MetroRiderLA

• The cost of building the Expo Line is going up!  Phase 1 might not even make it to Culver City.
• A  Santa Monica opinion on the progress of Expo Phase 2.  Refreshing!
• Weho Represents!  Over 120 passionate people show up to Westside Expansion Meeting in support of a subway under Santa Monica Blvd.
• History Lesson: How rail brought life to the Inland Empire.

• Preaching to the choir: driving is bad for you and the environment
• As transit’s popularity increases, so does its financial costs
• New Amtrak stops at Metrolink stations in Orange and Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo
• More on the fight to grade seperate the Expo Line to save the teens

• Damien Goodmon leads the (pricey) fight to make the Expo Line safer for high school students.
• MetrobloggingLA thinks that the Red Line is missing a vital stop in the Valley.
• The Boi from Troy wants the Red Line Extension to zig-zag in order to hit more hot-spots, including WeHo.

• Will arresting Orange Line cheaters reduce the murder rate? The LA Daily News thinks maybe so.
• The “Platinum Triangle” near the Anaheim Metrolink Station gets downsized.
• MetroRider’s must skew rich. Angelenic looks at the Solair Wilshire, a new development at the Wilshire/Western Purple Line Station with prices starting in the low 800’s.
• Once “America’s Best” always “America’s Best”? The Metro Mole thinks not.

[tags]los angeles, gold line, light rail, east los angeles, curbed la, militant angeleno[/tags]

And they mean it!
Credit: Militant Angeleno

Curbed L.A. has more pictures of the Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension — this time, with some shots of the underground stations. Come for the pictures, stay for Curbed’s trademark high-quality commentary. Two days before this article appeared, Curbed had a query about construction progress.

Meanwhile, everyone’s favorite militant Angeleno, umm … Militant Angeleno, tells about a recent trip to The Real Eastside. He also has an eyewitness account of Gold Line construction, encounters an apparent epidemic of duck molestation in an East L.A. park, and tries a Mexican addition to his list of Southern California’s ethnic iced desserts.

See also:

• MetroRiderLA: Eastside Gold Line nude pix (safe for work)

[tags]california, urban planning, paul shigley, california planning & development report[/tags]

Paul Shigley, editor of California Planning & Development Report, is going for the trifecta. He brought you California’s best big-city downtowns, and followed it up wth California’s best downtowns for mid-sized cities. In what is sure to be urban planners’ equivalent of the Star Wars Trilogy, Shigley closes the series with California’s best small-town downtowns.

Small towns, over 377 in the Golden State per Shigley, are populations of 75,000 or less.  Shigley welcomes comments on his blog, and reader comments are weighted to the list that will be released next month. Go over there and give him your what-for. Posting here would be nice, too.

See also MetroRiderLA’s award-nominated coverage of the Best Downtowns trilogy:

• A big steaming piece of Shig
• Shig happens
• How we stand in California
• We’re number four!