Headline News

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Rep. John Mica, R-Florida, told reporters this week that he expected the House to pass a new surface transportation authorization by March. According to the Associated Press, Mica told reporters that his bill would spend about $285 billion over the six years.

Outsourcing traffic enforcement to red-light and speed camera vendors can spell trouble for municipalities, according to a new report from a consumer watchdog group....Engineering alternatives, such as lengthening yellow lights, are often the best way to reduce injuries from red-light running, the report says, but such solutions often get short shrift from ticket revenue-hungry contractors and municipalities. “Automated traffic ticketing tends to be governed by contracts that focus more on profits than safety,” CALPIRG Legislative Director Pedro Morillas said. “Too often, local governments are taken for a ride by red-light camera vendors overly focused on their bottom line instead of public safety.”

A new bike lane planned for Golden Gate Park has raised the ire of disabled advocates who say the pathway poses a safety hazard. The bike lane, the first of its kind in The City, will be situated between a row of parked cars and the sidewalk on John F. Kennedy Drive...But because cars will now have to park several feet from the curb, crossing the bike lane — full of swift-moving cyclists — will be very difficult for persons with limited mobility, said Byron Yan of the Independent Living Resources Center, an advocacy organization for the disabled.

...The conference is still taking shape but recent remarks from the administration seem to imply that the focus will be on planning for climate change impacts. “We have to move from planning to action…and we are behind,” says Julia Levin, Brown’s deputy secretary for climate change and energy at the California Natural Resources Agency....Out of the now-familiar science came several points for coastal stakeholders....We should “establish a preference for green infrastructure over [the] gray” of concrete, said Louis Blumberg, who runs California climate programs for the Nature Conservancy.