Recent Streetsblog USA posts about California

California Has Officially Ditched Car-Centric ‘Level of Service’

By Damien Newton and Melanie Curry | Aug 7, 2014 | No Comments

Ding, dong…LOS is dead. At least as far as the state of California is concerned. Level of Service (LOS) has been the standard by which the state measures the transportation impacts of major developments and changes to roads. Level of Service is basically a measurement of how many cars can be pushed through an intersection […]

Talking Headways Podcast: Good Riddance, “Level of Service”

By Tanya Snyder | Jul 15, 2014 | 4 Comments

All the buzz right now is about Arlington, Virginia — the DC suburb has seen its population rise and its car traffic drop since the 1980s. How did they do it? It could be a lesson for Palo Alto, California, which is considering various growth proposals, including one that would invite greater density as long as […]

Talking Headways Podcast: California Über Alles

By Tanya Snyder | May 1, 2014 | 2 Comments

Welcome to our all-California, all-the-time episode of the Talking Headways podcast. We start with a statewide debate over whether $60,000+ Teslas should qualify for tax breaks — or whether any electric vehicles should get tax breaks. Then on to the conversation about how California’s cap-and-trade dollars should be spent. One proposal, from the State Senate leader, […]

Caltrans Endorses the NACTO Urban Street Design Guide

By Melanie Curry | Apr 11, 2014 | No Comments

It wasn’t a total surprise, but exciting nevertheless for bicycle advocates gathered at the NACTO “Cities for Cycling” Road Show in Oakland last night. Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty announced that the agency will endorse the use of the National Association of City Transportation Officials Urban Street Design Guide, giving California cities the state DOT’s blessing to install modern […]

Parking Craters Aren’t Just Ugly, They’re a Cancer on Your City’s Downtown

By Payton Chung | Apr 10, 2014 | 12 Comments

Streetsblog’s Parking Madness competition has highlighted the blight that results when large surface parking lots take over a city’s downtown. Even though Rochester, winner of 2014’s Golden Crater, certainly gains bragging rights, all of the competitors have something to worry about: Cumulatively, the past 50 years of building parking have had a debilitating effect on America’s downtowns. […]

Apple Transportation Program Stuck in the Past

By Tom Fairchild | Apr 9, 2014 | 24 Comments

Tom Fairchild is the director of Mobility Lab. This article was originally published by METRO Magazine. As an avid iPhone user, I have bought into the sense that Apple could literally peer into the future and deliver me technology that I never realized I would so desperately need. For years, Steve Jobs and company seem to have been our […]

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