Blogs

How did mass transportation in urban areas wind up getting shafted by the federal stimulus bill? According to an analysis published in Thursday's New York Times, urban transit systems are set to receive far less of the $26.6 billion than are rural areas. This is hard to justify, given that population, jobs and education are concentrated in urban areas. (You can do your Homer Simpson imitation at this point.)

I recently returned from four months of living in Moscow. The best thing I brought from California was a Zen-like detachment to accept Russia on its own terms. Because Russia is what it is.

And Russia is basically a mess. A livable mess, where the trains run on time. But it is the kind of place that made my family appreciate California. Despite its ongoing  financial wreck, the Golden State looks pretty good when viewed through the prism of Moscow.

One person's infill is another person's environmental disaster.

It seems to me that, like so many other policy initiatives, this whole SB 375 thing can either be a bureaucratic nightmare or a useful way to move forward. We can devote an enormous amount of time and attention to figuring out how to comply with the law ... or we can figure out how to drive less.

Even as local officials in Southern California attack the question of how to implement SB 375, they have slyly begun to suggest that the bill isn't the best way to attack the problem it supposedly addresses – greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It is not clear what the locals will do with this line of attack, unless they are angling to try to go back to the Legislature to shift the responsibility for GHG emissions reductions away from land use and back toward technological improvements.