Angeles Times

Crumbling Long Beach Bridge's $1 Billion Replacement Nears
Beverly Hills Courier

Digitization And Transportation: Northwestern University's Google Books Project
Metro Transportation Library Primary Resources Blog

A Former Traffic Engineer On The Industry's Perverse Standards
StreetsBlog DC

High-Speed Rail Takes A Shellacking
Wired

Long Beach Bridge At The End Of Its Lifespan: Officials Expect To Replace The Gerald Desmond Bridge With One Higher And Wider To Accomodate Larger Ships And More Vehicle Traffic ("According to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., the project is expected to generate about 4,000 jobs each year and more than $2 billion in economic activity.")
Los Angeles Times

[N.Y.] MTA Workers Didn't Do Thousands Of Subway Safety Checks On Time, Filed Bogus Reports, Sources Say
New York Daily News

A New Political Reality Settling In For National Transportation Financing ("Austerity measures that may be introduced in the House could result in significant cutbacks in support for transit. Meanwhile, the decision by Republican legislators to phase out earmarks may reduce support for a future transportation bill.")
Transport Politic

Not Enough Clipper Cheats To Fix Glitch, BART Says
San Francisco Chronicle

On The Waterfront: Cargo Traffic Climbs Back To '07 Levels
Long Beach Press-Telegram

One-Way Car Sharing To Airports Launches In NYC: Makes Practice More Like Bike Share Or Taxi
Transportation Nation

Otis Report On The Creative Economy Of The Los Angeles Region: The Power Of Art And Artists (73p. PDF)
Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation; Otis College Of Art And Design

Peter Appel Discusses USDOT (audio : Appel, the Administrator of the USDOT's Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), is responsible for leveraging effective research and cross-modal coordination. In this "Business of Government Hour," innovative transportation solutions are discussed)
Federal News Radio

Residents Opposed To Gold Line Maintenance Yard Now Keeping An Open Mind: The City Believes It Has Allayed The Concerns Of Many Residents Who Signed A Letter Opposing The Construction Of The Maintenance Facility In Monrovia
Monrovia Patch

Solution To 405 Backup Nightmare: East/West Tunnels Under Wilshire & Santa Monica
Calcanis

Some Doubt Ridership Estimates For S.F.-L.A. High-Speed Rail ("Rail officials say the ambitious projections were not meant to forecast revenue. Rather, they were developed to help planners account for the harshest possible effect of the system on the environment, they say. That means the numbers needed to be as high as could reasonably be expected.")

Fresno Bee

Streetline Named IBM Global Entrepreneur Of The Year ("At the core of Streetline's technology is its patented smart parking platform which detects the presence of a car through a network of ultra-low power wireless sensors located in each parking space.")
PR Newswire

Subway Cars On Venice Blvd.?
Plus Metro

Talking The Walk: The Great LA Walk 2010 Does Wilshire Blvd.
LAist

The Tea Party Targets...Sustainable Development? ("If you believe conservative activists, smart growth is really a global conspiracy to herd Americans into human habitation zones.")
Mother Jones

Transportation Secretary LaHood Announces Recipients Of New Railroad Safety Technology Grants ("Seven projects will share $50 million to help make the nation’s rail system safer by facilitating deployment of Positive Train Control (PTC) collision avoidance systems and other advanced technologies...Southern California Regional Rail Authority (SCRRA) Shared LA PTC Communications Infrastructure will develop and test the communications best practices guide for all railroads that must implement a standard Vital Train Management System (VTMS) which requires an interoperable communication architecture that will allow trains to operate safely across railroad networks using the Los Angeles basin as the prototype.")
PressZoom

Walk Score Ambles Into 2,500 New Cities
GOOD

Was AV Transit Agency Board Asleep At The Board?
In The AV

Orange Line Bikeway, South LA CicLAvia?, Congestion Pricing In SGV, Car-Free Chat, Dodger Stadium Shuttle, 57 / 60 Interchange & More

Buildings Don't Cause Traffic In Pasadena, Drivers Do
Brigham Yen

Caltrans cited by EPA For Water Pollution
San Francisco Chronicle

Chat With Us 11/22: Living Car-Free In Southern California (today online, 3 - 4pm)
Southern California Public Radio

The Cold And The Dark ("If Art Leahy were to meet you at the Blue Line station or at one of the Rapid bus stops, introduce you to the Metro driver, and get a conversation among the passengers started, you might even consider putting your car aside once in a while and taking Metro. He's that good.")
KCET Departures

Congressional Reps Agree To Let Go Of Earmarks, Reluctantly ("Locally, the $1.8 billion Alameda Corridor East Construction Authority project to separate traffic from railroads is a popular target for earmark funds. But there is no funding category for so-called "grade separation" projects")
Whittier Daily News

Connections vs. Complexity ("The striking thing about the Los Angeles map is that most streets have only a single line on them, even though we are immediately south of downtown and you would expect many lines to be converging.")
Human Transit

Contrasting Visions Of Urban Transport: Critique Of "Fixing Transit: The Case For Privatization" (26p. PDF)
Victoria Transport Policy Institute

Dodger Stadium Express A Success, But Future Depends On Funding
Blog Downtown

Editorial: Echoes Of The Holocaust: France's National Railway Delivered Jews To The Nazis. It's Apologized, And Now Wants To Bid On A High-Speed Rail Project In California
Los Angeles Times

Editorial: Rail Sinkhole ("More federal cash would not make a bullet train a higher-priority need for California, nor would it answer the troubling questions that surround the proposal. Other states' rejection of federal funds for high-speed rail should serve as a sign to California to rethink a dubious project, not an invitation to grab more money.")
Riverside Press-Enterprise

European Import Has Cars Spinning. Heads, Too ("Armed with mounting data showing that roundabouts are safer, cheaper to maintain and friendlier to the environment, transportation experts around the country are persuading communities to replace traditional intersections with them. There's just one problem: Americans don't know how to navigate them.")
New York Times

GOP Wants To Bring Transpo Policy Back To The 1950s
StreetsBlog DC

In The U.S., Poor Communication And Poor Choices Plague Bus Rapid Transit
The City Fix

Metrolink Adding To Fleet Of Crash-Savvy Cars: The Commuter Railroad Is Buying 20 More Hyundai Rotem Co. Coaches, Which Will Make Up 137 Of 160 Passenger Cars. Some Of The State-Of-The-Art Passenger Units Will Be Rolled Out Next Month
Los Angeles Times

Opinion: Downtown Drops The Ball On Transit Stop
Los Angeles Downtown News

Opinion: Have You Tried The Gold Line Yet?: Yes Monrovians Need To Drive To Pasadena To Catch The Train To L.A., But Now's A Great Time To Practice Your Strap-Hanging Skills
Monrovia Patch

Sanchez Urges Feds To Ship Surplus Rail Funds To California
Voice Of OC

Schulz Named President Of Los Angeles Transportation Club
Daily Breeze

S.F. Solves Funding Quandary For Central Subway
San Francisco Chronicle

Some Hope Given To Those Who Endure Traffic Bottleneck at 57 / 60 Interchange In Diamond Bar ("Led by the city of Industry, the 57/60 Confluence Project promises to solve the problem of 16 lanes of traffic being squeezed into 12.")
San Gabriel Valley Tribune

South L.A. CicLAvia Community Meeting (December 9)
CicLAvia

To Thwart Distracted Driving, US Government Considers Cell Phone Jammers In Cars
Popular Science

Transportation Benefits Will Soon Be Cut In Half: Help Us Stop It
Transportation For America

Using Parking Fees To Reduce Street Consumption
StreetsBlog Network

What A Difference Two Years Makes, Warm Reception For Congestion Pricing In San Gabriel Valley
StreetsBlog LA

Work Starts On Orange Line Bikeway, Metro Mulls New Cycling Plans
Curbed LA

Would An Hourglass Traffic Light Work Better?
GOOD