This week’s headlines mostly focus on a $3 billion federal grant for Brightline West, one of the largest-ever federal grants for a privately owned transportation project. In case you haven’t heard, Brightline West high-speed rail is planned to extend from…
The following article first appeared on Streetsblog California. Choking back tears, California Transportation Commission Chair Lee Ann Eager closed out the commission’s meeting last week with an emotional speech. “Our job is about people,” she said, “and about making people…
This article first appeared at Streetsblog California. More than sixty climate and transportation advocacy organizations sent a letter to Governor Newsom asking him to investigate current state Transportation Department practices that are undermining California’s climate, safety, and equity goals. A…
The following article first appeared at Streetsblog. Governor Newsom was busy over the weekend, signing around 330 bills and vetoing another 140 of them. There are somewhere around 260 bills left for him to deal with by the October 14…
Transportation is the largest contributor to climate emissions and pollution in California. Knowing this, state leaders have set goals to reduce those emissions in various ways, including increasing the number of “clean” vehicles in the mix. But the state Air Resources…
The following article first appeared at Streetsblog California. Caltrans has long promised to develop guidelines for building complete streets. The guidance is close to being released – but somewhere along the way, highway interchanges were exempted from them. This exemption…
This post first appeared at Streetsblog California. “We’re not the first ones to point this stuff out,” said David Weiskopf, Senior Policy Advisor with Next Gen, about its new report “California at a Crossroads,” which calls for an end to “California’s traffic-creating,…
This post first appeared at Streetsblog California. Politico reports that Caltrans’ Deputy Director of Planning and Modal Programs, Jeanie Ward-Waller, is being “reassigned” in the department. Politico is calling the move a “shakeup.” Let’s name it more precisely: Jeanie Ward-Waller, advocate…
This article first appeared at Streetsblog California. If it feels like a bit of a bonanza for sustainability legislation this year, it is because a lot of bills championed by safety and sustainable transportation advocates actually made it all the…
The California legislature passed a bill today that would require all large corporations that do business in California to measure and publicly report their carbon emissions. S.B. 253 is a first-in-the-nation bill from Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who successfully fought off…
This article first appeared at Streetsblog California. After an arduous and digressive journey, Assemblymember Laura Friedman’s bill to allow a few cities to test whether cameras can help curb dangerous speeding passed out of the legislature. A.B. 645 grew exponentially more complex…
This story first appeared at Streetsblog California. It’s time for a quick update on bills that are still alive in the legislature. All bills moving forward must have passed to the floor of the second house already, and the Senate…
The following op/ed first appeared in Streetsblog California and uses examples from the Bay Area Rapid Transit System, BART. However, the lessons and messages apply well to Metro and the Big Blue Bus as well. Tuesday afternoon, Senator Scott Wiener…
The following article first appeared in Streetsblog California. For years, proponents of speed cameras, which have proven to reduce vehicle speeding, have been trying to get a bill through the state legislature to allow their use in California. While these bills have…
This post first appeared on Streetsblog California. Near the top of its recently released California Transportation Carbon Reduction Strategy, Caltrans notes that although switching to electric vehicles is important and necessary, it is clearly not enough – that “to achieve carbon…
