California

California Republicans from Fresno and Bakersfield put their foot down in a House hearing yesterday, rejecting the high-speed rail project whose initial segment would run between those two cities.

Nonprofit reporting group California Watch recently looked at how Californians travel to work and concluded that free parking provided by the state's employers is leading to a lot of street-clogging solo car commuting.

On the local level, the night’s biggest win for sustainable transportation was the victory of Kirk Caldwell over Ben Cayetano to be mayor of Honolulu. Caldwell had won just 29 percent of the vote in the three-way primary race, facing a steep uphill battle in the general election versus Cayetano, a popular former governor who had pulled in 44 percent of the primary vote.

The election is less than a week away. Americans have a choice between a) a president who has overseen notable transportation and land use innovations but failed to provide leadership when the national transportation bill could have been reformed, and b) a former governor who enacted a progressive, pro-smart-growth agenda but who has renounced those positions as a candidate.

A professor at San Francisco State University recently developed an econometric model to study how smart growth affects travel behavior. His finding: quite a bit.

In a pivotal vote Friday, the California Senate approved $4.5 billion in bonds to begin construction of CA High-Speed Rail (CAHSR) connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles. The funds will help fund construction of the line's initial segment in the Central Valley and upgrades for the Caltrain and Metrolink commuter rail lines in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, respectively.

If you ever doubted whether a small investment in biking and walking could have a large impact, here is your proof.

Yesterday, for the second time in as many weeks, the House T&I committee held a hearing on the benefit-versus-boondoggle high-speed rail debate. Last time, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was asked to defend the peppering of high-speed rail grants to projects outside the Northeast Corridor. Yesterday, the topic narrowed to focus just on California's high-speed rail project, whose recently-drafted business plan [PDF] has revised its total construction cost to $98.5 billion through 2033—up from $43 billion though 2020 just a few short years ago.

If you live in Stamford, Connecticut and your walk to the train station gets safer next year, you can thank USDOT’s TIGER grant program. Or when your hometown of American Falls, Idaho suddenly gets complete streets downtown, accommodating people on foot, on bikes, on buses, in cars, and in wheelchairs, encouraging local shopping. Or when you realize that traffic congestion between Olympia and Tacoma, Washington has eased, not by adding lanes but by installing intelligent technology to manage traffic and encourage ridesharing.