UEPI News and Commentary

Bike or walk to Vote!

It might seem like a very modest suggestion, but what if cities, counties, states, and other jurisdictions like the Board of Elections encouraged people to vote by biking or walking to their polling place. “I biked to vote” or “I walked to vote” stickers could be used as a substitute for the “I voted” stickers now available.

Why might this be important? Consider that: 28% of all car trips are less than a mile; that a “cold start” (where the car first is turned on during the day) uses far more gasoline for that < than a mile trip and generates far more pollutants than any other point in a car’s journey; and that the reduction of the number of polling places generates more parking problems and more “cruising for parking” taking place, which itself consumes more gasoline.

It might be symbolic but short trips are precisely the area where biking and walking are more efficient and less costly and ultimately healthier for both people and the planet!

'Bike Riding in Los Angeles'

Now that UEPI is collaborating on a biking summit with some great folks from LA's energetic bike movement (stay tuned for more news and links to a summit planning wiki), I decided to re-read Bike Riding in Los Angeles, a 1972 novel by Marc Norman, best known for writing the screenplay for Shakespeare in Love.

Arroyofest: Five year anniversary

It's been five years since the residents of Northeast LA, South Pasadena and Pasadena took a bicycle ride down the car-free 110 freeway. 

LA Times blogger Steve Hyman remembers the event.:

"I was lucky enough to cover the event. And, I must say, riding a bike on a big, car-free freeway was exceptionally fun."

And Robert Gottlieb outlines a vision for a bikable freeway in an op-ed in today's LA Times.

So will there be another ArroyoFest?   Or can we truly make the oldest freeway in the west a corridor for alternative transportation?  Let us know what you think!

Recent UEP grad Ericka Fick's research project on Bike Culture, Community, and Politics in Los Angeles after the jump.

The Chicken and Egg Story – Park[ing] Day L.A.-- Park Poor, But Parking Rich

Los Angeles is one of the most park poor but parking rich cities in the country. Endowed with a Mediterranean climate, and mountains and ocean that span the region, what often passes for open space in areas like downtown L.A., are large open air parking lots.  It is not only that parking lots, wide streets, and rows of parking metered parking spaces are unattractive; they also have major impacts on quality of life and the environment by contributing to beach and ocean pollution, raising the temperature on already hot days, and increasing housing costs due to parking requirements imposed on developers.

moving slower in the car pool lane

As the number of hybrid cars sold in California reach 75,000 and the stickers available to drive solo in the car pool lane reach their max, angry car poolers in conventional cars may well try to block the program's renewal. They have a point: hybrids are going to continue to be sold at a fast clip regardless of car pool lane sticker availability, and there is a danger that the overall value of the car pool lane could diminish as more solo driver hybrids enter the lane. That would weaken one of the few incentives to reduce the huge number of those single occupied vehicles. But some of the angry car poolers also complain that hybrids go too slow -- 65 or even 70 mph instead of 80 and faster. They do that (I know from personal experience) because they're conscious of stretching their mileage. But that's a good thing, even good policy if we ever took seriously the idea that speed limits have a purpose. Slowing down to the speed limit on the freeway not only stretches gas mileage but could create less congestion with steadier traffic and fewer accidents. Traffic calming on the freeway -- an unintended consequence of the Prius moment?

Double decker highways and additional highway lanes on the 710 Freeway..do we really need more?

It's unfortunate, but buried within the legislative package of infrastructure projects that the Legislature passed last week, and that otherwise includes important goals such as affordable housing and education, will be a big chunk of change that will go to freeway building, particularly for increasing the ability to expand the movement of goods that flows through -- and pollutes -- the Southern California region. Translated: more freeway lanes or even a double decker of that most notorious of Southern California freeways, the 710.