SGV Connect

Even if you're one of our listeners from outside of the San Gabriel Valley, you doubtless know that this Sunday is the 626. The mammoth car-free party will feature 8 cities, two missions, one Sasquatch and over 20,000 participants. Read more about the 626 at the official website.

And who better to help us preview the event than Wes Reutimann, the special projects director for Active SGV? Wes talks to Kris Fortin about the plans for this Sunday and the history of San Gabriel Valley's world famous open streets party.

Because of our recording schedule, we decided to split our podcast in two so we could get this interview online as fast as possible. We'll be back tomorrow with a special edition of SGV Connect highlighting one of the special projects that we'll be able to experience at the 626.

#SGV Connect is supported by Foothill Transit, offering car-free travel throughout the San Gabriel Valley with connections to the new Gold Line Stations across the Foothills and Commuter Express lines traveling into the heart of downtown L.A. To plan your trip, visit Foothill Transit. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.”

Catch past episodes of SGV Connect and #DamienTalks on LibSyn,iTunes, Google Play, or Overcast.

Before we get in to this week's episode, let me remind you that this Thursday is Streetsblog L.A.'s annual awards dinner. We'll be honoring Active SGV, Asm. Laura Friedman and some others. To get tickets or for more information, click here.

Leading off the podcast, Kris speaks with Blair Miller with the Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition to get an update on the proposed protected bike lane for Union Street in Pasadena. Unlike the road diet that was scrapped for Orange Grove earlier this year, there has not been nearly the level of opposition for this project. Conversely, Miller and Fortin report that more advocates for safe streets were galvanized by the NIMBY Bikelash last year.

Second, Damien talks with Androush Danielians, Executive Officer of Project Engineering at L.A. Metro about the I-210 Barrier Project. For those new to this discussion, ever since the opening of the Gold Line Foothill Extension, people have been crashing their cars into the train tracks where it runs parallel to the I-210. At the April Metro Board Meeting, the Board voted to move forward with a project to create barriers between the freeway and Metro property. For more coverage of this issue from Streetsblog, click here.

#SGV Connect is supported by Foothill Transit, offering car-free travel throughout the San Gabriel Valley with connections to the new Gold Line Stations across the Foothills and Commuter Express lines traveling into the heart of downtown L.A. To plan your trip, visit Foothill Transit. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.”

Catch past episodes of SGV Connect and #DamienTalks on LibSyn,iTunes, Google Play, or Overcast.

Tonight is the big Spring Fundraiser for Active SGV! "Everyday is Earth Day" party will be tonight at the Grace T. Black Auditorium, 3130 Tyler Avenue in El Monte. In addition to the usual revelry, Active SGV will be unveiling their new logo. To buy tickets, or get more information about the event, click here.

With their event tonight, and the Streetsblog Los Angeles fundraiser under a month away, it seemed like the perfect time to check in with David Diaz, the executive director of Active SGV. We talk about more than just events, as he gives us a rundown of what Active SGV is working on and what are some of the major things happening throughout the San Gabriel Valley.

Speaking of events, our annual fundraiser is on May 9th, and will honor Active SGV for all that they've done over the last several years. The event will be at the El Paseo Inn, across the street from Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles. For more information or to buy tickets, click here.

10 days later will be the next SGV Golden Streets event. "Mission-to-Mission" will span South Pasadena, Alhambra and San Gabriel with another large open streets event. For more information on that event, visit the official website here.

#SGV Connect is supported by Foothill Transit, offering car-free travel throughout the San Gabriel Valley with connections to the new Gold Line Stations across the Foothills and Commuter Express lines traveling into the heart of downtown L.A. To plan your trip, visit Foothill Transit. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.”

Catch past episodes of SGV Connect and #DamienTalks on LibSyn, iTunes, Google Play, or Overcast.

The San Gabriel Valley is becoming a hotbed for innovative transportation solutions. This week, Damien and Kris talk with two leaders who are bringing the transportation revolution to their cities.

First, Damien talks with Oliver Chi, the City Manager for the City of Monrovia. In March of 2018, Monrovia launched the Go Monrovia program to change the way the city did transit. Instead of a dial-a-ride service, Monrovia partnered with Lyft to offer reduced rides. The program proved more successful than expected, and Chi offers updates on how the city is tinkering with the program to make it more cost effective and sustainable. You can read more about Go Monrovia, here.

Next, Kris talks to Kristen Peterson with the City of Duarte. Duarte recently converted its entire bus fleet to electric. Duarte is the first city in the Southland to make this switch. The city made the leap from a diesel fleet straight to an electric one. The San Gabriel Valley Tribune covered the switch in an article on Tuesday.

#SGV Connect is supported by Foothill Transit, offering car-free travel throughout the San Gabriel Valley with connections to the new Gold Line Stations across the Foothills and Commuter Express lines traveling into the heart of downtown L.A. To plan your trip, visit Foothill Transit. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.”

Last month, shared-use mobility company Gotcha announced a partnership with the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments to bring a regional, 1,000-bike, bike share system to a dozen cities. The bikes will be rolled out this summer.

This week, Damien talks to Sean Flood, the CEO of Gotcha. The discussion covers how this contract came to be, a timetable for the rollout and how users will access the system through smart phone apps and a card system similar to TAP.

Recently, Flood completed a trip on Gotcha's new electronic tricycles from the home office in Charleston, S.C. to Austin, Texas for South by Southwest as part of their rollout for the new product. You can watch a short video on the trip, by clicking here. 

But first, Damien and Kris discuss an article that appeared in the Pasadena-Star News earlier this week that both Pasadena and Alhambra are working to acquire the unconnected "710 stubs" of freeway that are inside their city borders. Currently, the stubs are still owned by Caltrans, but if the cities get control they could implement more creative and beneficial use for the land than underutilized asphalt.

During our conversation, we reference a story Kris wrote for Streetsblog in 2013 about a block party that doubled as a rally for freeway expansion. If you're interested in reading this classic-Streetsblog piece, you can find it here.

#SGV Connect is supported by Foothill Transit, offering car-free travel throughout the San Gabriel Valley with connections to the new Gold Line Stations across the Foothills and Commuter Express lines traveling into the heart of downtown L.A. To plan your trip, visit Foothill Transit. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.”

Catch past episodes of SGV Connect and #DamienTalks on LibSyn, iTunes, Google Play, or Overcast.

Have you ever seen a general plan process include collecting community stories? That’s what A People’s Map of East San Gabriel Valley is doing, and in this week’s SGV Connect we talked with the creative team behind this ongoing project.

A People’s Map project a part of LA County’s Department of Regional Planning effort to update the County General Plan. Because the region is so large they’re breaking up the process into parts by doing Area Plans to better focus on and identify an areas specific needs and character. The first area plan is being done in East San Gabriel Valley, which is loosely defined as the areas east of the 605, North of Orange County, West of San Bernardino County and south of the Antelope Valley. It includes 21 unincorporated  places like Rowland Heights, North Pomona and Walnut Islands.

Fonografia Collective, a documentary and journalism storytelling team of Ruxandra Guidi and Bear Guerra, have done similar place-based storytelling projects around LA (Going Grey in LA; South of Fletcher: Stories from the Bowtie). While A People’s Map is more of a community engagement tool – the regional planning department is doing its own outreach and information gathering activities – the project is complimenting the work by giving the residents a space to be a part of defining what’s important in their community, said Guerra.

“By giving them the space to share that personal story. . . by giving people the place to talk about the things that they value, the things that really matter to them about the place that they call home or the place that they spend a lot of time, in a way that wouldn’t come out in a typical planning meeting,” Guerra said.

Fonografia collective will be collecting stories from 2 p.m. – 4 p.m. March 16th at the Homestead Museum (15415 E. Don Julian Road, City of Industry, 91745).

#SGV Connect is supported by Foothill Transit, offering car-free travel throughout the San Gabriel Valley with connections to the new Gold Line Stations across the Foothills and Commuter Express lines traveling into the heart of downtown L.A. To plan your trip, visit Foothill Transit. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.”

Scott Chan returns to the SGV Connect this week for a conversation with Kris Fortin about the Alhambra Community Plan. Scott talks with Kris Fortin about how the plan has initially looked like they had very little outreach that was done and how the bike plan that's included was more sharrows then much else. Staff will present again at next Monday's planning commission meeting to give a response to the commissioners' comments.

This week's SGV Connect also features a talk with  Joshua Schank, the Chief Innovation Officer at Metro and Daniel Ramot, CEO and co-founder of Via. Earlier this week, metro and Via announced a new yearlong pilot project to offer shared, on-demand rides to and from three Metro Stations including the El Monte bus station. For information on how to sign up for this program, click here.

#SGV Connect is supported by Foothill Transit, offering car-free travel throughout the San Gabriel Valley with connections to the new Gold Line Stations across the Foothills and Commuter Express lines traveling into the heart of downtown L.A. To plan your trip, visit Foothill Transit. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.”

Catch past episodes of SGV Connect and #DamienTalks on LibSyn, iTunes, Google Play, or Overcast.

In this week's episode, Damien and Kris kick off the new(ish) year by talking about the best ways to get involved and an update on plans for the Gold Line Foothill Extension's next phase.

First, Damien talks with Dorothy Wong, a long-time bike advocate who now serves as a Council Member in Altadena. Wong has been active with groups locally (such as C.I.C.L.E.) and statewide (she served as a board member for Calbike). In this interview, she discusses how advocacy prepared her for her campaign and her position and urges people to get and stay involved in local government.

In our second interview Kris talks to Joe Linton who catches us up on the status of the Gold Line Foothill Extension. A lot's been happening since the Construction Authority changed plans at the end of last year, but Metro gave the Authority's plans a thumbs up at their Board Meeting last week.

#SGV Connect is supported by Foothill Transit, offering car-free travel throughout the San Gabriel Valley with connections to the new Gold Line Stations across the Foothills and Commuter Express lines traveling into the heart of downtown L.A. To plan your trip, visit Foothill Transit. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.”

Catch past episodes of SGV Connect and #DamienTalks on LibSyn, iTunes, Google Play, or Overcast.

Welcome to the last episode of SGV Connect for 2018. Today, Kris Fortin and Damien Newton talk with Joe Linton and Melanie Curry. The two Streetsblog editors join us to discuss some of the big stories from 2018 and what we're looking forward to in 2019. 

Gas taxes debates, Proposition 6 and Keep Pasadena Moving are in our rear-view helmet mirror and the 626, the last chance to halt climate change and, well, Keep Pasadena Moving are on the road ahead.

#SGV Connect is supported by Foothill Transit, offering car-free travel throughout the San Gabriel Valley with connections to the new Gold Line Stations across the Foothills and Commuter Express lines traveling into the heart of downtown L.A. To plan your trip, visit Foothill Transit. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.”

Catch past episodes of SGV Connect and #DamienTalks on LibSyn, iTunes, Google Play, or Overcast.