Roger Rudick
Recent Posts
Transit Vote 2016: California’s Transportation Funding Ballot Initiatives
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We continue our overview of what’s at stake in the big transit ballot initiatives next week with a look at California. Previous installments in this series examined Indianapolis, Seattle, Detroit, Atlanta, and Raleigh. All three of Streetsblog’s west coast editors contributed to this article: Melanie Curry of Streetsblog CA, Roger Rudick of Streetsblog SF, and Joe Linton of Streetsblog LA. Twenty of 58 California […]
A Note of Caution on Tech and Privatizing Transit
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At a recent SPUR meeting, an audience member asked why cities continue to invest billions in long-term projects, such as the Central Subway, when ride-hail services such as Juno, Lyft, and Uber Pool have rendered urban rail more or less obsolete. This sentiment is reflected in a recent piece in the Atlantic by former Los […]
French Flair and Bullet Trains at Rail~Volution’s California Day
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The Rail~Volution conference at the San Francisco Hyatt concluded yesterday with three hours of presentations and break-out meetings about California High-Speed Rail. The focus: how to build the communities we want around HSR stations in Los Angeles, San Jose and Fresno. An important part of that was to learn from the experts: the French designers […]
Panel Asks: How do We Get More Diversity in Bike Advocacy?
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Yesterday evening, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) held a discussion about diversity as part of its “Bike Talks” series at the Sports Basement Grotto on Bryant Street. Janice Li, Advocacy Director for SFBC, moderated a panel comprised of Lateefah Simon, President of the Akonadi Foundation, Tamika Butler, Executive Director of the Los Angeles County […]
SPUR Talk: Gabe Klein on Technology and Past and Future Cities
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Gabe Klein, entrepreneur, writer and former head of transportation for Chicago and Washington DC, spoke yesterday afternoon at the Oakland office of the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) about how technology can be guided to shape the future of our cities. He put up a slide with a chilling number on […]
SF SPUR Talk: Dancing on the Grave of “Level of Service”
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Wednesday evening, SPUR, the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, sponsored a talk entitled “Reconsidering Transportation to Create Better Urban Spaces” at their new downtown Oakland location. The talk focused on the history and damage done by the almost mindless adherence over the years to Level of Service (LOS) on urban spaces […]
Vancouver, Canada: A City on Bikes with Lessons for Los Angeles
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(In advance of tomorrow night’s presentation with Modacity about the bicycling culture of Vancouver and what L.A. can learn; we asked Streetsblog contributor Roger Rudick to write about his recent trip to Vancouver. For more information about tomorrow’s event, click here.- DN) Ten years ago, Jeff Leigh, a businessman and engineer, lived in the suburbs, […]
The 710 and Measure R2: Can Los Angeles Build Transit and Beat Its Addiction to Asphalt?
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“We have to build an army of people who are willing to say ‘enough is enough,’” said Mayor Eric Garcetti at Wednesday’s MoveLA conference at Union Station, speaking of the region’s traffic and pollution problems. He was there, along with hundreds of other county and city leaders, drumming up support for Measure R2, a proposed […]
Metro’s North 710 Freeway Tunnel Study Meetings in High Gear, Pasadena Working Group Offers Brainy Alternatives
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Smart people live in Pasadena. Some of them work for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and send probes to Mars. Others spend their days figuring out quantum mechanics at Caltech. And still others dabble in transportation. A study group formed by Pasadena’s Mayor Bill Bogaard and its City Manager has a smart idea in response to L.A. Metro’s study to link […]
More Lanes on the 710 Means More Trucks: More Trucks Means More Pollution, Get it Caltrans?
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The Arts District of downtown Los Angeles is now a vibrant residential community. But the signs of its warehouse past are everywhere. Abandoned railroad spurs, peeking up from the asphalt and running down old brick streets, speak volumes about bad public policies and metrics that, even as LA struggles to rebuild its once-great transit system, […]
Bottle Thrower in Cuffs: This Time I Was the Cyclist Who Got Attacked
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Wednesday night I attended the vigil for Milton Olin, a cyclist who was run down and killed by a distracted Sheriff’s Deputy. The next morning, I decided to do something I haven’t done in a long time: go for a purely recreational ride. As I get older, and my number of close-calls gets larger, the […]
Law Enforcement and Bike Safety: Top Cops Must Innovate, not Prevaricate
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If you approach LAPD headquarters from First Street, City Hall is reflected in the windows. This was designed into the building intentionally, to remind cops that they’re not there to serve the police department itself; they’re to serve the people of Los Angeles. When I first moved to downtown from Los Feliz in 2009, I […]