SGV Connect

This week, Damien talks with Frank Ching, the Senior Director, Parking Management for Metro about the early feedback and impacts of the new parking program at the El Monte Bus Station. Earlier this week, Metro began charging $2 for parking at the Bus Station to riders' TAP accounts as a way to make certain that those parking in the lot were actually doing so to use the bus service.

The early impact shows that the program is working, the need for an overflow lot has vanished and at least anecdotally there has been little change to ridership. This experience mirrors what has happened when fully subsidized parking is replaced with a fee-based system in other Metro lots.

In today's podcast Ching not only discusses the program in El Monte and rail stations across the county, but also the future of the program and any near-term tweaks that could be coming to the parking plan at the El Monte Bus Station.

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.”

Whole Foothill Transit is mentioned in this podcast, they were not involved in the content for the podcast in any way.

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

This week, Brian Velez talks to a pair of horse riders in the San Gabriel Valley about their experiences, challenges and all of the reasons to choose riding a horse as their preferred form of transportation. 

The first interview is with Alejandra from Avocado Heights. A horse owner, Alejandra tells stories and outlines the costs of owning, caring for and riding a horse both in terms of money and time.

The second interview is with Deputy Hector Beltran, with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's office. Deputy Beltran tells stories from his time as a horse owner, including a sad tale of a horse's death after being spooked by a driver. He also explains some of the rules and regulations for owners and riders in L.A. County.

This is one of our longer interviews, the podcast runs nearly a half hour and we do our best to only lightly edit for brevity.

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 episode of SGV Connect and #DamienTalks on LibSyn and iTunes.

Nisei Week is an annual festival put on by the Nisei Week Foundation in Downtown Los Angeles' Little Tokyo District. The nine day festival features everything from a parade, to a film festival to a competitive eating competition with pretty much everything else in between. A full schedule of events can be found on Nisei Week's official website.

Today, #DamienTalks with idori Mizuhara with Community Arts Resources and Cory Hayashi with the Nisei Week Foundation about this year's festival which begins at the end of next week. Hayashi does a great job of briefly laying out the history of the event and highlighting some of his favorite parts of this year's festival. 

Mizuhara works on the Go Little Tokyo campaign with Metro and the Little Tokyo Neighborhood Council. This campaign is designed to help the community thrive during construction of the Regional Connector in the area and to preserve the cultural events, and places that help make Little Tokyo a unique place to live, work and visit. The campaign, is working to provide transportation options beyond the car for people visiting the festival. Read more about that effort at Go Little Tokyo's campaign website.

A quick programming note, we are not going back to the #DamienTalks format for our podcast in the San Gabriel Valley. #SGVConnect will return in the next week or two with the promised podcast on mobility for horse riders.

(Disclosure: This is a sponsored podcast that Metro pitched to us and agreed to sponsor. No discussion was made as to any editorial comments made by me nor did Metro receive any questions from me ahead of time. If you would like to sponsor a podcast, email me at [email protected])

After watching bike share systems come to neighboring cities of Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Santa Monica, Long Beach and others; in July it was Pasadena's turn to launch its own bike share system. Shortly after the launch, the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments (COG) earned a grant to expand bike share to 14 other cities throughout the valley.

Today, SGV Connect's Damien Newton talks with Streetsblog Los Angeles editor Joe Linton and the Pasadena Complete Street Coalition's Blair Miller. Miller is also a member of the City of Pasadena's Transportation Advisory Committee.

In our conversation, we discuss the rollout of bike share in Pasadena and how the system is working and being perceived. From there we transition to a discussion of the regional network of Metro bikes and other systems before talking about future bike share systems that will be coming to cities throughout the San Gabriel Valley thanks to the state grant received by the COG.

"Bike share is an exciting opportunity because we hope it will get more people out and riding," Miller concludes. "I hope that Los Angeles, Pasadena and other cities in the San Gabriel Valley can keep going in the direction their going to get more people out and riding."

Towards the end of the discussion, Linton mentions an upcoming piece by Streetsblog L.A.'s Sahra Sulaiman that looks at some of the equity issues (pricing, location) that surround bike share in Los Angeles and throughout the world. He hopes that the COG's plans take reporting on these issues seriously to insure that bike share is a system that works for as large a group of riders as possible. 

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 episode of SGV Connect and #DamienTalks on LibSyn and iTunes.

UP NEXT : Horses!

Every now and then, one of our interviews turns up some breaking news. The 6 stations that will be part of the next Foothill Gold Line Extension will have twice the bicycle parking as the six stations opened last year. Much of that increased parking will be in the form of "bike rooms" similar to the bike hub currently opened at the El Monte Bus Terminal.

While final details and designs on the rooms are not yet available, much of the rest of the station design will be unveiled at a series of public open houses tonight. Staff will be on hand to answer questions. Models of the station and samples of the local art will also be on hand.

Today, SGV Connect talks with Albert Ho, with the Foothill Gold Line Extension's media relations team about the meetings and of course about the bike parking.

Here's a full list of the upcoming meetings:

Thursday, July 13
San Dimas Senior/Community Center
201 E. Bonita Avenue
San Dimas, CA 91773

Tuesday, July 18
Palomares Park Community Center
499 E. Arrow Highway
Pomona, CA 91767

Wednesday, July 19
Montclair Senior Center
5111 Benito Street
Montclair, CA 91763

Monday, July 24
Alexander Hughes Community Center
1700 Danbury Road
Claremont, CA 91711

Thursday, August 3
Hillcrest Retirement Community
2705 Mountain View Drive
La Verne, CA 91750

Monday, August 7
Glendora Library, Bidwell Forum
140 S. Glendora Avenue
Glendora, CA 91741

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.”

Welcome to the latest episode of SGV Connect, Streetsblog Los Angeles’ podcast covering the San Gabriel Valley, featuring hosts Damien Newton and Brian Velez. SGV Connect’s new episode includes a series of interviews conducted by Brian Velez on the pending report by the U.S. Department of the Interior examining whether or not previous administrations followed proper procedure in creating national monuments.

A National Monument is a place of historic, scenic, or scientific interest set aside for preservation usually by presidential proclamation. The San Gabriel Valley National Monument covers 342,177 acres of the Angeles National Forest and 4,002 acres of neighboring San Bernardino National Forest.

Velez interviews Congressmember Judy Chu and Los Angeles resident Roderick Burr, two supporters of keeping the San Gabriel Mountains Monument as it is. He also speaks with Glendora City Councilmember Judy Nelson, who opposed parts of the designation of the monument in 2014 but currently has a more supportive view.

A final report, due in August, could decide whether or not Trump challenges the National Monument designation made by the previous administration. In the meantime, there is a lot of waiting, and a lot of unease, from supporters of the monument.

#DamienTalks 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.”

Welcome to the first episode of SGV Connect, the podcast formerly known as #DamienTalksSGV, covering the issues, places, people and events that impact mobility in the San Gabriel Valley.

In this week's episode, Damien Newton interviews Habib Balian, the CEO of the Gold Line Foothill Construction Authority. Following a successful meeting earlier this week for potential contractors for construction, it seemed a good time to check back in on the next extension of the Gold Line.

The Foothill Gold Line from Glendora to Montclair will extend the Metro Gold Line 12.3 miles and add stations in the cities of Glendora, San Dimas, La Verne, Pomona, Claremont, and Montclair. Ground breaking will be this October, but construction won't be complete until 2025.

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.”

Duarte Mayor John Fasana has been earning a lot of positive press based on his efforts to finally end the 710 Big Dig Tunnel Project. In the meantime, the City of Duarte has been making strides to embrace a more progressive vision for transportation inside its own borders.

Today, #DamienTalks with Brian Velez, who conducted a series of interviews with people riding bicycles, residents of the city and the Duarte City Manager about the impact of recently installed bicycle lanes on Duarte Road. The lanes were installed as part of the city's effort to build out its Bike Master Plan, passed by the city in the end of 2015.

For more information on bicycling in Duarte, you can get information from the Bike SGV webpage: Information on bicycle master plan, information on the current state of bicycling in Duarte, and recent news on how the SGV Greenways plan impacts the future of bicycling in the city.

#DamienTalks 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.”

Today, #DamienTalks with Jose Jimenez, the education director for Bike SGV. Late last month, Bike SGV and its partners, the City of El Monte, Day One, and the Honorable Daniel Lopez of the Los Angeles Superior Court in El Monte, launched Los Angeles County's first "traffic school program for people on bikes."

For the car-free amongst us, violators of traffic laws who are driving a car can often get the penalties reduced by going to "traffic school". The Bike SGV Website does a great job explaining the program :

For BikeSGV and Day One, launching the program in a high-need, lower-income community like El Monte was particularly important as the monetary cost of a violation on a bicycle is generally the same as when driving a motor vehicle. With court fees this means a stop sign violation can cost around $200 and a red light violation more than $400, significant sums, especially for low-income individuals and families who are most likely to rely on bicycling for everyday transportation.

We go into much greater detail in today's talk, so make sure to check it out.

#DamienTalks 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.”

As anyone who reads Streetsblog or The Source or who follows the pace of rail expansion in Los Angeles knows, today is the "retirement party" for Harriet, the tunnel boring machine that has been drilling about a mile of tunnel for the Crenshaw Line.

Today, #DamienTalks with Anthony Crump, the Constructions Relations Manager for the Crenshaw Line Construction Project. In a wide ranging conversation, we touch on Metro's commitment to bicycle and pedestrian access to stations, upcoming plans for Crenshaw Construction and an update on whether or not the line is scheduled to open on-time in the fall/winter of 2018 (It is!)

And of course, we wish a fond farewell to Harriett. As she is the property of the construction company and not Metro, we cannot say as to her long-term fate. However, we all wish her well in "retirement."

(Disclosure: This is a sponsored podcast that Metro pitched to us and agreed to sponsor. No discussion was made as to any editorial comments made by me nor did Metro receive any questions from me ahead of time. If you would like to sponsor a podcast, email me at [email protected])