The green area around Center Pointe Parkway makes little sense to me. There’s no housing there; the closest housing is at the top of the giant hill or off Rainbow Glen, so I don’t have too much confidence in this map (plus, have you ever tried to walk through an ocean-sized parking lot like that?)

Nor does the greenish area around the Valencia Industrial Center, unless by walkable, the site means “walk in the street with cars.” Because that place, shamefully, was built without sidewalks at all.

But other areas make sense. It’s interesting that we see two contrasting visions for urban design here. Down south in Newhall and in the east in Canyon Country, we’ve got lots of traditional, low-capacity, low-speed grid patterned streets and the areas rate as probably the most walkable in all of the SCV. Yes, cars and pedestrians can coexist.

Central Valley, along the McBean corridor, we’ve got NLF’s Master Plan, which also emphasized walkability but segregated walkers off onto paseos and bridges and went with high-capacity, high-speed roadways. This is probably the second most walkable area in town….as long as you’re on one of those beautiful paseos, otherwise good luck! (remember the woman killed in March walking on Orchard Village Road, where there are no sidewalks?)

The newer developments in the north and west, like Hillcrest, Stevenson Ranch, and Sunset Pointe, aren’t walkable at all. I grew up on hilly Laurelcrest Lane in Sunset Pointe, which gets a 45 “Car-dependent” score and I hated walking or riding my bike up that hill.

The liberal health nut inside me would like to see developers at least create high-quality paseo paths for auto-dependent ‘burbs like some of the ones on here. I think that if you’re a suburban developer and you’re committed to building cul-de-sacs, you ought to at least build walking paths like Newhall Land did back in the 60s to encourage walking and to shorten the distance between neighborhoods. It’s a shame that all the newer developments in town fail to meet the standards NLF set 40 years ago.

Anyway, what’s your neighborhood’s Walk Score?

http://www.walkscore.com/

All Multi-modal up in here

Neat article in the Signal about Bike to Work day in the SCV. Some experienced and first time riders shared their views:

Princess Cruises employee Eric Dean said biking to work every day saves him money and also gives him a good workout. Dean lives in Saugus and says his round trip to and from work each day is about eight miles.

Since he rides his bike, Dean’s family of four manages to get by with one car and saves money.

Exactly! After a few months of cycling to my former job in the SCV, I was able to get rid of my $250/month Subaru WRX, reduce my insurance bill by about a third, and save about $120 a month in gasoline and slash by over half my carbon footprint. Think of the money I saved over the two and half years I biked to work!

I didn’t just save money though, I lost something too, like this rider:

“It’s kind of fun,” said David Luna, a Saugus resident who works for Kaiser Permanente. “I’m trying to lose weight, so this is the first step.”

This is a good strategy. Who has time to go to the gym? Combine your workout with your commute to work and problem solved!

A City traffic engineer also rode his bike to work today. As a member of a department that I’ve accused of being too car-centric (building roads just for the transport and storage of cars, is what I think I’ve said), this was refreshing:

Ian Pari, senior traffic engineer for the city, said he lives in Saugus and was able to get rid of his car once he started working for the city. Pari normally takes the bus and walks the rest of the way to work, but he said taking the bus starting in Saugus and biking the rest of the way to work cut down on his commute time Thursday.

“I did the bike on bus, and it was so convenient,” Pari said. “I live up in Saugus, so it’s kind of far to bike the whole way.”

This is an interesting observation. Getting from Saugus to downtown Valencia isn’t that long of a drive in a car, even if you’re talking the depths of Seco & Pamplico or Plum Canyon. But if you’re riding a bike?

Well, look at this way. If the City would focus more on putting bike lanes on existing roadways, cyclists like Ian Pari would be able to ‘go where the roads’ go as most experienced cyclists like to do. Instead, the city focuses on segregating cyclists into beautiful, nicely-built and expensive off-street paths that seldom go where the roads go. Don’t get me wrong, I love our paths, but they are totally incomplete. Until they are complete, which will never happen given the lack of right-of-way in many parts of town, I prefer well-marked and spaced Class II on-street paths, the kind that line much of Bouquet, Rockwell Canyon, and parts of the Industrial Center.

Think about it- if Mr. Pari had a Class II lane all the way down Seco or Plum or wherver he lives in Saugus, and that lane continued all the way down Valencia Blvd, he’d be riding his bike on the same efficient path he would have driven his car on rather than diverting out of his way to get to a fancy, but incomplete off street path.

Of course there are safety concerns, but I find that most motorists respect well-marked bike lanes. The only accidents I’ve been in in the SCV have been my own stupid fault.

One last observation:

One employee joked about the “benefits” of riding his bike to work. Kevin Vinez, who works in environmental services for the city, said he won his bike in a Metro-sponsored raffle last year and rides to work on occasion.

“You get to come in all sweaty – that’s pretty cool,” Vinez quipped. “Your hair looks funny because the helmet smashes it down.”

I used to worry about that too. But you learn quickly how to adapt to life as a bicycle commuter. It’s simple really: leave a comb, a wash-cloth, some deoderant and, if you like, a spray bottle at work. Once you complete your commute, spend five minutes in the john and you’ll come out as fresh as roses with an endorphin high!

It’s striking to me how important these bridges are in our town. Kids & adults use them to safely cross our freeway-like streets. They literally link neighborhoods together, and they are neat to stand on and watch traffic go by underneath.

They can also function as the best-placed and most noticeable billboards in town, which is why the City allows non-profits to advertise on them. Occasionally they serve as platforms to express political sentiment, as in 2007 when the City put up THANK YOU BUCK! banners, or just a few days later, when someone modified the B to look like an F, or during election season in 2008 when Pro Prop 8 people swarmed public spaces in the SCV, including these paseo bridges. The bridges can add perspective too: I’ve photographed Tea Party rallies from a paseo bridge in Valencia, and I’ve watched the 4th of July fireworks from them too. Lately I’ve spied Ron Paul fans on the bridges.

What’s interesting about the paseo system is that it started as a piece of privately-funded infrastructure that served as a bullet point to sell Valencia to SCV newcomers, like my parents who told me about them before I moved here. But now, as you can see above, the City maintains them as public infrastructure. Over the decades they’ve morphed from being a novelty to something essential. We may not have much in this town that we can claim is originally ours, that is unique, but I think the paseo system and its numerous bridges come close.

The Comprehensive Newhall Pass Disaster Planning Tool 1.0 (CNPDPT) was developed for city planners, traffic engineers, emergency operations centers, law enforcement officers, CalTrans workers, and everyday Newhall Pass road warriors to help bring some order to the chaos.

The scenarios described in the instrument are based on real-life or potential disaster events that have/could result in the partial or full shutdown of the Newhall Pass.

It is presented free of charge or license fee below as a public service of SCVTalk:

Here’s how it works:

1. Print the instrument out, preferably on a heavy, sturdy paper
2.  Cut the wheel out, discard remaining paper
3. Cut the triangular black Disaster Randomizer Selector tool out from the wheel
4. Take care when inserting a sewing needle or other sharp instrument in the center of the wheel
5. Insert bottom end of sewing needle into cardboard base (a used box works well in our testing)
6. Prior to Monday morning commute, simply give the wheel a spin to assist you or your agency in planning for the terrible disaster about to befall the Newhall Pass
7. If you are a commuter, plan accordingly. Always have water and food on hand in your vehicle, some way to relieve yourself, music, and potentially a weapon (in case of zombie hordes)

Thank you in advance for any feedback you have on the design of the instrument or the scenarios presented. Remember, SCVTalk cares and we will continue to develop the tool as new, unforeseen disasters present themselves.

Dr. Donald Shoup, a Yale-trained economist, studies something no other respectable economist studies: the economics of parking. And his findings are pretty shocking.

Behold the cost we all bear for our laziness and need for convenience:

After 36 years, Shoup’s writings—usually found in obscure journals—can be reduced to a single question: What if the free and abundant parking drivers crave is about the worst thing for the life of cities? That sounds like a prescription for having the door slammed in your face; Shoup knows this too well. Parking makes people nuts. “I truly believe that when men and women think about parking, their mental capacity reverts to the reptilian cortex of the brain,” he says. “How to get food, ritual display, territorial dominance—all these things are part of parking, and we’ve assigned it to the most primitive part of the brain that makes snap fight-or-flight decisions. Our mental capacities just bottom out when we talk about parking.”

Nail. Meet Hammer.

In my 20 years of SCV living, I’ve found that few things piss SCVers off more than not finding convenient parking. I remember the aggression and anger (sometimes descending into fist fights) of fellow students at Hart and COC. The non-stop letters to the editor about the City’s admittedly misguided back-in parking plan. The live transformation -before your very eyes- of a genteel suburban soccer mom into a maniac gunning it through the parking lot of Westfield during the holidays.

Of course this isn’t just limited to SCVers. The article itself is all about parking in Los Angeles. But I’d argue that SCVers feel even more entitled to abundant, free, and convenient parking than anyone else in LA County. At least in LA there’s an expectation that you’ll have to pay for parking. The same is not true in Santa Clarita; indeed, we expect  free, convenient, and highly-available parking at all times and places, anything else is a license to get our pitchforks and torches and storm City Hall.

We have an upcoming City Council election. If you were to ask me how to get elected to the City Council, I’d say I have no idea. But if you were to ask me how to fail at getting elected but get more press & public attention than any of your opponents, I’d suggest you talk openly and boldly about your new plan to implement pay parking at some of the City’s more popular attractions and sites as a method to encourage alternative transportation and better land use.

Your candidacy would go down in flames (perhaps getting you an all time low vote count) but you’d live on in SCV infamy and become the hero of parking/transit geeks like me. And you might be responsible for voter turnout hitting 20 or 30%!

Along the same lines as the poor family that lives in Sand Canyon and has seen far too many crashes in their neighborhood, I have two ideas to combat the problem. One is rather traditional and boring and will no doubt outrage many: a massive, city-wide crackdown on speeders with coordination between Sheriff’s Deputies, the CHP, and the  city. This is admittedly a rather brutish approach to the problem, but it’s necessary nonetheless. If drivers -young and old alike- have no fear of the kinetic consequences of speeding, then they at least ought to fear getting caught speeding. It’s hard to probe the minds of Santa Claritans, but does anyone think the City’s current anti-speeding campaign (bus bench ads. Seriously. How many speeders ride the bus?) is scaring people enough to slow down?

To whatever extent possible, the city ought to establish a baseline for speeding then build some measurements into the program. Example: create speed zones around town, then start measuring. During week 1 of the crackdown in Zone 2, x number of citations were issued with Y being the percentage each driver was exceeding the speed limit by (5mph over in a 50mph zone would be 10%, for example). Week #2 saw x percentage drop-off in the amount of speeding citations and y% drop in the same zone. The Sheriff’s Department should be ruthless with the citations, and the City Council should steel their spine for in advance of the inevitable blowback.

Couple increased police enforcement with the placement of several more traffic speed monitoring devices, more automated speed/radar signs on certain high speed roads, hell even placebo police cars, and then voila! Watch as speeds decrease overtime as the perception of enforcement increases. We don’t necessarily need to start paying every Deputy overtime; all that is really needed is the perception that we’re getting tough on speeders.

The City already has an intelligent and advanced traffic information network; it’s time to augment that network and put it to use in the service of safety, not just efficient traffic flow.

Secondly, the radical but fun part: embrace the SCV’s need for speed. For whatever reason this town has a proud heritage of racing. Maybe it’s our beautiful, twisty, canyon roads, maybe the perchlorate in the water increases aggression and enhances the daredevil gene , maybe ye olde Saugus Speedway and exhaust fumes and gasoline are embedded in our consciousness…who knows?

Let’s embrace it in a controlled, practical, and fun manner by establishing Sheriff’s Department-managed, highly-controlled legal drag races.

Sounds crazy right? Not so, when you consider the National Hotrod Association has a Street Legal style racing program at tracks around the country (the nearest one is in Bakersfield or Pomona).  True, we don’t have a track, but that didn’t stop a San Diego professor from seeking out state grants and building a non-profit agency called RaceLegal that provided a “youth oriented environment in a neutral and centrally located location where we could replicate a street environment, but with safer and sanctioned conditions that insured the safety of our racers and their fans.” The group hosts 12 races every year and has seen youth speeding related deaths decline dramatically since the program was built in 1998. Here’s an example from just last year:

The idea would be to allow youths to drive their cars fast, but in a controlled and stable environment. This would not only make it safer for them, but for us. It’s been done in other communities and I’m confident that if we put our minds to it, we could do it here.

I’m admittedly somewhat of a maniac about safety on the streets. I blame two factors: almost being hit several times while riding around the SCV and this blog. I’ve been reading about crashes like the one on Tuesday for years. What’s more, I have a good memory and so each time I drive by a crash site, I’m reminded of what happened there, of the violence that accompanied driver, passengers, and innocent victims in the last moments of their life. Judging by the comments here and elsewhere I’m not the only one tired of the carnage.

The City should step up to this challenge and see if we could at least take a stab at reducing the number of speed related crashes and fatalities in our valley.

Two women hit by a car outside Mimi’s Cafe in Valencia today were taken to a hospital with minor injuries, while the 9-month-old baby in a stroller with them emerged uninjured, a sheriff’s spokesman said.

At 2:14 p.m., a car collided with two adult women, pushing the stroller with a baby in it through the intersection of Magic Mountain Parkway and Auto Center Drive between Mimi’s and the Westfield Valencia Town Center mall, said Lt. Tom Bryski of the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station.

“The two female adults were slightly injured but the baby in the stroller was uninjured,” he said.

The women were treated at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital.

“Basically, what happened was one female hit by the car was pushing the stroller, so that when she fell, she pushed the stroller forward and the baby fell out of the stroller,” said one local firefighter who responded to the scene of the collision.

“A car collided,” “the two women were hit by a car,” “one female hit by the car,” and so on. We see this kind of language used all the time in Signal and Sheriff’s reports about car-on-ped or bike accidents in the SCV. They always use the passive voice (the women were hit by the car) or they imply the car had free-agency and decided to hit the women on its own accord (the car collided).

Let’s look at this story once again as it should have been written:

A driver of a silver Mercedes SUV struck two women pushing a 9 month old in a stroller at a crosswalk in Valencia Monday, Sheriff’s officials report. The two women, who suffered minor injuries, were treated at the scene and transported to Henry Mayo Hospital. The infant was uninjured in the collision, which occurred at the intersection of Magic Mountain Parkway and Auto Center Drive.

“Basically, what happened was one female hit by the car was pushing the stroller, so that when she fell, she pushed the stroller forward and the baby fell out of the stroller,” said a firefighter on the scene.

*insert text about how the investigation is continuing, which doesn’t matter anyway, because we all know there will never be a follow-up*

See how that works so much better? When it’s written the first way, I get a little nervous that there are rogue, angry cars in the SCV that randomly strike people crossing the street. When it’s written the correct way, I realize now that it was the driver of the Mercedes who struck the woman with her car, not her car acting independently of human control.

Don’t get me wrong, I think reporting on such incidents has improved somewhat. A year or two ago, the lede might have been “Two women were accidentally hit by a car while obstructing traffic in a crosswalk.” At least they’ve dropped the word “accident” and replaced it with the more accurate “collision,” but still, please drop the passive voice and stop implying that cars are free agents in these kinds of stories. Thank you.

Riding the bus from work to home in the afternoon is always a treat. I’m tired, have a lot on my mind, and so it’s great to not have to fight LA traffic on the way home. Instead, I can read, listen to music or a podcast, people watch, or, simply fall asleep.

Of these, I fall asleep most often. This is great because by the time I get home, I’ve had an afternoon nap and feel refreshed, ready for all the evening’s activities.

However sleeping on the bus carries its own special risk, namely the risk of sleep terror.

What is sleep terror? Well I’m glad you asked because I’ve become something of an expert on the subject.

Sleep terror is when you fall asleep on a bus that’s not equipped with seat belts. There you are, slumbering peacefully when, for whatever reason, the bus driver taps mildly/slams on the brakes. In an instant, your relaxed body motions forward and your brain -up until this time more preoccupied with fantastic dreams- signals to the rest of your body: “Holy sh*t!!! You’re free-falling! ALARM, ALARM, ALARM! WAKE UP IDIOT! DO SOMETHING!” and you wake up with a jolt of adrenaline amid an overwhelming sensation of terror.

This happens to me several times a week and sometimes two to three times per bus ride. Last night’s incident was the worst, however. Because as my brain was signaling my body that I was free-falling through space and death was imminent, I awoke with must have been a really loud and dramatic inhale such that I startled all the people around me who wisely don’t sleep on the bus. An instant later, a hand reached forward and patted me on the shoulder, and a guy behind me said, “You’re okay man, you’re ok.” Then he chuckled under his breath, the bastard.

Indeed I was ok, but it takes a good 30 seconds to calm down from these scares to resume sleep. Past sleep performance is no guarantor of future sleep performance however, so this terrifying ”OMG I’m falling to my death. Wake up! Oh. I’m on the bus. Go back to sleep” process happens again by the time we’ve reached the Newhall Pass.

So yeah, when people ask me about the benefits and drawbacks of using mass transit, I’ve got one new drawback to mention: sudden terror at 55 mph. But even with these sudden terrifying moments and the savagery of other SCV bus riders, it’s still better than driving.

The Allstate Insurance Company (NYSE: ALL) today released its seventh annual “Allstate America’s Best Drivers Report™.” The report ranks America’s 200 largest cities in terms of car collision frequency to identify which cities have the safest drivers, according to Allstate claim data.

For the past seven years, Allstate actuaries have conducted an in-depth analysis of company claim data to determine the likelihood drivers in America’s 200 largest cities will experience a vehicle collision compared to the national average. Internal property damage reported claims were analyzed over a two-year period (from January 2008 to December 2009) to ensure the findings would not be impacted by external influences such as weather or road construction.

A weighted average of the two-year numbers determined the annual percentages. The report defines an auto crash as any collision resulting in a property damage claim. Allstate’s auto policies represent about 10 percent of all U.S. auto policies, making this report a realistic snapshot of what’s happening on America’s roadways.

So how did Santa Clarita fare?

Well according to the report, Santa Clarita drivers average 8.8 years between accidents, a number that is 13.9% above the national average. We’re worse even than Lanacster, whose drivers average an accident every 10.8 years. LA drivers average an accident every 6.6 years, which made them the second-worst large driving city in the US.

Overall, out of the 200 cities studied, Santa Clarita ranks 124th. Fort Collins Colorado is America’s safest driving City, where drivers average nearly 16 years between accidents.

Allstate’s report doesn’t seem that rigorous to me, but I will say this jives with my view of the SCV. I’m hyper-alert and cautious whenever crossing a street because you never know when someone is going to blow through the crosswalk light and make a hood ornament out of you. The City? Well they’re part of the problem. They’re almost exclusively focused on one thing: moving cars quickly. That’s why they segregate cyclists onto off-street paths that many times end up in Nowheresville, that’s why they’re more than happy to add lanes to Newhall Avenue without building sidewalks for pedestrians, that’s why they’re so proud of the beautiful new high speed CVC and the triple turn lanes on Bouquet and Soledad.

And guess what? It works. Traffic flow in the City is very fast as I demonstrated a year ago.

But speed comes with a cost: collisions are not only more likely, but they are more likely to be severe.

Anyway not a lot to be proud of in this report, let’s wait and see how (or if) the City spins it.

Frustrating right? I mean it’s not a good way to start your day, but these things happen. They’re called traffic jams and they’re an unfortunate fact of life in Los Angeles County.

Five minutes into the stop, my fellow SCVers behaved appropriately. They took their headphones off, woke up from their nap, or put the newspaper down. They quietly inquired of their neighbor what was going on. They looked out their windows to see why the traffic was backing up all around us and why nothing seemed to be moving. Then they went back to whatever they were doing to occupy the time.

By 15 minutes into the stop, people were understandably getting restless. I pulled out my laptop to see what the problem was. Google maps showed a long red & black line on the street we were on. What’s more, police started to show up. Obviously there was an accident or something wrong on the road ahead. Motorists started making their own rules and flipped U-Turns. Passengers in the bus started glancing at their watches nervously and texting people.

At 20 minutes, passengers who were only a few blocks from their destination decided to exit the bus. The bus driver let them off immediately and they went on their way. I still had five miles to go in my trip, so I couldn’t do that. I started to hear loud sighs and grumbling from the remaining commuters.

It was around the 30 minute mark that people started to lose their sh*t  pleasant suburban demeanor. A 50-something blonde woman two rows ahead of me called a friend who was on the 7:30 bus (commuter bus riders form tight & useful albeit temporary friendships with other bus riders). After a few minutes of complaining loudly that our “stupid” bus driver wouldn’t flip a U in the middle of a crowded 6 lane street, she found out that the bus behind us had been dispatched to avoid the gridlocked street and head down an alternate street.

Now armed with insight into our unfortunate situation vis a vis her friend who was enjoying a hassle free ride to work, she erupted. Walking up and down the aisle quickly, she pressed the males on the bus. “Don’t you care? Aren’t you upset?”

Do something! 

Why yes, I was upset, but what the hell am I going to do about it? Rip off my shirt to reveal the Bus Captain superhero outfit I wear beneath each day? Beat the driver senseless? Go Hulk and rip some seats up and throw them out the window?

But she, and several others, were beyond reason. The mutiny had begun.

At T+ 40 minutes, our 45 foot “Where the Good Life Takes You” coach became a rolling scene from Lord of the Flies. Sentiments most foul poured forth from seemingly kind little old ladies. Abuse after abuse was hurled at our poor driver as more and more angry riders discussed what they should do. You could almost see some of the riders grabbing for the conch in a frenzy.  One got the bright idea to call the dispatcher, thinking that if enough mean things were said to that poor bastard, he’d order our driver to ignore policemen all around us, the dozens of cars surrounding us, drive through the downed rail arms Dukes of Hazard Style, and get us on our way.

And then, just as I was becoming agitated enough to exit the bus and hail a cab (or walk), we started rolling again. And just like that, the atmosphere of mayhem dissipated, the older woman returned to her seat, and everything was at it should be. I arrived to work 45 minutes late but with a good story to tell and some insight into the savage capacity of your average SCVer.