I watched a bicyclist get hit by a car today in Westwood Village, right in front of me. So I had bike riders on the mind.
Tests for drugs and alcohol came back negative, so Dodgers first baseman James Loney won't be charged in his November 14 crash on the Ventura Freeway.
I guess it's good news that the president's main venue on Feb. 15 will be in Holmby Hills, at the home of soap opera producer and writer Bradley Bell and his wife Colleen.
The narrow squeeze between the San Fernando Valley and points north shuts down so often that a blog has come up with the, um, Comprehensive Newhall Pass Disaster Planning Tool.
This morning at 9 a.m., Councilman Tom LaBonge and others will gather at the Caltrans building in Downtown to celebrate the first use of Loyd Sigman's SigAlert system.
Long Beach wants to be known as more a bicycle friendly city than Portland, Oregon — and even put its claim of two-wheeled superiority on the wall of city hal
Hard to see today, but Downtown was encircled on at least two sides by big hills that blocked access. As L.A.'s outlying areas grew, the traffic poobahs punched through the hills with tunnels.
Westbound lanes of the 60 freeway were opened about 11 a.m. on Saturday. The eastbound lanes were back in service by about 3 p.m.
The MTA, not surprisingly, didn't care for Reason.tv's lampoon of light rail the other day.
Lots of roads in the higher elevations of Los Angeles County are having snow closures after Monday's storm.
The libertarians at Reason.tv made an entertaining video on traveling by rail from LAX to Burbank, accompanied by their research on how much the public subsidizes the transit system.
Metro says it has no cause yet for the failure of a retaining wall section on the 405 freeway improvement project in Sepulveda Pass.
On January 1, a new amnesty program allows drivers who ignored their traffic tickets before 2009 to pay half of what they owe and clear their record. The Legislature saw...
Kent Twitchell's mural of L.A. Chamber Orchestra players started going up in 1991
Fun story on Off-Ramp over the weekend about architect Arthur Golding's concept of an open-air mercado with cafes spanning the Los Angeles River.
The Expo Line has taken its next big step on the path from construction project to actual light-rail transit line.
The worst of the bunch, in the latest Texas Transportation Institute study, is supposedly the stretch of the 110 Freeway from Interstate 10 to the Dodger Stadium exit at Stadium Way.
Parking at the Getty Museum used to be free after 5 p.m.
Grand Avenue will be blocked in front of Disney Hall on Tuesday, or so the sign says.
A no parking sign of dubious origin, plus evidence of progress on the Eli Broad art museum on Bunker Hill.
The California Public Utilities Commission gave its go-ahead to the grade crossings proposed for the second phase of the Expo Line, west from Culver City across the Westside to Santa Monica.
A website gathers the rear-window plaques for hundreds of car clubs across the U.S., including more than 100 in the San Fernando Valley alone — covering generations of low riders, high riders and more.
Evidence is mounting for the bad health effects of breathing the air in traffic jams and living near freeways, even as the exhaust from cars and trucks gets cleaner.
Time-lapse video of the tear-down work on the north side of the Sunset bridge.
Concrete in the 1933 bridge connecting Downtown with the Eastside is rotting from the inside and the structure is slated for replacement.
It could have been worse. The final segment of Obamajam was avoided when the President flew by chopper from Burbank to LAX.
Rob Adams' video of the scene at the Oct. 9 CicLAvia on L.A. streets.
L.A. gets acquainted with a new level of Obamajam while President Obama himself stops for takeout and politics at Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles.
There's not much new to know since we filled you in last week.
A byproduct of the geological research for Metro's Westside subway extension is that the northern end of the deadly Newport-Inglewood Fault is better understood by scientists.
They're calling it Viadoom, the massive urban traffic breakdown some fear from the nine-day closure of the Alaskan Way Viaduct along the Seattle waterfront.
President Barack Obama is scheduled to arrive at LAX on board Air Force One between 4:30 and 5 p.m. on Monday, the White House just announced.
The show will air next Tuesday, the night after fundraisers in the Hancock Park area.
Metro's experts panel of seismologists, geologists and engineers also says tunneling poses no threat to Beverly Hills High School.
Lisa Napoli, the public radio veteran who stepped out of the rat race a few years back to live in Bhutan, recently began hosting All Things Considered every afternoon on KCRW. That made her a cross-town commuter.
UC Berkeley researchers looked at the the after effects of the state moving hybrid drivers out of diamond lanes as of July 1 — and on Bay Area freeways, the impact was significant.
USC professor and Asymptotia blogger Cllifford V. Johnson rode from Heliotrope and Melrose, the western end of Sunday's CicLAvia route, to the eastern end at Hollenbeck Park.
Here's a quick guide to Sunday's closure of ten miles of streets around Los Angeles.
Requiring drivers to slow to 15 miles an hour while passing a bicyclist closer than three feet is not going to fly.
Before there was Google Maps — and still today, if an Angeleno really wants to know where something is located — there was the Thomas Bros. street atlas, aka the Thomas Guide.
On- and off-ramps serving Sunset Boulevard at the 405 freeway will start closing Friday for 14-day periods of rebuilding. It's the other shoe falling from the earlier demolition of half...
If you were caught in traffic near Sunset Boulevard between Beverly Hills and Brentwood between 9:30 and 10 a.m., that was just President Obama heading for his helicopter.
So far the timing of the president's moves across the Westside seems to be smooth and on schedule.
Coming up on my Monday KCRW commentary: why presidential visits are mainly traffic events for Angelenos, and why they also tend to create the worst jams.
President Obama woke up in San Francisco, is in La Jolla now for a fundraising lunch and will be in L.A. this afternoon.
Presidential visits (of both parties) typically create the most intense surface street traffic jams most of us have ever seen in L.A., but they tend to be localized and avoidable if you just plan ahead.
Check out the car hanging over the edge of a parking structure on Wilshire Boulevard near Veteran Avenue in Westwood.
Historian Richard White provides a dose of reality for the romantic notion of high-speed trains zipping across California, just like in "France, Japan, and now China."

The president and the mayor could benefit from each other's help.
In my Monday afternoon column coming up on KCRW, I praise today's Expo Line groundbreaking in Santa Monica — and the Libros Schmibros bookstore at the Hammer Museum.
President Obama will be in West Hollywood on Sept. 26 for two entertainment-themed fundraisers. The return of Obamajam will be on a Monday night.
Caltrans had planned to show off four new pieces of artwork along Los Angeles freeways this morning, replicas of murals from the 1984 Olympics era that had been defaced by taggers. But overnight, two of the pieces were stolen.
Pop music staffer Todd Martens was in the subway in Hollywood last night when he witnessed a man stab another man, then flee the scene. It was more complicated than...
"The feeling is that this could be much worse" than Carmageddon, says the president of the Westwood Homeowners Association.
Hate to break this to all you miscreants out there, but you've never had to pay your ticket.
The City Council just voted 13-0 to kill off the program,.
Leo Braudy and Timothy Egan on what to take from last weekend's unexpectedly light traffic.
The L.A. culture war between drivers and bicyclists was in full view this morning on KPCC's "Airtalk.
Supervisor Yaroslavsky's website team has pulled together some insightful data points from the weekend closure of the 405 freeway.
KPCC's John Rabe and I share a pet peeve: drivers who take up two curb parking spots by not pulling a few feet farther forward.
Lakers center Andrew Bynum was videotaped parking his BMW across two marked disabled spots at the Bristol Farms store in Westchester.
Now that the big media event is over, it's back to the routine closures that users of the 405 freeway have experienced over the past several months. Here's tonight's partial list.
Carmageddon weekend is taking on the same image of freedom from traffic as the 1984 Olympics has in Los Angeles lore.
It's been real quiet across the Westside with no 405 freeway spewing white noise for miles around. Villaraigosa thanks "the people of Los Angeles for doing their part."
As the traffic experts say, it doesn't take many drivers to change their ways for congestion to go away.
It's not bad out there. I came over Sepulveda Pass about 2 o'clock, and except for what seemed to be a bit of lookie-loo slowdown on both sides approaching the...
Until the tunnel under Mulholland Highway opened in 1930, there wasn't much "pass" to Sepulveda Pass. There was a dirt road and trails, but most of the traffic between...
Traffic along the 405 has been good today. People are self-correcting: good sign. Now this from cartoonist Donna Barstow.
A roundup of news and observations on the biggest story in Southern California: this weekend's closure of the 405 freeway in Sepulveda Pass, potentially affecting a million or more people — but probably only a little bit.
The city Department of Transportation is slapping up new No Stopping any Time signs for Carmageddon weekend on these streets, mostly in the Valley.
The Automobile Club of Southern California Archives have some stunning photos from the years in which the L.A. area was discovering its relationship with the car. Like this one.

I'm pretty sure I swore off the Hitler spoofs awhile back. but this one is worth it — and just very smart about the city's culture.
Carmageddon in the New York Times, from Los Angeles bureau chief Adam Nagourney. You would think that Los Angeles, of all places, would know how to handle a catastrophe. But...
As part of the official choreography of publicity for the 405 freeway shutdown next month, the LAPD asked Ashton Kutcher and other celebrities — Lady Gaga among them — to...
Metro has posted a six-page fact sheet on construction of the Westside subway extension, a project whose future is still tied to decisions yet to be made in Congress.
The latest news and gimmicks on the coming 405 shutdown, including the LAPD asks a favor of Lady Gaga.
Here's one minute of Sunday afternoon traffic looks and sounds like on the 405 freeway in Sepulveda Pass. No wonder there's talk of carmageddon.
KPCC's John Rabe seems a little perturbed that the police commission has overruled the LAPD staff and voted to discontinue the red-light cameras that spew out dubious tickets at 32 intersections around Los Angeles. It's moire about L.A. drivers though.
The Los Angeles Police Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to reject a new contract the LAPD wants with the firm that runs the city's 32 red light cameras.
Ted Soqui checks out the seven-mile stretch of Angeles Crest Highway above La Cañada-Flintridge that reopened Friday
How LAX is planning for the worst weekend ever. Isn't it weird how the best job of covering the 405 freeway construction disruption so far hasn't been by any traditional media at all, but by the websites of Metro and of Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky?
A three-car train is due to be tested on Metro's new Expo Line between today and Thursday.
In his quest to read 25 books about Los Angeles this year, LAT architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne is up to David Brodsly's slim 1981 work "L.A. Freeway: An Appreciative Essay."
When was the last time you saw a news release issued jointly by Caltrans, Metro, the California Highway Patrol, the Los Angeles Police Department and the L.A. Fire Department?
The MTA board passed its largest annual budget ever, held fares at current levels, gave support to — but declined to fund — a Crenshaw rail station at Leimert Park, and approved 7.7 miles of interrupted peak-hour bus lanes on Wilshire Boulevard.
Jimmy Price will officially retire on June 4 from the LA Department of Transportation, several years ahead of his planned exit, Joel Grover reports.
It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better — and be prepared for two years of disruption near the busiest intersection in Los Angeles.
An Expo Line train being tested on the new bridge over La Brea Avenue.
Good lede from Channel 4 investigative reporter Joel Grover on his latest story about L.A. traffic officers behaving badly.
When Controller Wendy Greuel was on the City Council, her office made use of the special desk to handle, um, delicate requests from elected officials for special handling of parking tickets.
Inland empire columnist David Allen got to Monday night's Dodgers game in the second inning and left in the eighth, but he can say he successfully took MetroLink and the Union Station shuttle.
Tonight's KCRW column, airing at 6:44 p.m. talks about the massive I-405 freeway makeover and the plans to close the freeway for a weekend in July.
All lanes of the freeway will close in Sepulveda Pass for an enitre weekend in July. You've been warned, but you will be warned again.
Westwood architect Jamie B. Myer has designed an innovative solution to the bottleneck that forms along Santa Monica Boulevard where it crosses under the 405 freeway.
The city's Department of Transportation sent out a Sunday afternoon press release saying it had "launched a full investigation" of that KNBC report about two traffic enforcement officers appearing in a porn film while on duty and in uniform.
NBC 4 tonight at 11 p.m. will air an expose showing two uniformed Los Angeles Department of Transportation traffic enforcement officers appearing in a porn film.
The first time I snuck into the vacated Fred Harvey cafe at Union Station, maybe 20 years ago, I could almost smell the 1940s cigar smoke. The room and adjacent...
Pool reporter from the LA Times gets the name of Obama's restaurant wrong. Can't say she wasn't warned.
President Obama is scheduled to land at LAX at about 2:45 P.M. Thursday. He then has to get to the Sony lot for a 4:30 fund-raising appearance, then up to Tavern in Brentwood for dinner and another fundraiser.
President Obama will visit the Sony lot in Culver City and Tavern in Brentwood to meet with Hollywood donors.
Use of the MTA's buses and trains is down about three percent compared to last year. Some data and graphs.
Metro's blog The Source has become in 18 months one of the MTA's main ways of exciting the base of L.A. transit enthusiasts and responding to rail critics. Now the...
Click on the map above to see the street closures for Sunday's second CicLAvia.
One of the little quirks about Downtown L.A. is that a major north-south street, Hope Street, stops at the Central Library. Yet Hope Street predates the library.
Last week in the Valley, something like 450 people turned out at a raucous community meeting called to discuss the restriping of upper Wilbur Avenue to add left-turn and bike lanes.
Don't plan to drive between Big Sur and Carmel or Monterey any time soon.
Shuttles between Union Station and Dodger Stadium will begin with the March 28 exhibition game. Buses will run 90 minutes before games and 45 minutes after the final out. Dodger...
I missed that longtime KNBC reporter (and the ex-anchor of "News Conference") Laurel Erickson returned to the local air waves last month as the correspondent on an episode of KCET's "SoCal Connected." She also has a piece this week.
The Jewish Journal cover story this week poses the question to the community: will Jews support the expansion of Metro's subway, other rail lines and busways?
Streets around City Hall and the cathedral will be closed Friday morning for the funeral procession and service for Glenn Allen, the LAFD veteran killed fighting a fire in the Hollywood Hills last week.
Part of the 55 freeway in Orange County is now the Paul Johnson Memorial Freeway.
Our Valentine's Day mystery about the present-day status of L.A.'s Lovers Lane from 1871 appears to be solved
Here's our modest contribution to Valentine's Day.
Lowriders from around the West caravanned through East Los Angeles on Saturday in a funeral procession for Jesse Valadez, co-founder 45 years ago of The Imperials car club. His red...
Bikers aren't happy about rumble strips being added to the loop of canyon roads off Mulholland Highway where motorcyclists have raced for decades.themselves or others. T
The proposal to dedicate a lane each way of Wilshire Boulevard to Bus Rapid Transit during the hours when the street is already at its most packed has picked up a new obstacle in Westside Councilman Bill Rosendahl.
Joel Epstein, one of the more single-minded transit advocates in town, argues that fans of the rapid express buses on Wilshire should stage a massive work slowdown before Friday's City Council meeting to vote on the boulevard bus lane.
After a three-hour closed-door session, City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana said the City Council had voted unanimously to submit a parking garage concession agreement to potential private operators. But no details.
John Rabe, the host of KPCC's Off-Ramp, picked up and ran with my suggestion that parking garages be required to open the gate and let people go if the queue to pay reaches five minutes.
In the real world where Angelenos live and drive, the city's sell-off of parking garages in Hollywood and Westwood would let rates triple over five years.
The CHP is letting drivers cross in and out of Southern California again on Interstate 5 through the Tehachapis and on I-15 in Cajon Pass.
The CHP closed I-15 through Cajon Pass after 10 p.m. due to the snow, ice and sliding cars.
It figures that on the last day to get back in town for many Angelenos, Interstate 5 is closed by snow over The Grapevine.
Joe Lumer is the name behind the Joe's Auto Parks lots so ubiquitous in Downtown Los Angeles.
If you have any plans to hit Big Bear or Running Springs this winter, you will be going the long way around.
The plan to sell off the city parking garages is not going over well in Westwood Village.
ESPN's Rick Reilly spent a day tooling around L.A. in Ron Artest's Cadillac Escalade, talking about the Lakers, therapy, and a bunch of other things.
This might be the biggest thing to help Westside traffic congestion that is in the works.
Once a preferential parking district is approved, it costs you $34 a year for each permit to park on your own street.
Three members of the Imperial Stars band were charged by District Attorney Steve Cooley, for blocking the Hollywood Freeway last month.
The Santa Monica Mirror's Slav Kandyba found out the hard way that unpaid parking tickets can be a bummer in Los Angeles.
Jose Rodriguez, Harold Katz and Danny McDevitt.
Let's hope Steve Lopez didn't really mean to say "west of the 10 freeway."
Today's MTA vote approving the Wilshire subway route leaves out the West Hollywood detour and the politically sensitive Crenshaw station, leaves undecided the dicey political question of just where the tunnel will go under Century City and Beverly Hills, and should put to rest for now Mayor Villaraigosa's inoperative "subway to the sea" meme.
Crowds are already forming, and streets already closing, in the USC area for President Obama's campaign rally this afternoon. But some new plans to be aware of: the White House...
My KCRW column tonight wades into the big divide in Los Angeles between those who see L.A. as a car culture city and those who crave a more transit-fed urban culture. There are no winners in the debate, only a need for co-existence.
Harry Pallenberg, longtime producer for Huell Howser and the director of "Shotgun Freeway," is making a documentary on the racing years in Southern California, based in part on Harold Osmer's book "Where They Raced."
A truck parked across three lanes of the Hollywood Freeway near Sunset Boulevard and a band climbed up top to play a song, "Traffic Jam 101," that it says is about raising awareness of homeless children.
Tonight the giant concrete muncher begins taking down the northern side of the Skirball Center Drive bridge over the 405 freeway deep in Sepulveda Pass.
Here's the 7½ route of city streets that will be closed to cars on Sunday for the 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. event.
Tony Castro at the Daily News gives the quick tour of new security features.
Caltrans and Metro have all but finally decided to alter the way the impressively high, 1959-era Mulholland Drive bridge is replaced during the I-405 widening project. It's a simple change that will reduce headaches and could save $10 million.
City Controller Wendy Greuel will release an audit tomorrow of the city's 32 red light cameras, discussing why they weren't placed at the most dangerous intersections and concluding that the program "cannot document conclusively an increase in public safety."
Channel 2 has mapped the locations of what it calls the only cameras in the state placed to catch drivers running stop signs.
The Daily Journal's Ciaran McEvoy seems to have this alone, in today's paper.
The Strand, a program on the BBC World Service, features a segment on One-Ten, the opera being composed in serial form along and about the Pasadena and Harbor freeways by Los Angeles Magazine.
The image of a girl painted on the pavement is being tried in lieu of speed bumps, or humps if you prefer.
Complying with the parking limits isn't enough to avoid a ticket at the city's new "smart" meters — which have more ways to fail than the old ones.
The Eric Owen Moss art tower beside the Expo Line, as observed by John Rabe, Mark Peel and Scott Timberg — and Moss.
Well it could happen, right?
Adam Nagourney's first piece as L.A. bureau chief: traffic on the 405.
The Beverly Hills PD cracked down on drivers failing to yield to a plainclothes officer crossing Wilshire Boulevard at Palm Avenue, the intersection where the city says it gets the most complaints.
Steven Slater, the Jet Blue flight steward who quit so dramatically after being hit on the head by a passenger's bag, has been posting over the past year about the trouble caused by the increasing number of bags in airliner cabins.
Last week's video of the future Expo Line route across part of the Westside is the starting point for tonight's LA Observed column on KCRW.
Clifford V. Johnson, the blogging and bike-commuting USC professor, speaks up for bicycle sharing after seeing it in London.
Immigration rights protesters in chains have blocking the intersection for several hours, but the LAPD has issued a dispersal order. Media reports have the cops moving in to cut chains...
Say that Metro Rail ever reaches as far west as Westwood Village. It's going to need a station. But where should it go?
Food writer Barbara Hansen watched last night as a guy pulled into a parking spot on a trendy block of Beverly Boulevard, wrapped a shirt around the parking meter and strolled away with two women. She got a photo.
he Sunset Boulevard bridge over the 405 freeway in Brentwood is being torn down, piece by piece, for replacement. When it was completed in 1956, the road was still being called the Sepulveda Freeway.
Mark posted this earlier at LA Biz Observed, but everybody I've shown it to loved it so much here it is again.
Maybe it's more like a flackable moment, an easy way to throw a bone to bicyclists.
County Supervisor Don Knabe is the chair of Metro this time around and, as such, learns how to drive a bus.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was riding in a bike lane on Venice Boulevard in Mid-City before 7 p,.m. tonight when a taxi pulled in front of him.
A head-on crash this afternoon involving a semi-truck and more than one car blocked all lanes of Sunset Boulevard for awhile at Bellagio Road, adjacent to the north side of UCLA in a spot called Dead Man's Curve in L.A. lore.
That $1 billion project to mess up traffic across the Westside and Sepulveda Pass for years — oops, I mean add a carpool lane to the 405 freeway and modernize...
Lane closures after 10 a.m. at Sunset Boulevard.
Gayle Anderson's segment at Santa Monica beach went on despite a parking officer scribbling out tickets, perhaps not knowing she was on live across Southern California.
Mike Barbour, the project manager on the big 405 freeway rehab and widening project from the Westside through Sepulveda Pass to the Valley, will take questions on the Metro website from noon to 1 p.m. on Wednesday.
There's some kind of demonstration on Wilshire Boulevard in front of the Westwood federal building
My KCRW column airing this evening at 6:44 p.m. talks about the San Diego's place in the delicate organism of Westside traffic and more broadly how it has shaped Los Angeles.
Photojournalist and blogger Ted Soqui was riding with the L.A. Wheelmen on Mulholland Drive when they came across Jay Leno, loading his 1963 Porsche onto a truck.

Expect a busy night of work and traffic disruption on the San Diego Freeway below Sepulveda Pass (on the Westwood side, not the Valley side.) Here are the scheduled closures.
I've ranted a little bit before about the second-rate practice of naming freeways and other big public works for minor political players and less-than-extraordinary do-gooders — I believe I said...
The 10,000 fancy new parking meters being introduced around the city are getting most of their attention for being solar powered and taking credit and debit cards. But the fanciest thing about them is that they will let the city raise parking rates block by block and hour by hour in response to demand — or the desire to alter behavior.
The 405 freeway widening project begins a new phase this week, and you're not going to like it. Got to be done, but still — beware if you can. There will be full freeway closures at night this week and next heading up into Sepulveda Pass from the Westside, for restriping of lanes. That's because this month a giant "hoe ram" — a crane equipped with a massive jackhammer — will begin smashing the Sunset Boulevard bridge over the freeway.
Crushable nose cones, engineers placed above crash zone, other improvements.
TV loves to "investigate" valet parking in Los Angeles, but this time Channel 4 turned up the interest factor to show that there are few rules governing valets and fewer protections for drivers. Ana Garcia became a valet.
We're locked in pre-June gloom on the Westside these days, but Katie Keating had a ray of virtual sunshine find her on the freeway this morning.
Patt Morrison is stretching but only a bit when she writes that Monday's closed-casket viewing at the Police Administration Building — and Tuesday morning funeral at the cathedral — "will be the closest thing to a state funeral that Los Angeles could have."
That planted rectangle on the 110 near Downtown that Caltrans sold to Toyota last year for a Prius ad is being given a baseball-themed message.
President Obama will arrive a little before 5:30 p.m. Monday to raise L.A. campaign cash for the Democrats — Sen. Barbara Boxer and the DNC specifically — and wreak a little unfortunate havoc with local mobility. At least it will be a Monday, so the natural afternoon traffic should be a bit lighter than usual — but there's a Kings playoff game at Staples Center at 7 p.m.
Mandalit del Barco of NPR's Los Angeles bureau has the latest story, airing today on "All Things Considered," on the mixed bag you get with red light cameras.
The news blog of the Glendale News-Press and its sister papers has a story up about a local car reaching 500,000 miles — and it's the car driven by the husband of the managing editor of the La Cañada Flintridge paper.
Five people, possibly four of them children, died in the crash during a rain downpour just after midnight where I-5 and the 14 meet in the Newhall Pass entrance to...
Tina Dupuy at Fishbowl L.A. says the runners she has heard from had tons of horror stories about pre-race traffic, the course and the experience for runners after they finished the race. Especially the traffic.
Marathon organizers are advising runners to get out early Sunday since getting to Dodger Stadium could prove difficult: "ARRIVE EARLY! We suggest you be there by 5:30am.," says an official tweet. Plus street closures, bus changes and more.
In honor of Angels Flight re-opening Monday to paying passengers, let's return to the days when the funicular originally called the Los Angeles Incline Railway was an integral part of Downtown life.
A $300,000 grant from the South Coast Air Quality Management District will pay for free shuttle buses this season between the stadium and Union Station. The service was cancelled last season when neither the city nor the Dodgers wanted to pay for it.
You'll start to see K-rails brought onto the San Diego Freeway tonight as part of the carpool lane and bridge repair project in and around Sepulveda Pass.
KCAL's news went out in the field this afternoon for a report from that Prius flower patch beside the 110 freeway where that makeshift memorial to Toyota victims was taken down — four days ago.
White crosses were laid out over the former site of Toyota's floral ad for the Prius beside the Pasadena Freeway near Downtown. A sign reads, "You Reap What You Sow."
No criminal charges are expected in the death of Julia Siegler, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Harvard-Westlake School who was struck by two cars Friday morning while crossing Sunset Boulevard.
Metro just tweeted that restriping of the northbound lanes has been completed for now. Southbound restriping won't begin until March 3 at the earliest.
Northbound freeway traffic was snarled briefly near Getty Center Drive.
A car got in the way of a northbound Gold Line train about 1 p.m. at the Glenarm crossing north of Mission Station. At least one person is injured.
Now that the Metropolitan Transportation Agency has spent 15 years and $32 million fighting the giant engineering and construction contractor Tutor-Saliba-Perini, staff writer Gabe Friedman asks a reasonable question in Friday's L.A. Daily Journal: what price is too high for a legal victory?
When work begins Wednesday night on the Sepulveda Pass Widening Project — the first full closure of the northbound freeway is after midnight — Metro's man in charge will be an Iraq veteran.
Superior Court Judge Scott T. Millington expressed doubts about Dr. Christopher Thompson's remorse for stopping short and injuring two cyclists on Mandeville Canyon Road. Millington also claimed the five-year sentence...
You have until Jan. 31 to pick up your car.
Cruising the canyons in a Gullwing and telling tales of Steve McQueen drag racing.
Think the new construction project only affects the freeway? Ho ho ho.
Thirty-two Los Angeles intersections now have cameras installed to generate traffic tickets and, thus, revenue for the city and the company that runs the cameras. Contrary to the original intent,...
Yeah, Metro CEO Art Leahy changed course and approved running free all-night service on the Metro Orange Line this New Year’s Eve — after the Daily News reported that the...
The 8½-mile light-rail line would run from the Expo Line at Exposition Boulevard to the Green Line at Imperial Highway in El Segundo. The route chosen today follows Crenshaw Boulevard...
The highway is now open through the San Gabriel Mountains, though caution is urged due to crews clearing rocks and high winds....
An elevated portion of the Gold Line today runs past the Capitol Milling Company plant in Downtown. From 1889 to 1896, the Cape Horn Viaduct also carried passengers past the...
Some streets are already closed for Sunday's Hollywood Christmas Parade, aka the parade that refused to die. Hollywood Boulevard from Orange Street to Highland Avenue and Orange from Hollywood Boulevard...
Caltrans has quietly installed new directional signs over the northbound 110 freeway out of Downtown, in the process taking down one of Los Angeles' all-time great guerilla art installations. In...
Cellphones, GPS and the struggling economy are conspiring to begin the die-off phase for regular traffic reports on your car radio, says Daisy Nguyen at AP. (She could have cited...
The inveterate urban explorers at Southern California Transit Advocates came up with a pretty cool Day After Thanksgiving outing this year: they will ride all four Metrolink lines on Friday,...
More LA Sketchbook by Steve Greenberg...
Tough situation in the mid-city area, Susan Kennedy's future with Schwarzenegger, Playboy's possible sale and more after the jump — including a Larchmont shop trying to change the rules it...
CBS 2's David Goldstein and team got the data from the city and found that instead of fewer accidents, the number of traffic accidents has gone up at most of...
After the city built its plans for a Downtown clean-tech corridor around Italian rail car maker AnsaldoBreda, and the MTA bent over backwards to work with the company despite its...
TMZ's cameras caught Maria Shriver, the wife of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, parking her Escalade in a Santa Monica red zone for almost an hour. She released a statement this afternoon...
The first is more of a website than a blog, by ex-Los Angeles Daily Journal editor Martin Berg. He's editing Where's Our Money? for Harvey Rosenfield's Consumer Education Foundation, billed...
There's no need for a special law banning options other than a tunnel for extending the 710 freeway from Alhambra to Pasadena, Gov, Schwarzenegger's veto message said. South Pasadena had...
I joined some media and blog folks at the KCET studios the other morning for a preview of the second season of "SoCal Connected," the PBS station's weekly news program....
Matthew Fleischer was in the audience last week for Talking Heads founder David Byrne's appearance at Aloud to talk about his new book, "Bicycle Diaries,” and Los Angeles. The event...
An L.A. Times investigation found that Metrolink trains have killed 244 people in 15 years, and that unsafe conditions have been allowed to continue at some intersections and rail crossings....
Mayor Villaraigosa and the unions got their way — the Italian rail car builder with the spotty record will now be the provider of choice for L.A.'s transit future. The...
An LA Observed reader driving north on the 110, somewhere below the Santa Monica Freeway, emails that the Caltrans info sign that predicts travel times was for once indisputably accurate:...
Phase 1, going from downtown to Culver City, was supposed to be finished in 2010, but now they're talking about only a partial opening. Spokesperson Gabriela G. Collins tells Curbed...
A doctor jaywalking across Sepulveda Boulevard near LAX was struck and killed Wednesday night by a passing car. The car was driven by another doctor, who stopped to render aid....
Always allow one plane length between cars on the freeway, LA Daily wisely suggests....
This week's exploratory subway drilling is scheduled for Monday and Tuesday at San Vicente and Gracie Allen (that's near Cedars-Sinai), Wednesday in UCLA parking lot 36 near Wilshire and Veteran,...
When visiting Venice, notes the blog Yo Venice, "it is advisable not to block a driveway when you park your vehicle. Odds are that two towing trucks, two parking enforcement...
This morning there was the guy running from Burbank to Texas. Now KPCC's John Rabe, riding his bike into work today, ran into a South Korean native named Shine who...
Eerie media silence regarding the return trip to wherever Michael Jackson goes now, and the continuing buildup of costs for public services. Will freeway closures occur again this afternoon? 1:28...
Several dozen black limousines (and other vehicles) are starting to move away from the Jackson family home on Hayvenhurst Avenue, presumably headed toward Forest Lawn. They have a police escort,...
Freeways are uncommonly bad out there today, especially the 405 north due to truck crash in Sepulveda Pass. Incoming councilman Paul Koretz signed his chief of staff: Rich Llewellyn,...
My mention last night of UCLA students protesting a Rose Bowl snub on the San Diego Freeway in 1966 prompted an LA Observed reader to remember a photo he'd seen...
After my observation the other day that the freeways have come into play as spots for protesting pedestrians to swarm, a reader pointed out this article saying the practice has...
Zach Behrens at LAist has gotten together a map showing the overlapping ranges claimed by the seven mountain lions believed to still inhabit the Santa Monicas, Santa Susanas and Simi...
You can now search the websites of Los Angeles County and all of the cities in the county simultaneously, using this custom Google search by Matthew Barrett of the MTA's...
Susan Kitchens was in the fast lane on the 605 last night when a driver sped by in the adjacent carpool lane — going the wrong way! She writes: I...
KTLA reporter Eric Spillman thought he had a good case so he fought the ticket he received via red-light camera while exiting the 2 freeway in Glendale. He won and...
The folks at Discarted take umbrage that a Los Angeles parking officer camped out in a loading zone during her lunch break in East Hollywood....
New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff includes Los Angeles in an essay arguing for steps that should taken in four U.S. cities that would begin "making our cities more...
LA Observed's TJ Sullivan was credentialed into President Obama's town hall this afternoon in Costa Mesa and sent along some photos. He'll have more later at his website. In the...
While you haven't been watching your politicians at work in Sacramento, they have added some unrelated charges to the cost of a ticket. Here's the breakdown of the tab for...
It's not what you think — perhaps, though, it's the logical Darwinian outcome of car culture? Observed Sunday on Reseda Boulevard in Northridge. Video link More LA Observed video: Downtown...
Eric A. Morris, a former writer for television and the Harvard Crimson, is a recurring guest blogger for the New York Times' Freakonomics blog. In his hats as a doctoral...
A wrong-way head-on in the eastbound lanes near National Boulevard about 5 a.m. killed two drivers and still has the area gummed up. The freeway's eastbound lanes and the connectors...
Journalist Joe Mathews has become the latest advocate of a narrow SoCal position to argue that taking his side is somehow a test of whether President Barack Obama truly means...
Say you live on one of those Los Angeles streets with permit parking. Say you want to get a couple of visitor permits so friends or family can visit you...
LA Observed contributor TJ Sullivan talks about the new parking regulation controversy in Los Angeles with Warren Olney on "Which Way, L.A.?" on KCRW at 7:30 p.m. He's up against...
A new staff report from the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority sort of confirms what people involved in the transit arena knew, but may come as a shock to...
Roger Snoble announced today that he will leave soon after seven years as CEO of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Release after the jump....
Bryan Olive, a staffer at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, turned in his leased car last March. In August, the car got a parking ticket in Los Angeles. In...
Steve Hymon's Bottleneck blog is the latest Times staff blog to be folded into L.A. Now, which the paper is trying to deepen and finally build up in hopes that...
You really can't see anything near the coast, and there's a fog advisory in effect until 9 a.m. as far as Downtown that is expected to be a factor for...
Our own Bill Boyarsky, writing at the L.A. Times Op-Ed page, says the crashing economy and the voters' approval of so many funding measures on the November ballot provides an...
There are said to be a handful of minor injuries, plus some disruption of Metro Link service in the Inland Empire. L.A. Now...
Demonstrators upset by the passage of Proposition 8 began at the Mormon temple on Santa Monica Boulevard and have moved to Wilshire and Westwood boulevards, closing both streets. They're targeting...
With officials concerned that commuters will abandon Metrolink, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa plans to meet the buses arriving at Chatsworth station from Ventura County at 6 am. He will then ride...
Supervisor Gloria Molina joined the two Republicans on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to reject placing a sales tax increase question on the November ballot, citing friction between...
The blogger behind MetroRiderLA says the competition from professional transportation blogs and the need to make money — plus plain old blog burnout — nudged him to call a time...
By Bay Area tradition, references to freeways don't carry an article. In Los Angeles we "take the 101" (or "the Ventura Freeway") but up north they just "take 101." Times...
This winter skiers and snowboarders will be able to fly to Mammoth for the first time in years. Tickets go on sale Monday for new Horizon Airlines service from LAX...
Christopher Thomas Thompson, who turns 59 today, has been charged with two felony counts each of reckless driving causing injury, battery with serious bodily injury and the special allegation of...
NPR's Culver City-based show "Day to Day" is running a web series on what gas prices and changing interests are doing to the traditional car-based California culture. The producers have...
From now until November, expect the presidential candidates to be a giant pain in L.A.'s butt. Motorcades shutting down entire freeways, etc. For Barack Obama's appearance Tuesday night at the...
I don't know if National Public Radio's "Bryant Park Project" airs here at all, but if you're interested the show has done a story on the riders who demonstrate by...
David Willis' story was about Los Angeles commuters switching to the tube, if we can call it that, because of the high price of gas. This week I did something...
Most of the tickets issued off cameras in the city of Los Angeles — 80% — are for rolling right turns. Still legitimate violations, but not the super-dangerous red light...
D. J. Waldie rides the bus around Los Angeles by necessity but enjoys it less. The price of gas is pushing more people onto buses at the same time the...
The city of Los Angeles has to complete a thorough environmental impact study before resetting the traffic lights to make parts of Olympic and Pico boulevards function as something like...
The boulevard is closed to traffic from Harvard to Western, and booths have been put up to celebrate Earth Day with a car-free street festival and "special musical yoga experience."...
How many private cars, trucks and other vehicles would you guess are registered confidentially in California, able to escape parking tickets, toll road fees and those red light cameras? Would...
I've received a couple of emails from fans who did just fine getting to the Coliseum game on Saturday, by avoiding the Dodger Stadium shuttles. The funny thing about Saturday...
Take a look at the line for the Dodger Stadium shuttle bus to Saturday's Coliseum game. Jon Weisman blogged that when he left the game early, the line to return...
Last weekend's New York Times did a nice spread on J. Michael Walker and his one-of-a-kind Los Angeles book, "All the Saints of the City of the Angels: Seeking the...
Slope slides down to the street, knocks out power and pretty much screws traffic in that part of Westwood. LAT Also: Commuting isn't fun on Pacific Coast Highway either....
In the course of advising Los Angeles what it needs to become a super-city like London, New York or Shanghai, Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne (in the Sunday magazine)...
The newly completed Mid-Wilshire Signal Sync System, bounded by Hollywood Boulevard, Western Avenue, La Cienega Boulevard and Wilshire Boulevard, synchronizes a total of 256 traffic signals and spans 12-square miles...
With seven residential projects containing 900 units already under construction — and another two dozen projects approved — the most upscale shopping street across the Valley is evolving. But the...
Today is when Hollywood and Highland really starts to feel the pain of hosting the Academy Awards for another year. Hollywood Boulevard is set to close to traffic at 10...
Enough members of the City Council are attending this morning's services for slain LAPD officer Randal Simmons that the regular Friday session was cancelled. TV stations have agreed on pool...
Mayor Villaraigosa told the city DOT today to bar most rush-hour parking as far east as Fairfax and to re-time the lights on Pico to favor eastbound traffic and Olympic...
Here's a nice little story from writer Mark Evanier's blog, called modestly News From Me. Seems he began teaching a humor writing class at USC yesterday, but his car broke...
Gene Maddaus at the Breeze delves into the decision long ago to spend $700 million building the Green Line light rail for 20 miles from Norwalk to Redondo Beach, then...
The Santa Anas are back and the LAFD has declared a red flag day in the hills for Wednesday. Those who live there know what it means: no parking on...
Larry Mantle this morning took on one of the lesser issues of our time, but one that's still interesting and perplexing for locals: should we refer to freeways by their...
Sue Doyle compiles her realities of driving for the Daily News, and some are just so true: If you're waiting behind cars in a left-turn lane, never expect to go...
CityBeat columnist Alan Mittelstaedt FOI'd the chancellor of UC Irvine trying to find out who pressured him to un-hire Erwin Chemerinsky as dean of the new law school, before eventually...
A new book released this week, The Driver: My Dangerous Pursuit of Speed and Truth in the Outlaw Racing World, describes a wild cross-country drive that broke the previous record...
* 8 am update: Lanes were open in both directions this morning. Caltrans district chief Douglas Failing said the southbound lanes of the freeway would be opened through Newhall Pass...
Don't plan on sailing in or out of Los Angeles on Interstate 5 (or the Antelope Freeway, for that matter) any time soon. Last night's conflagration in the truck tunnel...
Richard S. Chang, writing in today's New York Times Wheels section about the pleasures of driving a stick shift: I was living in Los Angeles. Even though stopping and starting...
Transportation planners get mounds of daily data from all the sensors installed beneath Los Angeles streets, but they throw it all away after a few days. The Times reports that...
In response to today's Breeze article on new computerized traffic signals across the South Bay, an LA Observed reader wrote to the Breeze reporter, Gene Maddaus: I noted in the...
All those residential and commercial developments that planners and politicians like to promote near transit lines make getting around harder, since most occupants choose to drive and the businesses attract...
It's illegal to turn right onto La Brea from Clinton Avenue during rush hour, and so many Hollywood traffic cops lie in wait that it has become fun entertainment for...
Highway crews and flagmen working on the widening of California 138 across the Mojave Desert have taken so much physical abuse from motorists that the stretch between Lancaster and Victorville...
Franklin Avenue spotted handwritten signs today on 6th Street near the mayor's mansion in Windsor Square posted to beseech drivers, Burma Shave-style, to SLOW... THE... F**K... DOWN! Photos at the...
Scaffolding has been spotted around the vacant stores at the northeast corner of Wilshire and Barrington, alerting tipster Doug that his commute through the habitually jammed Brentwood-adjacent intersection is about...
Another Gran Marcha to support immigrants begins Tuesday morning at Broadway and Olympic, moves north on Broadway starting at 10 am, and heads to City Hall via 1st Street. Fewer...
John Stodder was one of the smart ones who got to Dodger Stadium early yesterday and was able to observe the mess with somewhat detached eye. He pulls from his...
President Bush has an evening fundraiser in Brentwood, there are accidents on both sides of the 405 near Wilshire, and the northbound Pasadena is backed up near I-5. Luckily, Bush...
Film director Bob Clark and his son Ariel were killed in the crash that kept Pacific Coast Highway closed through the Palisades during today's morning rush hours. Clark directed A...
With this year's new L.A. Marathon route, a lot of people are going to head out Sunday and run into street closures. The map and timetable is more complex than...
Squeaky wheels do get the grease, it turns out. The state transportation commission rethought its earlier decision to leave the freeway out of the spending plan. Also: The day's headlines...
Pasadena keeps the Rose Parade route open to the public pretty much until show time. Ditto for the Los Angeles Marathon. But for some reason, busy Hollywood Boulevard has to...
Throttle Jockey columnist Susan Carpenter walks, talks and rides on her video reviews on the Times website. Today's installment covers three-wheeled bikes and scooters and shows Carpenter whizzing around downtown,...
A crane that fell onto the northbound San Diego Freeway just before the Ventura Freeway in Sherman Oaks about 1 pm has the area a big Friday afternoon mess. The...
Michael Dukakis's campaign to free Westwood of the plague of apron parking — parking in driveways so as to obstruct sidewalks, for the uninitiated — has hit a snag. City...
Protesters against the Iraq war will assemble at noon tomorrow in front of the Democratic Party headquarters at 9th and Figueroa, then march to the federal building via this route:...
→ The Times' Robin Abcarian is filing video updates (left) from Sundance on LATimes.com. → Variety's Gabriel Snyder is jumping to the Los Angeles bureau of W. He will be...
Free today at WSJ.com, economists Peter Gordon of USC and Matthew Kahn of UCLA discuss the costs of traffic congestion: "the problem it poses -- or doesn't pose -- for...
One of the traffic engineers being arraigned today for shutting down four intersections on the day that EAA went out on strike was featured last January in a Downtown News...
What a story. Two high-ranking city traffic engineers, Gabriel Murillo and Kartik Patel, were charged Friday with breaking into the city's automated traffic system and disabling the lights at four...
I won't repeat my rantlet (and here) about casual abuse of the word 'gridlock' by local media and pols. Just check out this photo of the real thing from Xiamen,...
Meant to re-post this oldie but goodie from 2004 for New Year's. On Dec. 31, 1897, a cameraman for Thomas Edison shot movie footage of the street scene in the...
You can ride the buses, Red Line and light rail lines for free from 9 pm Dec. 24 to 2 am on Christmas morning. The fare gets dropped again from...
Laura Mecoy, the Sacramento Bee's Los Angeles reporter, weighs in today with a longish piece on L.A. transit pegged to the revived talk of a subway out Wilshire Boulevard. Mayor...
Brief history lesson and somewhat optimistic view of the future from The Economist: In the past 15 years the city has gradually built a skeletal subway and light-rail system. Thanks...
LA Observed contributor Cari Beauchamp posts at Native Intelligence on the frustration of trying to wrestle answers about her cable service from the voice(s) on the line at Time Warner....
Michael Dukakis, the Democratic candidate for president in 1988, lives in Westwood's North Village during his part-time teaching gigs at UCLA. For two years, the LAT says, he has been...
Item: A big rig rig on the northbound I-5 struck and killed a pedestrian this afternoon near Zoo Drive in the Griffith Park area. Two lanes are blocked. Item: A...
Germany recognizes 648 valid traffic symbols, but all that instruction can leave drivers confused or, perversely, encourage them to drive unsafely. Now seven cities in Europe are going naked —...
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky says he's actively looking for support to put a county executive initiative on next year's ballot. Voters have rejected the idea of an elected county exec before,...
Veronique de Turenne gives bicyclists their space on Pacific Coast Highway, but asks the same in return. "Share the road, you arrogant cyclists. Sure, it's narrow, sure it's scenic, sure...
Just last September John Catoe withdrew from consideration for the top transit job in Atlanta to remain with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Now today's Washington Post reports that Catoe has...
Mixed in among the nine-hour parking meters on Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica, TJ Sullivan found a stretch of nine-minute signs. It pays to check the details twice. At Native...
Filming for Live Free or Die Hard has been postponed a couple of days, so the production won't be shutting down Imperial Highway beside LAX until the weekend. Previously: Vengeance...
Live Free or Die Hard received the permits it wanted and will be disrupting traffic in El Segundo and the south side of LAX starting Thursday. And not just a...
U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter ruled today that a ten-year-old legal agreement with the Bus Riders Union that prodded the MTA to spend $1.3 billion to improve service for the...
The worst is over on the southbound San Diego Freeway between Sunset Boulevard and the Santa Monica Freeway. After more than a year of orange cones and restricted flow that...
Mayor Villaraigosa returned to City Hall today almost giddy from his fortnight in Asia. Flanked by twenty fellow travelers, the mayor met the media this morning and talked about the...
It just gets worse. Besides the major sporting events that will overlap, officials are warning that the LA Weekly's Detour Festival in the Civic Center and the Grand Avenue Festival...
UCLA has revised the traffic alert for this afternoon that I called unhelpfully vague yesterday. They still won't say that the president is the reason that Westside traffic will bite...
The president of these here United States is going to be on the Westside again tomorrow for a Republican fundraiser. UCLA has given its folks a day's notice, in an...
As of yesterday, the city of Santa Monica is seeking out people who overpaid on parking tickets to give them refunds. The city has collected and quietly held on to...
Times critic Christopher Hawthorne welcomes the revived interest in tunneling a subway under Wilshire Boulevard all the way to the ocean. He writes today about its possible effect on the...
The most meaningful stat in the Times' Sunday page one story about the Westside's awful traffic is that it takes an average of nineteen minutes to travel one mile on...
For his interview on today's "Morning Edition," How To Live Well Without Owning A Car author Chris Balish took the Metro bus to Venice Boulevard and Hughes then rode his...
The weekly Highway 1 section in the Los Angeles Times always skews toward the few who are buying a vehicle and usually has little if any information or fun stuff...
Members of Southern California Transit Advocates like to challenge themselves — and explore the region — by taking long group excursions on public transit. They have gone as far as...
If you watch traffic maps online or listen to radio reports, the earliest freeway snarls are often out in western Riverside County where commuters get up early and begin slogging...
Red-light cameras will be turned on in August at two intersections, LADOT officials said today. The first two corners where tickets will be issued are Laurel Canyon at Ventura boulevards...
Tales about riding Metro Rail and buses make up a growing subset of the L.A. blogosphere. Doc on the Train is written by a resident at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center who...
Los Angeles airport chief Lydia Kennard today described $1.2 billion worth of coming improvements to LAX: an expanded Bradley International Terminal, realignment of the southernmost runway to improve safety and...
The Daily News' Mariel Garza blogs about the physical effects of trading her car for the bus this month. I have two blisters on my left foot -- one on...
My favorite reads of the week have been Thomas Curwen's musings on Los Angeles and the automobile in the Times' commemorative issue of the Highway One section. About Mulholland Drive,...
After two weeks of riding the MTA, Daily News columnist and editorial writer Mariel Garza blogs that she drove her car. "I need to drive for work," I told myself....
At 4 pm, Mayor Villaraigosa will emcee the ceremonial rollout of his Gridlock Tiger Team on Wilshire between Normandie and Ardmore. The office all but promises the media that they...