Melanie Curry

Caltrans' Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Branch has been working with SafeTREC, UC Berkeley's Safe Transportation Research and Education Center, on a couple of projects to increase safety. The researchers are asking for locally collected data on the number of pedestrians and bicycles using state highways and local arterials roads.

It's exciting times in Oakland, California. In the past six weeks, Oakland has passed a raft of policies that promise to have a lasting effect on the city's future transportation and development. This is all being done as part of the city government's reorganization, creating a new Department of Transportation to better strategize and coordinate transportation planning and construction.

Long-time Caltrans planning chief Katie Benouar is retiring, so there's a job opening up at the top of the transportation planning division.

Caltrans is making some progress on its first-ever statewide bicycle and pedestrian plan. The progress is happening at a Caltrans pace, but it is coming along. Two workshops were held this week to discuss what's been done so far: the draft vision, goals, and objectives. An online survey seeks input on what needs to be added or adjusted.

Climate Plan, a coalition of more than fifty nonprofits working on California climate policies, released a report [PDF] about what we've learned from S.B. 375, one of California's policy efforts to grapple with climate change. The coalition held a day of presentations in Sacramento on Monday to celebrate the release. Presenters—people who've been working in state and local agencies and advocacy organizations—confirm that we've learned quite a lot, that planning practices in California are changing, and that there is still more work to do to achieve state goals.

Update: Caltrans officially announced the opening of the island end of the path will happen at noon on Sunday [PDF]. The press release includes a map of the shuttle route, which will run every 30 minutes between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekends and holidays. And here's an explanatory video they made.

Contra Costa County voters are considering whether to tax themselves to pay for transportation, and the plan accompanying the measure has a few potentially game-changing aspects. That doesn't mean that sustainable transportation advocates all support it, however.

The most recent cap-and-trade allocation bill, A.B. 1613, allots $10 million to the Active Transportation Program. The money comes with a few strings attached. Any projects funded by cap-and-trade have to show that they reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Also, the money must be allocated by 2018 and spent by 2020.

At last week's California Air Resources Board hearing to discuss its plan for meeting climate change goals, the cap-and-trade system that has underpinned much of the state's efforts got raked over the coals. But not by the industries subject to the emissions cap.

The California High Speed Rail Authority released three simple animations showing possible routes for the Palmdale to Burbank section. The animations appear on separate maps, so it's hard to compare them side-by-side, but they give a pretty good idea of how very, very long the proposed tunnels are.