The loss of state and federal funding halts affordable housing construction at a time of unprecedented need. The biggest loss for local officials has been the $1 billion a year that had flowed from redevelopment agencies across the state, which have all been abolished to close the state's budget gap.

Read it in today's LA Times.

Following last week's two 4.5 magnitude earthquakes, Metro's engineering and operations staff and consultants answer the question: "What magnitude are the tunnels or stations designed to withstand?" It's noted that subways generally survive earthquakes with minimal or no damage, far less than buildings or roads.

Read it on The Source.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="470"] America's Olympic basketball team rides public transit, tweeting "#fasterwaybacktothehotel."[/caption]

Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's VP nominee, has repeatedly voted against Amtrak and rail authorizations, and his Congressional budget proposal would have defunded high speed rail completely. He gave California's HSR project the "budget boondoggle award" last year.

Read about it on the California HSR blog.

The TIFIA loan program in the new federal transportation bill facilitates public-private partnerships, encouraging government institutions to enter into long-term partnerships with private contractors to build and maintain a piece of infrastructure, supported by third party financing.

Read the story in Financial News.

The Golden Rule elegantly sums up the moral imperative “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The best place to practice is in the city, because only in the city do we find the rich and poor, sick and healthy, black and white, all living close together.

The author of this essay on Seattles Land Use Code blog wonders whether Jesus was a density advocate. "If we are to love our neighbor as ourselves," he points out, "it’s awfully hard to do if we have no neighbors. Living in a city means have lots of neighbors and encountering otherness every day. How we deal with otherness, our neighbors, shapes how we deal with issues of public spending, priorities for policy, and how we organize our society. Our tendency can often be to push each other and unpleasant things away. Cities make that harder to do, turning the problems of other people into our problems."

Check it out:

The Federal Transit Administration issued a Record of Decision yesterday on the Westside Subway Extension’s environmental studies, which means pre-construction activities – such as soils testing and utility relocation – can begin. This allows LA Metro to pursue a full funding grant agreement for New Starts funding from the federal government. Metro plans to build the project with a combination of Measure R sales tax funding and federal money.

Read more on The Source.

LA Metro's The Source blog posted a letter from the California Geological Survey -- and a Beverly Hills Weekly story about the letter -- which reviewed an earthquake fault study contracted by the Beverly Hills Unified School District. The study shows the fault is not active under the Beverly Hills High School campus; the Geological Survey letter says more work needs to be done before the conclusion is justified.

A state lawsuit has been filed by the School District against Metro involving the adequacy of the environmental documents for the Westside Subway Extension. Metro’s studies concluded that the West Beverly Hills Lineament is active in the High School area but can safely be crossed by the tunnels at a near perpendicular angle. Metro’s studies also concluded that the Santa Monica Fault is active along Santa Monica Boulevard in Century City and that a subway station could not be safely built at that location. The Source provides a link to Metro's studies.

More here.

 

Here is the letter (link is here):

Planetizen blogger Michael Lewyn writes about the triangulation of transportation politics these days: the road lobby, the environmental/transit coalition, and the anti-tax/anti-spending conservatives at the federal and state levels. And he discusses the strange case of his hometown Atlanta where, he speculates, the road lobby and transit advocates could have won if they'd been unified, but instead were defeated by a coalition of groups as diverse as the Tea Party, Sierra Club and NAACP. Read more.

 

The Daily News had the full story of what went down at the Board of Supervisors yesterday when they voted 3-1 to put the 30-year extension of the Measure R sales tax for transportation -- to be called Measure J -- on the November ballot. Read it here.