California

California High-Speed Rail Moves Forward

On December 16, the California High-Speed Rail Authority apparently issued a Request For Qualifications (RfQ) amongst train-operating companies — for the guidance of planning and early stage-operations of the planned Central Valley to Silicon Valley bullet train. To explain that more simply, the California High-Speed Rail Authority has begun looking for a train operator for the first …

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$9,641 = Annual Savings Taking Public Transportation In USA

Also published on CleanTechnica. Riding public transportation is a vital means of saving money, money that can much more happily be spent on other things than on owning, driving, and maintaining a car. Transit riders can forget about auto insurance, car payments, fuel costs, tuneups at the mechanic, expensive broken car parts, etc. The American Public …

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California Judge Rules in Favor of High-Speed Rail

According to The Fresno Bee, a Sacramento, California, judge recently denied the efforts of Kings County Board of Supervisors to halt production of a high-speed bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles. This is yet another advancement for the project which has been held up in litigation and bureaucracy for the last several years. …

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$64 Million Bike & Ped Plan For San Diego Moves Forward

Recently, Next City reported on San Diego, California’s $64 million plan to construct a bicycle and pedestrian transit system complete with “protected bike lanes, pedestrian greenways, curb bulb-outs, road diets and more.” The Downtown Mobility Plan, if adopted, will reinvent the way cyclists and pedestrians travel the downtown streets. “Just getting to this stage is …

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Bikesharing In Los Angeles Launches In Santa Monica

By Kyle Field Santa Monica and Venice Beach are two iconic Southern California destinations that embody the beach lifestyle in 2 very different ways. The upscale shopping mecca that is Santa Monica sports lots of EV chargers — many of which are free — and the architecture in the area exudes modern environmental awareness and …

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7 Things I Loved about Living & Bicycling in Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, & Redwood City, CA

Following up on my posts about what I loved about living and bicycling in Sarasota, FL and Chapel Hill-Carrboro, NC, here are 7 things I loved about living and bicycling in Northern California. In the middle of graduate school, I lived in Sunnyvale for a summer, worked in Redwood City, and did most of my grocery shopping in Palo Alto. So, despite being 3 different places, they were sort of one place to me and I’m combining them all for this.

Southern California Investing in Bike Paths!

Southern California is known for its beautiful weather and, ironically, for its auto-centric development patterns. Why not take advantage of that beautiful weather more, some have argued. And they are actually being listened to, finally,.. in Long Beach at least. Long Beach is now constructing a network of separate bike paths. The city currently doesn’t …

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Happiest City in U.S.? (No Cars on Main Street, No Fast Food, No Smoking, Bike Valet)

Oprah recently featured San Luis Obispo, “America’s Happiest Town” (if the video above doesn’t work for you, that’s the link to it). Jenny McCarthy actually does the leg work for this video story. Highlighted features of the city are that it shut down its main street 40 years ago — “experts say if your town …

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Most Promising High-Speed Rail Routes in U.S.

What are the most promising high-speed rail routes in the nation? A new report released by America 2050 evaluated 7,870 potential high-speed rail corridors across the country Here’s more on the report from the INFRASTRUCTURIST: To evaluate each corridor, the authors created a scoring system that weighed 12 factors that contribute to rail ridership, including …

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Caltrain Threatened with Service Cuts, Citizens to the Rescue?

The mobility of Caltrain’s 40,000 daily riders on the Peninsula and the South Bay could drastically suffer under deep service cuts being considered to close a $30 million budget gap, but a movement to get the commuter rail service agency out of the red and on a path toward long-term sustainability is gaining momentum. “Everyone …

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EcoLocalizer Link Drop

New Transit Projects for 2011 A comprehensive list of transit projects scheduled to start construction or open in 2011. “Streetcar lines dominate the nation’s new transit construction landscape, but this year only light and commuter rail lines will open for service.” NYC Tries ‘Rapid’ Buses in Bid to Cut Transit Costs The city’s much-maligned bus …

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Over 30% of San Francisco Households Now Car-Free

New data out in the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency 2010 Transportation Fact Sheet shows that the number of car-free households in San Francisco has climbed a little bit recently, bringing the percentage of car-free households in this progressive city above 30%. Yes, an increase from 29.8% to 30.3% isn’t huge, but you know how we …

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Where’s the World’s Most Painful Commute?

I was just writing earlier on the power of cities and the progressive transportation choices cities can take to turn the world around (environmentally, economically, and otherwise). Looking at this from a different (and perhaps more negative) angle, IBM recently released a global “Commuter Pain Study.”