Heading into the Pro Walk/Pro Bike Conference this week, I thought now would be a good time to address the tension and opportunities that exists between bicycling and walking in the city of Santa Monica. For locals, occasional but regular conflicts between walkers and bike riders is hard to miss. Rarely does a week goes […]

Back in January of 2010, food bloggers helped make the debut of a “food truck parking lot” at the vacant car dealership lot on 14th and Santa Monica a smashing success. Over 1,000 people showed up, and  many of the trucks actually ran out of food. However the event was illegal for the location under city […]

Yesterday, the Santa Monica Daily Press published a story documenting “budget adjustments” affecting the city’s Bike Action Plan. The changes being made are driven by a number of factors with declining state revenue to the city being chief among them. The changes went largely unnoticed until planning commissioner Richard McKinnon started digging into the matter […]

This post marks the conclusion to my 3 part series “Santa Monica Traffic, Is It Really So Bad?”. Links to the first two parts are here (1) & here (2). In the debates about traffic in Santa Monica, the connection with new development goes hand in hand. New developments are the perennial punching bag and target of choice […]

The Santa Monica Lookout News recently reported that Santa Monica is speeding up its bike share plans from the 2016 date originally in the city’s bike action plan, to possibly by the end of next year. I felt the original goal date was unambitious, so I was really excited to read the status update the […]

Sadly this week marks the second fatality of a bike rider in Santa Monica this year (following the recent death of Antonio Cortez). This raises the Santa Monica traffic death toll to at least four that I am aware of in 2012, counting two prior pedestrian deaths this year. Erin Galligan, a 30 year old […]

Two weeks ago I started a conversation about traffic in Santa Monica.  That first post stirred up quite a bit of commentary and criticism. I expected this given my deviation from the playbook of many other local columnists: using populist rhetoric to complain about traffic congestion as a universal evil, with no viable proposals of […]

If you were to summarize the biggest complaint of Santa Monicans and many Westsiders in one word, that word would probably have to be traffic. With no other subject but auto-traffic congestion do I encounter so much heated rhetoric, nor as many entirely contradictory messages about what’s causing it and what to do about it. […]