SGV Connect

Rounding out our coverage of the Foothill Transit fare and route changes #DamienTalks #BrianTalks with three Foothill Passenger riders about how the changes would impact their lives. Spoiler : people don't like having their transit fares increased. However, most of the riders that Brian talked to, regular commuters, could actually see a decrease in their monthly pass from $70 to $50 if they choose to buy monthly instead of trip-by-trip.

Earlier this week, #DamienTalks hosted Foothill Transit's Felicia Friesema to give an overview of the changes. Yesterday, Joe Linton reported on a hearing he went to on Wednesday night.

Before we get to the three interviews, Damien has a short editorial reminding people that fare increases and service changes don't happen because transit agencies are mean, but because they don't get the support from state and federal governments that similar agencies do in other parts of the world. By all means, let Foothill Transit know what you think, but don't stop there. Let your state legislator, your Congressman, President Trump and Governor Brown know too.

To weigh-in on the changes, the easiest way is to email Foothill Transit at [email protected]. Find out more about the proposed changes at Foothill Transit website or attend one of the remaining hearings, listed below.

#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.”

• April 18, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., Pomona Library, 625 S. Garey Ave, Pomona, CA 91766.
• April 20, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., El Monte City Hall East, 11333 Valley Blvd., El Monte, CA 91731
• April 22, 9 a.m. (official public hearing), Foothill Transit offices, 100 S. Vincent Ave., West Covina, CA 91790.

Today, #DamienTalks with Felicia Friesema with Foothill Transit about the changes staff has proposed for the fare structure and bus service offered by Foothill Transit. Our talk covers an overview of the changes, the response from Foothill Transit riders, and a handful of questions submitted by you, Streetsblog readers.

Late last month, Foothill Transit announced plans for its bus service to react to ridership changes caused by the opening of the first phase of the Gold Line Foothill Extension. Last week, its Board of Directors approved taking the changes to the public through a series of hearings before a Board vote later this spring.

The San Gabriel Valley Tribune has broken down the largest changes, including segmenting Line 187, that currently runs from Pasadena to Montclair. The change will allow Foothill Transit to focus on more local service on the new Line 187 (Pasadena to Azusa) and Line 188 (Azusa to Montclair).

If you want a chance to weigh-in on the changes, the easiest way is to email Foothill Transit at [email protected] You can read more about the changes at the website and you can meet with them at the remaining hearings, listed below the podcast.

#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.”

This week, #DamienTalks with Monica Curiel of Bike SGV about the upcoming bicyclists and pedestrian counts happening throughout the San Gabriel Valley on April 1. Bike SGV is looking for volunteers to help with the counts, and if you want to volunteer, you can get more information by visiting Bike SGV website.

In Part II, Brian Velez is back, and he interviews three past (and future?) volunteers.

Irma Bustamante is one volunteer who collects data who then turns it over to Anthony William-Contrado who enters the data into a system. Both volunteers believe that their communities deserve more than what is given when it comes to safe street design.

“I see it not so much as giving my time. This is something I’m passionate about. I grew up in El Monte, and there’s too many cars,” replied Irma.

Next up, Brian talks to Danielle Zamora in North Whittier. Danielle also believes that bike counts are an important part of improving communities, “We want to make streets in general safer for everyone so people have access to active transportation and can be healthier.”

Just a reminder, all the information you need to sign up and help can be found here, at the Bike SGV Website.

#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.”

You know we’ve got a great episode of #DamienTalks when a woman who is eight months pregnant and running a half-marathon is the fourth interview in the podcast.

Today, #DamienTalks looks back at last Sunday’s mammoth open streets event, the 626 in the San Gabriel Valley. #DamienTalks with Joe Linton, the first staff person for open streets super-group CicLAvia, and Brian Velez of BikeSGV. Later, we podcast five interviews Velez conducted with people enjoying the 626 in the sun and rain last Sunday.

To call the 626 a success would be an understatement. Even with the rain, the event attracted roughly 100,000 participants. They biked, jogged, walked, or rolled the seventeen miles of car-free streets along a route that was roughly parallel to the Gold Line Foothill Extension that opened last year.

For more coverage of the event, visit this open thread from Streetsblog yesterday, or check out these stories on ABC7 and in the SGV Tribune and South Pasadena Review.

#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.”

Listeners are going to see some major changes in the podcast in the coming weeks and months. We’re happy to announce the first of those changes today.

Today, #DamienTalks with Brian Velez. You may know Brian as a staff member at BikeSGV. Brian is going to be joining this podcast as a correspondent, helping to round out our podcast with a series of “person-on-the-street” interviews to either supplement or anchor stories that we’ve been working on.

Of course, #DamienTalks is a lousy name for a podcast that has a lot more people talking than just Damien. A change in the name and logo will be coming in the near future as well.

But for today, welcome to the team Brian! Damien and Brian talk about Brian’s history, some of the things they plan to work on together, and of course, with March 5 looming just around the corner, they talk about the 626.

#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 Habib Balian, the executive director of the Gold Line Foothill Construction Authority. Last week, the Construction Authority's Board of Directors approved a construction schedule that was characterized as both a milestone for the project and a delay from the original time schedule pending your news source.

But regardless of you point of view on the schedule, there is no denying that the extension of the Gold Line all the way to Montclair in the San Bernadino Valley is going to happen. It might take eight years, but groundbreaking is going to begin this October and over 90% of the funding for the project is already in place thanks to Measure M in Los Angeles County and Measure I in San Bernadino County.

Before we finish our talk, I give Balian a chance to respond to our most recent podcast with Wes Reutimann, the executive director of Bike SGV. Reutimann pointe out that demand for bike lockers is much higher than the lockers supplied at the recently completed Gold Line Foothill extensions. Balian offered verbal support for building more bike facilities and encouraged activists to continue the conversation on bike parking and access throughout the next several months.

#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.”

We made it! It's inauguration day and the world hasn't ended. But even as the we face an uncertain future at the national level, there's still a lot of work to do locally. And in the San Gabriel Valley, 2017 promises to be another exciting year with "Gold Line Extension" being on the tip of everyone's tongue.

And while everyone is encouraged by the succesful launch of the Foothill Extension last year and the passage of Measure R; there's no need to let good be the enemy of "better." Today's guest, Wes Reutimann has some ideas that could make the next Gold Line extension the best Gold Line extension. Spoiler : It's less parking for cars and more parking for bicycles.

For it's part, the Foothill Extension Construction Authority has already built more bike parking than required by Metro for its last extension. A statement from the authority states:

"The Construction Authority put in significantly more bike parking (racks and lockers) than was required by the Metro criteria in 2010 when we began the project. In fact, we have reviewed their updated criteria for the next segment (which came out last year) and we put in more parking than is required by the new criteria as well.

The Construction Authority received a federal grant to study ways to improve bike, pedestrian and bus access to each of our stations and then was able to use about $1 million to augment the plans for each station to implement the recommendations. That allowed us to put in the additional bike spaces.

As you know, we turned the line over to Metro in September 2015. We have heard that bike parking is not full; but that may be old information."

At the request of Bike SGV, Metro put together some data on bike parking at existing Gold Line Foothill stations. That data can be found on Streetsblog Los Angeles. 

#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.”

This is it! The last #DamienTalks of 2016. As is traditional for unoriginal talk hosts, we're hosting an "end of the year" podcast where four local experts weigh in on what was the biggest story of 2016 and what will be the biggest story of 2017.

Our guests include the closest thing a bi-weekly podcast has to regulars, David Diaz and Wes Reutimann with Bike SGV, South Pasadena Mayor Mike Cacciotti and Transit Coalition executive director Bart Reed. As a bonus, Bart and I spend the first minute and a half of his interview talking about how my kids enjoy riding on trains.

Currently, all the Streetsblogs are doing their end of the year fundraising drives. If you want to continue to support this podcast, Streetsblog L.A. and the work we do, please click here and get started on your donation.

#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.”

This week, #DamienTalks with Joe Linton, the editor of Streetsblog Los Angeles. Joe has overseen our efforts to expand our coverage outside of the boundries of the City of Los Angeles into the San Gabriel Valley in 2016. As a result, he has a lot to say when asked if he has any opinions on what the biggest story was of 2016, and what the biggest story will be in the next calendar year.

This is our second to last podcast of the year, but if you are taking an early trip to visit loved ones during the holidays, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for your support of this podcast and Streetsblog.

Currently, all the Streetsblogs are doing their end of the year fundraising drives. If you want to continue to support this podcast, Streetsblog L.A. and the work we do, please click here and get started on your donation.

#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 foothilltransit.org. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.”

This week, #DamienTalks with David Diaz with DayOne and the San Gabriel Valley Bicycle Coalition about the Mulhall Bike Park that is under construction in El Monte. The Bike Park is literally designed to do exactly what it says: be a space for people who ride bicycle to practice their skills in a closed, safe setting.

This project is truly community driven, being led by community organizations, being next to a community center, and being in a community park. In fact, it's even being community built. The second of two Mulholland Bike Park Build Days is this Sunday. (Facebook Event) from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. If you don't know where the park is, you can find it on most mapping program and apps at 10900 Mulhall Street in El Monte.

A quick programming note...we'll be wrapping up our 2017 schedule with a pair of "look ahead, look back" podcasts over the next couple of weeks. Currently, all the Streetsblogs are doing their end of the year fundraising drives. If you want to continue to support this podcast, Streetsblog L.A. and the work we do, please click here and get started on your donation.

#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 foothilltransit.org. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.”