Press releases and official announcements from Santa Monica.
Joshua Baum is an urban economist and the Principal of Hilgard Analytics, a mission-driven real estate and economic development research firm founded in 2020. This op/ed also appears at Streetsblog California. California stands at a crossroads when it comes to public…
The following article also appears at Streetsblog by Roger Rudick. Photo : My “car.” Or one of them anyway. Photo from Wikimedia Commons by Pi.1415926535 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link Car prices, say analysts, are poised to shoot up by thousands of dollars thanks to…
This story also appears at Streetsblog California. Flanked by Bay Area elected officials and advocates from the Yes in My BackYard (YIMBY) movement, Senator Scott Wiener (D-SF) held a press event at the Daly City BART Station Friday morning to…
After a succesful pilot program in 2023, Santa Monica began working on a permanent program for cracking down on illegal car parking in bus lanes. The Big Blue Bus has been telling advocates the program will “hopefully” launch next month.…
Last month, the State of California released the Draft State Highway System Management Plan (SHSMP), a document required by the legislature every two years. SHSMP provides a ten-year prediction of statewide transportation funding needs. Despite the word “highway” appearing in…
It is very much still a construction site, but there’s a lot of progress visible on Santa Monica’s new first/last mile connections to the Metro E Line 26th Street/Bergamot Station. Bergamot Station has typically seen about a thousand daily boardings, which…
We’ll have more details on Santa Monica specific grants later today or tomorrow. From San Diego to Del Norte County, communities throughout California received good news on Friday when the Governor’s office announced 288 grants totaling nearly $300 million designed…
Last week, the State of California dropped at least three long but important documents: reports on transportation needs, outcomes of transportation spending, and CAPTI 2.0. Streetsblog is aiming to produce summaries and some analysis of these reports quickly and later…
In 2023, the state legislature approved Senator Lena Gonzalez’ S.B. 695 which mandated Caltrans share project data publicly. One result of the new legislation is a new Caltrans’ report summing up five years of freeway expansion throughout the state. The report may…
Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Santa Monica) introduced AB 891, a bill that will require Caltrans to develop quick-build bike lane and intersection projects to improve safety on state highways for cyclists and pedestrians. A “quick build project” is a temporary,…
The following article also appears at Streetsblog. The Trump administration is quickly moving to radically transform the implementation of America’s bedrock environmental rule to ignore “environmental justice” and prioritize “efficiency and certainty over any other policy objectives” — a move…
Mayor Karen Bass promised a “car-free Olympics” when the games come to Los Angeles in 2028. Olympic Committee Chair for the L.A. Games promised 5,000 buses to transport fans, participants and volunteers…all of whom would be able to ride L.A.…
This story also appears at Streetsblog Los Angeles. Many Streetsblog readers and Metro riders already know this story: Metro ridership keeps on growing steadily. Recently released ridership data from January shows twenty-six consecutive months of increases. January 2025 saw 918,375…
Caption: This image from a presentation in March of 2024 shows the state’s plan for the next $35 billion of high speed rail funding. Only the top yellow part was from the federal government which will likely be pulled back…
Gesturing toward the nearly completed Wilshire/La Brea Metro station, U.S. Representative Laura Friedman warned “The Trump Administration proposed cuts to federal investments to support this stop, this train stop that is months away from opening.” “How crazy is that?” Metro…
