Cities, Counties, and Countries

California administrative rulemakers recently moved a step closer to reforming the section of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) that has compelled cities to focus undue attention on the age-old Automobile Level of Service (LOS) threshold for impacts of new projects and has led to the construction of excess off-street parking.

Mary Yonkers, 58, of San Mateo, was killed by a truck driver while riding her bicycle to work on Shoreway Road in Redwood City last week.

The new head of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Jay Walder, is considering a novel approach to attracting more transit riders: lowering fares during off-peak hours. In an interview with the New York Times he outlined his ambition to get more out of a system designed for peak capacity, even late at nights and on weekends.

When House transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) recently accused his colleagues of lacking the “political will” to pursue long-term reform of infrastructure policy, he wasn’t simply employing a D.C. rhetorical flourish. To understand what Oberstar meant, let’s travel to Berlin for a moment. A German-made high-speed rail car. (Photo: Spiegel) Colby Itkowitz, CQ’s crack … Continued

With several well-publicized violent incidents on Muni buses recently, including two brutal attacks and a videotaped fight, security has become a hot issue for the MTA. Though the agency actually reported a slight decrease in crime over the past fiscal year, it hasn't matched the 13 percent citywide drop in the most serious crimes over the first half of 2009. The San Francisco Police Department responded in late September with a one-day sting called "Operation Safe Muni," and the MTA has scrambled to test its onboard camera equipment, which has failed during several incidents, including the stabbing of a young boy in September and the West Portal light rail vehicle crash in July.

With the debate about parking meter rates and hours raging on both sides of the Bay, Streetsblog called UCLA Professor Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking and arguably the world's foremost parking expert, and asked him his opinion on the new San Francisco MTA parking meter study, which was released on Tuesday and calls for increasing meter hours in commercial districts where parking occupancy rises above 85 percent and where businesses are open late on weekdays and on Sundays.

Streetlights are an enormous part of any city's energy consumption and cities that wish to cut down on their emissions and their energy bills are getting in line to convert their older street lamps to LED technology. According to Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) and Department of Energy (DOE) data, street lighting costs are one of the biggest components of a city’s utility bill, accounting for 10 percent to 38 percent of the total. With nearly 35 million street lights in the United States, about 1 percent of all electricity is used by street lighting systems.

Note: We've posted an update and a profile of Mary Yonkers.