LAT takes on traffic
Monday's Times has a roundup of strangely thin capsules on
problem highways around the state, and curiously gives no more depth to those in Los Angeles than to those in distant Northern California. Meanwhile, in a Sunday Current piece, author and professor of urban planning Robert Bruegmann (
Sprawl: A Compact History) points out that it's easier to drive across Los Angeles than many cities. He also
thinks we should stop whining.
I would argue that to a great extent, worries about sprawl and traffic have developed not because our situation is so bad but precisely because it is so good. In good economic times, expectations tend to run ahead of what is possible. And soaring expectations rather than actual problems are, I believe, responsible for a good deal of our contemporary discontent....
Even when speeds on the freeway decline to 20 mph, drivers throughout the Los Angeles area move more quickly than they do by car or public transportation at the center of almost any large, older city in Europe or the United States....When it comes to automobile travel, Los Angeles, perhaps more than almost any other large city in the world, suffers from a deflation of greatly raised expectations. After all, the residents of Paris, New York or Tokyo never even entertained the possibility that they could drive through the center of the city at 60 mph.
He also notes that transit use in L.A. is dropping as a percentage of all trips made.
Speaking of driving and insurance
The Auto Club
will announce today it is abandoning the practice of basing insurance rates mainly on ZIP codes and will count safety and number of miles driven more highly.
Attack on Reseda synagogue
Two days before the new Beith David was to open, someone set fire to discarded boxes and carpets placed at the front door and scrawled anti-Semitic graffiti. The
Jewish Journal has details.
310's day is July 26
That's the day that all phone calls within the 310 area code will have to start with 1-310, even if you are calling next door. Besides the inconvenience, it means reprogramming for cell phones and automatic dialers.
Kind of a pain for many businesses, the LABJ says.
The approaching deadline has caught many business owners, professionals and residents off guard, especially those with automatic dialing machines that must be reprogrammed or replaced. These include internal business systems, speed-dialing equipment, call-forwarding devices, computers, alarm systems, cell phones and any other piece of equipment that stores a phone number that can be used for automatic dialing.
Almost nobody Im talking to is aware of this. People are going to wake up on July 27 and find their phones or speed dialers will not work, said Steve Diels, who runs a call center in Redondo Beach.
Hardest hit are likely to be owners or operators of facilities with secured-entry systems that rely on visitors dialing an entry code that speed dials a number. Many of these machines must be reprogrammed, while some older ones that can only store seven digits must be replaced entirely.
Price of admission
Former Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski and her husband Doug Ring are holding a fundraiser for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson later this month at their Brentwood home.
Rick Orlov notes that it's $500 a person, $2,500 to be called a "co-host" and $10,000 to go all the way to host status.
'Full Disclosure' loses its spot
I've wondered before how it is that Leslie Dutton's politically charged interview show found a home on Channel 35, the city's official TV outlet. Turns out that Councilman Bernard Parks sponsored "Full Disclosure," but now he is pulling his support. Dutton
isn't happy.
Fewer TV critics
More Daily News bloggers
Front section columnist
Dennis McCarthy is now blogging on the Daily News website, though not very often. Business columnist
Greg Wilcox has jumped on the bandwagon too.
You're supposed to wash them
Future of Cole's
Cedd Moses talks about his wish to buy the venerable
downtown eatery in the Downtown News.
Westwood farmers market back
The Thursday market is no longer in Westwood Village, but it's going again on the VA grounds west of the San Diego Freeway.
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As usual the day begins with a meaty meal of news briefs and observations — the Morning Buzz. Come on inside after you check out some of these LA Observed posts from last week:
