The latest data analyzed by The Block Research shows that bitcoin miners made 8% more revenue in April as compared to March, thanks to a gradual recovery in bitcoin’s price.The post Bitcoin miners made $412.5 million in revenue during April, new data indicates appeared first on The Block.

The analysts might have been a bit too bullish on Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE:ED), given that the company fell...

The move will help Southwest save cash at a time when U.S. airlines collectively burn more than $10 billion a month. Last month, rival United Airlines agreed to sell and lease back 22 planes to aircraft investor Bank of China Aviation. United, however, did not specify the size of the deal.

Director of Fiscal Policy at the American Action Forum Gordon Gray joins Yahoo Finance’s Seana Smith to break down the April jobs report and how some workers are making more on unemployment compared to their wages before the coronavirus pandemic.

What happened to my stimulus money? Many who receive government benefits and others continue to wonder in early May.

GitHub on Wednesday announced two new security features designed to help developers identify vulnerabilities and potential secrets in their code.

The company announced several new products at its Satellite virtual conference, including ones aimed at helping customers write and consume more secure code.

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A large-scale attack campaign has targeted over 900,000 WordPress websites through vulnerabilities in plugins and themes, WordPress security company Defiant revealed this week.

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Researchers have found another vulnerability in software made by Schneider Electric that is similar to the one exploited by the notorious Stuxnet malware.

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Recorded Future this week announced the availability of Express, a free web browser extension designed to help security teams prioritize vulnerability patching and alerts from security information and event management (SIEM) tools.

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A couple of Salt vulnerabilities addressed last week were abused over the weekend to hack Algolia’s infrastructure, the search-as-a-service startup revealed.

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Cisco Patches High Severity Vulnerabilities in Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD)

Cisco this week released security updates to address more than 30 vulnerabilities in various products, including 12 high severity flaws impacting Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD).

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Samsung this week released its May 2020 set of security updates for Android smartphones, which includes a patch for a critical vulnerability impacting all of its devices since 2014. 

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Threat actors are actively targeting a vulnerability in the Elementor Pro plugin for WordPress to compromise websites, WordPress security company Defiant warned this week.

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More than 30 technology and telecom companies announced this week that they have formed a new alliance, the Open RAN Policy Coalition, that calls for open and interoperable 5G systems.

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Trellising tomatoes using the tomato hook and tomato clips Please check out this video I made on Trellising tomato plants. If you are growing indeterminate or vine tomatoes, they will have to be supported due to their tall growing nature. Trellising tomato plants is done either by a stick or a twine. Twine is the […]

  Pollination and its importance Without pollination, you can’t have the fruits of your effort (pun intended as always ;-). Pollination is a process where the pollen from the male parts of the flower are transferred to female flower or female parts of the flower. This step has to happen for fruit set to happen. […]

Buying a used car online does not have to be intimidating. With these four easy tips, you can make sure that you are getting the best vehicle for your money.

Biker Next is Dating VIP's latest club that seeks to bring together everyone who's interested in biking - feel the wind and the open road with your partner!

Sanford, Florida Power Sports dealership participates in Yamaha pre-order program.

Motorcycle enthusiasts can now experience another bucket-list journey of a lifetime.

Motorcycle enthusiasts are encouraged to take advantage of the European riding season and attend the world's largest BMW motorcycle party.

Austin personal injury attorney Chip Evans said the state ranks among the worst in the nation for motorcycle safety. Texas is behind only South Carolina and Mississippi in the number of number of motorcycle fatalities per registered motorcycles.

A firefighter with over 20 years' experience launched a safety tool on crowd-funding site Kickstarter that can literally be a lifesaver for First Responders and Civilians alike!

WeeTect, a global leader in designing and manufacturing abrasion resistant helmet visors, today announced that it has started using this technology on other eye and face protection products.

Billy Johnson, a personal injury attorney in Pikeville, KY, said that a greater awareness of the threats facing motorists could reduce the number of vehicle crashes.

Jinggu Energy, a leading inverter supplier in China, announced the publication of their website content: The Ultimate Buying Guide of Power Inverter.

The Online Shopping Experience at www.peninsulageneral.com is Fast and Provides Customers with More Choices

The American fashion designer Victoria Napolitano will collaborate with Luca Caputo, a talented Italian with a passion for restoring classic cars and motorbikes.

Cashyourcaruae is an instant car buyer introduced in UAE. Service is absolutely commotion free and company buy cars of all makes and models and provides customers with an ideal deal in less than 30 minutes.

This week, we highlight three new titles from the ASPA Series in Public Administration and Public Policy.

Market disruptions, climate change, and health pandemics lead the growing list of challenges faced by today’s leaders. These issues, along with countless others that do not make the daily news, require novel thinking and collaborative action to find workable solutions. However, many administrators stumble into collaboration without a strategic orientation.

Using a practitioner-oriented style, Strategic Collaboration In Public And Non-Profit Administration: A Practice-Based Approach To Solving Shared Problems provides guidance on how to collaborate more effectively, with less frustration and better results.

Linking collaboration theory to effective practice, this book offers essential advice that fosters shared understanding, creative answers, and transformation results through strategic collaborative action. With an emphasis on application, it uses scenarios, real-world cases, tables, figures, tools, and checklists to highlight key points.

The appendix includes supplemental resources such as collaboration operating guidelines, a meeting checklist, and a collaboration literature review to help public and nonprofit managers successfully convene, administer, and lead collaboration. The book presents a framework for engaging in collaboration in a way that stretches current thinking and advances public service practice.

A guidebook through the minefield of government contracting and procurement, Government Contracting: Promises and Perils describes the dangerous practices commonly applied in the development and management of government contracts and provides advice for avoiding the sort of errors that might compromise their ability to protect the public interest.

It includes strategies for increasing profits for government contractors, rather than incurring burdensome costs, through compliance with government mandated subcontracting and financial management systems.

Drawing from his in-depth investigation of government agencies across the country, the author examines present-day scenarios that regularly lead public servants and government committees to manage contracts with tools that are less than optimal and to select contractors that may not be the best qualified. He then delineates practical processes, contracting documents, and contract management tools to mitigate detrimental outcomes and alternative approaches to supplant the imperfect methodologies.

The author includes a CD-ROM with the book that provides a number of practical tools that you can apply as well as examples of contracts and templates that are the best he discovered during his research. The book also outlines an approach for performing advance contract planning, conducting contract negotiations, and administering contracts useful when planning for the management of the contracting process throughout the contracting cycle, negotiating a contract that protects the interest of all contracting parties, and ensuring successful contractor performance.

Filling a gap in project management literature, Managing Public Sector Projects: A Strategic Framework for Success in an Era of Downsized Government supplies managers and administrators—at all levels of government—with expert guidance on all aspects of public sector project management.

From properly allocating risks in drafting contracts to dealing with downsized staffs and privatized services, this book clearly explains the technical concepts and the political issues involved.

In line with the principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) and the PMBOK^® (Project Management Body of Knowledge), David S. Kassel establishes a framework those in the public sector can follow to ensure the success of their public projects and programs. He supplies more than 30 real-life examples to illustrate the concepts behind the framework—including reconstruction projects in Iraq, the Big Dig project in Boston, local sewer system and library construction projects, and software technology.

This authoritative resource provides strategic recommendations for effective planning, execution, and maintenance of public projects. It also:

• Highlights the differences between managing projects in the public sector versus the private sector
• Explains how to scrutinize costs, performance claims, and the backgrounds of prospective contractors
• Presents key safeguards that should be included in all contracts with contractors, consultants, suppliers, and other service providers
• Details the basics of project cost estimation, design and scheduling, and how to hold contractors responsible for meeting established project standards

In an age of downsized government and in the face of a general distrust of public service, this book is a dependable guide for avoiding management practices that are common to projects that fail and for adopting the practices common to projects that succeed in terms of cost, schedule, and quality.

The Metro Transportation Library has begun collecting, cataloging and providing access to “digital” documents via our online catalog. These important resources have been produced and disseminated in electronic format – rather than being released “on paper.”

Up until now, we had been providing access to plenty of digitized documents - those which were scanned to provide electronic portability for resource sharing.

Some of our print documents (books, reports, etc.) had digital versions published along with print copies, and we had linked to those in our online catalog. Other items that were published in print were scanned to create a PDF document, allowing them to be emailed or easily accessed in other ways. For example, our collection of historic L.A. transit plans offers numerous full-text digital documents.

In both cases, the digital documents supplemented the original print versions. They appear in our online catalog just as a book does, but with links to a URL that opens the PDF document for that title.

However, more and more information is being “born digital” -- published electronically, as opposed to in print format. Rather than printing these items out to add to our collection, we are cataloging the electronic version to conserve resources and provide better access and more options for our users.

We wanted to share with you some of the many benefits of growing our digital documents collection and why it is important to capture these “born digital” documents for posterity.

Digital documents do not take up valuable space. We save paper (and time, and ink) by not printing out electronic documents. We save additional resources by not binding, labeling and barcoding printed documents, as well as other physical processing. Cataloging the electronic version provides all the content directly to our users in a direct, cost-efficient manner.

Digital documents do not get lost or stolen. The Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library & Archive has its own server space to host digital documents in our digital libraries. We have created organized directories to facilitate sharing resources in a timely manner. By storing the documents electronically on our own servers, they are easily located and safeguarded from disappearing from the collection. There are numerous ways books, reports and other print documents can disappear from a collection: theft, mis-shelving, loss, never returned after checkout, or sustaining damage that hinders their use. Electronic access does not pose these problems.

Digital documents can serve multiple users simultaneously. While there is something to be said for the experience of curling up in bed with a great book, that book can only be experienced by one person at a time. Libraries are embracing eBooks because they reduce or eliminate the wait time for popular titles.

Likewise, our digital documents collection will accommodate multiple users at the same time. For example, when lengthy environmental impact reports (EIRs) are released to the public for review and comment, we now provide the user with the ability to consume this information at the same time as others, as well as at the time and place of his or her choosing.

Digital documents are findable as well as searchable. These resources are located the same way as other material formats in our collection. Our users will find relevant digital documents when searching the online catalog, although we do not currently have the ability to limit search results to only digital documents.

However, once a digital document is found, the user can open the link to the PDF and execute a keyword search within the document for the information they want.

Users can quickly locate specific data or text with a few keystrokes from home or their mobile device, as opposed to making a request of the Metro Library, having staff search for and locate a print document, scanning or sending the document to the user, and the user then searching through it for the information they need.

Like online news stories that disappear all too quickly, some resources that should persist forever often go away before they can be accessed. References to them often last longer than the access provided by the producer, leading users to waste time trying to track down something that no longer exists.

Transit advocacy groups go by the wayside, organizations merge with others, while other entities change their Internet domain names -- all these scenarios cause users to waste time searching for vanished resources, or search for URL links to desired documents that cannot be found.

Creating a lasting home for these items and making them permanently accessible meets these challenges. By cataloging electronic resources that fit our collection profile, we not only provide access to them, but preserve them as well.

As one of the premier transportation research collections in the country, we want to grow our collection to remain responsive to Metro’s ambitious mobility agenda moving forward. We can achieve this without using up more physical space or many of the costs associated with print documents.

Finally, we are mindful that more and more users will be accessing our collection via mobile devices in the coming years. New smartphones, e-readers and iPads allow students, researchers, historians, and anyone interested in transportation information the ability to access us however they like.

These devices will continue to provide users with greater amounts of information, more quickly, and in more customizable fashion, where they want and need it. Our growing digital documents collection helps us prepare for these for 24/7 access needs: anytime, anywhere.

The organization CEOs For Cities released a widely-cited report last month titled Measuring Urban Transportation Performance: A Critique Of Mobility Measures And Synthesis (71p. PDF). Their research finds that the secret to reducing the amount of time Americans spend in peak hour traffic has more to do with how we build our cities than how we build our roads.

The report explains how the cities studied have managed to achieve shorter travel times and actually reduce the peak hour travel times. Some metropolitan areas have land use patterns and transportation systems that enable their residents to take shorter trips and minimize the burden of peak hour travel.

This runs counter to the conclusions of the Texas Transportation Institute's Urban Mobility Report year after year. The CEO For Cities document explains that the UMR approach has completely overlooked the role that variations in travel distances play in driving urban transportation problems.

In the best performing cities -- those that have achieved the shortest peak hour travel distances -- such as Chicago, Portland and Sacramento, the typical traveler spends 40 fewer hours per year in peak hour travel than the average American. Because of smart land use planning and investment in alternative transportation, Portland has seen its average trip lengths decline by 20%.

In contrast, in the most sprawling metropolitan areas, such as Nashville, Indianapolis and Raleigh, the average resident spends as much as 240 hours per year in peak period travel because travel distances are so much greater. The report's 20-page Executive Summary is titled Driven Apart: How Sprawl Is Lengthening Our Commutes And Why Misleading Mobility Measures Are Making Things Worse.

In The New Sharing Economy, a study by Latitude in collaboration with Shareable Magazine, the authors look at new opportunities for sharing.

An interesting graph (click to enlarge) plots various endeavors on a market saturation and latent demand scale. The resulting plot points fall into four quandrants, labeled:

Low Interest and Low Prior Success (e.g. bike, outdoor sporting goods)

Done Well Already (e.g. work space, storage space, food co-op)

Opportunities Still Remain (e.g. physical media, digital media)

Best New Opportunities (automobile, time/responsibilities, money lending/borrowing)

This last category, Best New Opportunities, provides the launch point for discussion of car sharing. The report notes that there's still a large amount of unfulfilled demand for car-sharing. More than half of all participants surveyed either shared vehicles casually or weren't sharing currently but expressed interest in doing so. For people who share in an organized fashion, cars and bikes were popular for sharing amongst family and close friends but weren't commonly shared outside this immediate network, relative to other categories of goods.

This intriguing and visually appealing report goes on to point out the new sharing takeaways for non-sharing businesses, including "we-based brands," the value in social and alternative currencies, and the "contagiousness" of sharing.

Finally, Transportation For America recently released a White Paper titled Smart Mobility For A 21st Century America: Strategies For Maximizing Technology To Minimize Congestion, Reduce Emissions And Increase Efficiency (39p. PDF).

It proposes that improving transportation efficiency through operational innovation is critical as our population grows and ages, budgets tighten and consumer preferences shift.

As Congress prepares to review and reauthorize the nation’s transportation program, an array of innovations that were either overlooked or did not exist at the time of previous authorizations can be incentivized.

Just as the Internet, smart phones and social media changed they way we acquire news, listen to music or connect with friends and family, these same innovations have implications for how we move around. While high-tech gadgets can be a problem when they distract motorists from driving, they open up a whole new world for people using other modes.

But what if we could manage traffic to help drivers avoid congestion before they get stuck in it? What if you always knew when the next bus was going to arrive, the closest parking space or which train car had a seat available for you? The innovative technologies and strategies outlined in the White Paper include:

Making transportation systems more efficient (e.g. ramp meters, highway advisory radio)
Providing more travel options (e.g. online databases to match up vanpool riders, car-sharing services)
Providing travelers with better, more accurate, and more connected information (e.g. computerized vehicle tracking)
Making pricing and payments more convenient and efficient (e.g. EZ passes, electronic benefits)
Reducing trips and traffic (flex-time, consolidating services online)

The report goes on to discuss changes in demographics and make recommendations for federal transportation policy, as well as highlight several intriguing "smart mobility case studies."

Each and every day, social media tools change the way that organizations
interact with their users.

A recent report from the Center For Urban Transportation Research at University of South Florida titled Routes To New Networks: A Guide To Social Media For The Public Transportation Industry (66p. PDF) explains how these new platforms offer not only more personal one-on-one interaction than traditional media, but also represent the essence of niche marketing.

It is undeniable that social media is all the buzz. For some, utilizing new media tools may come as second nature. For others, however, entering the world of social media means taking a giant leap into the world of online communications.

One thing is certain – social media platforms are allowing a new opportunity for transportation providers to directly communicate with their target audiences. Communication is moving in this direction – with or without your organization.

The report analyzes the usefulness of and applications for social networks, written blogs, audio/video blogs, microblogs (e.g. Twitter), photo sharing, video sharing, user-generated content and mobile web content.

The report states that key points to consider when determining which tool(s) to use are:

1) Who is my target audience and what tools are they using?
2) What type of information do I want to communicate?

Content must always resonate with your audience. What can you provide that would be of value?

Earlier this year, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) published Funding The Public Transportation Needs Of An Aging Population (57p. PDF).

It explains how rapid growth in the number of older people in the United States during the coming decades will lead to greatly increased needs for expanded and enhanced public transportation services. This report:

a) identifies the range of actions that will be needed to expand mobility options for older people, including accessible public transportation services;
b) quantifies the demand for these public transportation services; and
c) estimates the funding that will be needed to provide them.

Needed actions have been identified by means of a review of the extensive literature on this
subject. The actions needed to expand mobility options for older people include:

• Enhancements to fixed-route public transportation operations and planning such as additional bus operator training, incorporating travel needs of older people in route planning and stop placement, and coordination with other agencies and transportation providers
• Enhancements to public transportation vehicles such as low-floor buses, kneeling buses, improved interior circulation, additional stanchions and grab bars, ergonomic seating designed for older riders, and accessibility features either required or encouraged by ADA like lifts and ramps, larger letters on head signs, and stop announcements
• Actions to help older people take advantage of existing services, like presenting information in ways that are easy to read and as clear as possible, information and assistance programs to connect older people with appropriate services, and outreach and training programs
• Expansion of supplementary services including flexible route and community transportation services, ADA complementary paratransit, non-ADA demand-responsive services, taxi subsidy programs, and volunteer driver programs
• Application of universal design strategies at transit facilities, bus stops, and on streets and sidewalks in the immediate vicinity of transit facilities and stops

These are the actions of greatest concern to public transportation agencies, but they are not the
only actions needed.

Other important actions include assuring supportive services to caregivers
who provide transportation, encouraging further development of unsubsidized private
transportation services, increasing the availability of accessible taxicabs, coordinating with non-emergency medical transportation provided under Medicaid and Medicare, and supporting
modifications to automobiles and roadways to increase the safety of older drivers.

Finally, we wanted to take a closer look at U.S. Parking Policies: An Overview Of Management Strategies put out by the Institute For Transportation And Development Policy in New York.

This report highlights best practices in parking management in the United States.

In the last decade, some municipalities have reconsidered poorly conceived parking policies to address a host of negative impacts resulting from private automobile use such as traffic congestion and climate change. Unchecked, these policies have proven to be a major barrier to establishing a balanced urban transportation network.

Many aspects of current parking management in the United States do not work reliably or efficiently for anyone: Motorists find themselves circling for long periods in search of a place to park; retail employees take choice parking locations away from potential customers; developers are compelled to provide more parking than the market requires; and traffic managers encounter difficulty handling traffic generated by new parking as there is often no link between parking price, supply and the amount of available road space.

Finally, the old parking paradigm doesn’t work for the environment, as hidden subsidies encourage over reliance on private car use — a major, growing contributor to global warming and air pollution.

This report identifies core sustainable parking principles and illustrates how smarter parking management can benefit consumers and businesses in time and money savings, while also leading to more livable, attractive communities.

We wanted to share important (and frankly, frightening) news with you regarding the findings released last week of an audit of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

The audit (42p. PDF) was prompted in part by the loss of the Wright Brothers' original patent and maps for atomic bomb missions in Japan.

These losses led investigators to discover that some of the nation's prized historical documents are in danger of being lost for good. It follows a previous audit (66p. PDF) earlier in October highlighting oversight and management improvements, but pointing out that more action was needed.

The Government Accountability Office has also released a Summary Of Audit Findings as well as a Highlights page. The NARA website has posted a Statement in response to the audit findings from Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero.

Nearly 80 percent of U.S. government agencies are at risk of illegally destroying public records and the National Archives is backlogged with hefty volumes of records needing preservation care, the audit by the Government Accountability Office found.

The report by the watchdog arm of Congress, completed this month after a year's work, also found many U.S. agencies do not follow proper procedures for disposing of public records.

The report comes more than a year after news reports of key items missing at the nation's record-keeping agency. Some of the items have been missing for decades but their absence only became widely known in recent years.

The patent file for the Wright Brothers flying machine was last seen in 1980 after passing around multiple Archives offices, the Patents and Trademarks Office and the National Air and Space Museum.

As for maps for the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, military representatives checked them out in 1962, and they've been missing ever since.

The GAO report did not specifically mention those or other examples of missing items including Civil War telegrams from Abraham Lincoln, Eli Whitney's cotton gin patent and some NASA photographs on the moon.

Meanwhile, some documents face the threat of deterioration even though they're already at the Archives. Figures from 2009 show 65 percent of its holdings need preservation steps. In some cases, a document's condition already is so poor, it can't be read – a backlog amounting to more than 2 million cubic feet of records.

The National Archives and Records Administration has 44 facilities in 20 states, including 13 presidential libraries, funded by about $470 million this year from Congress.

NARA also maintains a "Help The National Archives Recover Lost And Stolen Documents" website.

In August 2007, the I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis, MN, collapsed, killing 13 and injuring 145 others. Investigations following the tragedy revealed that it could have been prevented. The grave reality is that it is a tragedy that threatens to be repeated at many of the thousands of bridges located across the nation.

In Too Big To Fall: America's Failing Infrastructure And The Way Forward (New York: Foster, 2010), author Barry LePatner chronicles the problems that led to the I-35W catastrophe — poor bridge design,shoddy maintenance, ignored expert repair recommendations, and misallocated funding — and digs through the National Transportation Safety Board’s report on the tragedy, which failed to present the full story.

From there LePatner evaluates what the I-35W Bridge collapse means for the country as a whole — outlining the possibility of a nationwide infrastructure breakdown.

He exposes government failure on a national as well as state level, explains why we must maintain an effective infrastructure system — including how it plays a central role in supporting both our nation’s economic strength and our national security — and rounds out the book by providing his own well-researched solutions.

Too Big to Fall presents an eye-opening critique of a bureaucratic system that has allowed political best interests to trump those of the American people. It contains special comments by James Oberstar, the outgoing Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure.

Cities are the engines of the economic growth and the foundation of our prosperity. But what will become of them as our world gets hotter?

In Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive In The Hotter Future (New York: Basic, 2010), Matthew Kahn, one of the world's foremost experts on the economics of the environment and of cities, argues that our future lies in our ability to adapt. Cities and regions will slowly transform as we change our behaviors and our surroundings in response to the changing climate. Kahn - professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, the UCLA School of Public Affairs' Department of Public Policy, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research - shows us how this will happen.

The author is optimistic about the quality of our lives in the cities of the future, despite a high chance of less hospitable climate conditions than we face today. At the heart of his conviction in a bright future is our individual freedom of choice. This personal freedom will reveal pathways that will greatly help urbanites cope with climate change.

Taking the reader on a tour of the world's cities - from New York to Los Angeles, Beijing to Mumbai - Kahn's clear-eyed, engaging, and optomistic messages presents a positive yet realistic picture of what our urban future will look like.

An entire chapter is devoted to Los Angeles, including sub-sections titled "Los Angeles Has A Subway?" and "Could Public Transit Become Hip In Los Angeles?"

The recent selection of a route alignment for the Westside Subway Extension, as well as the release of the Wilshire Boulevard Bus Rapid Transit final environmental impact report started us thinking about something we read aways back regarding Wilshire Boulevard.

It was in Kevin Roderick's Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse Of Los Angeles (Santa Monica: Angel City Press, 2005). The author briefly mentions (on page 20):

"New subdivisions around the periphery of Los Angeles were not unusual in the mid-1890s, but the Wilshires had grander ambitions. Across the center of their land, they promised to grade a generous, one-hundred-twenty-foot-wide graveled boulevard.

It would stretch just four blocks between the two parks, but the brothers believed that even a short stub of remarkable avenue would attract lot buyers.

To spur sales, they lobbied to encircle the tract with special streetcar lines, but insisted that the city council forbid the laying of tracks - forever - on their boulevard."

Forbid the laying of tracks?

Forever?

Really?

We had to determine if this had actually been codified, and turned to the City of Los Angeles Municipal Code to investigate.

Sure enough, we discovered in SEC. 62.129. PUBLIC BOULEVARDS - USE OF:

That the following regulations shall apply to those certain streets in this City, known as Wilshire Boulevard, from Park View Avenue to the west City limits; Adams Street from Grand Avenue to Hoover Street; Boyle Avenue from Whittier Boulevard to First Street; Alvarado Street from Seventh Street to Hoover Street; and Occidental Boulevard from First Street to Sixth Street; which have been heretofore dedicated as open, public boulevards:

(a) No railroad or pipe line franchise shall ever be granted, and no railroad track or pipe line shall ever be laid or constructed, except water pipes, sewers, gas mains and conduits for telephone and electric wires, for service of the property fronting on said boulevards and house connections and connections of water, sewers, and gas pipe lines, or conduits for telephone and electric wires on intersecting streets.

The early developers of Wilshire were successful in banishing rail lines from the Boulevard forever. Despite having the greatest urban rail system in the world in its heyday, no streetcars ever rumbled down Los Angeles' grandest street.

This 1925 Kelker DeLeuw City/County Comprehensive Rapid Transit Plan Urban Map shows nothing on Wilshire - cross-town streetcars were designated for Pico Boulevard, 3rd Street, and Hollywood Boulevard.

A 1938 Los Angeles Railway map depicts cross-town streetcars on several east-west lines: 3rd Street (R), 10th Street / Olympic Boulevard (L), Pico "Street" (P), Washington Boulevard (W), and Jefferson Boulevard (J). Only motor coaches served Wilshire Boulevard.

Wilshire still became the city's grandest boulevard despite its lack of "rapid transit" - or perhaps because of it - and Rodericks' book is a fascinating account of Los Angeles' iconic boulevard and how one street can influence such a large city.

We can't know how the street or city would have developed had streetcars run along it, but Wilshire Boulevard never got stuck with overhead transit either.

We might be thankful we didn't end up with a Wilshire monorail, as one proposal depicted the intersection of Wilshire & Fairfax here.

Meanwhile, this Saturday marks the annual Great Los Angeles Walk, which goes back to its roots this year.

The day-long trek will take participants 15.6 miles along the entire length of Wilshire Boulevard, from Pershing Square downtown to its west end at the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica.

The L.A. Conservancy has a wonderful interactive website that helps visitors create their own customized tours of Wilshire Boulevard's past and present.

There is a wealth of research and literature explaining suburban sprawl and the urgent need to retrofit suburbia. However, until now there has been no single guide that directly explains how to repair typical sprawl elements.

Avid readers of local history are usually intrigued by photos of historic sites juxtaposed against contemporary images. This format of visual history has a particularly strong impact when the subject is Los Angeles: a city that grew up -- and outward -- so quickly.

Those seeking pictorial overviews will likely have checked out aerial photography books as well.

Los Angeles From The Air: Then And Now (San Diego: Thunder Bay Press, 2010) is a hybrid of these two types of pictorial books. It presents decades-old photographs of both familiar and lesser-known landmarks along side more current ones.

This takes the reader on a trip through Los Angeles like never before, featuring inspiring, sky-high then-and-now images of some of LA's most famous locations.

Some of the landmarks' origins are well-known, but the authors provide context for both familiar and hidden pieces of Los Angeles history.

Many of the photos feature snow-capped peaks in the distance -- a testament to our clear Winter days being the best for photography.

Unfortunately, the work falls flat in its description of transportation in downtown Los Angeles. The authors write:

"Metrolink [sic] provides service to Union Station in the form of three rail lines -- Red, Purple, Gold..."

While Metro and Metrolink may sound similar to those outside of Los Angeles (the book is, after all, published in San Diego), it gives one pause that other information found here may not be entirely accurate. Ultimately, one can ignore the text entirely, as these beautiful photos speak for themselves.

In Makeshift Metropolis: Ideas About Cities (New York: Scribner, 2010), noted architecture writer Witold Rybczynski offers a glimpse of an urban future that might very well serve as a template for cities around the world.

Rybczynski integrates history and prediction of the development of the American city in a brisk look back that takes us from colonial town planning to the Garden City and City Beautiful initiatives of the early 20th century and on to the "Big Box Era."

He also examines how contemporary urban designers and planners are revisiting and refreshing older urban ideas, such as bringing gardens to a blighted Brooklyn waterfront.

Rybczynski's study is kept relevant by his focus on what the past can teach us about creating the "cities we want" and "cities we need."

The prose is instructive and always engaging, and the author's enthusiasm for the future of cities and his enduring love of urban settings of all kinds is evident.

He not only writes about what people want from their cities, he inspires the reader to imagine the possibilities.

In Down The Asphalt Path: The Automobile And The American City, author Clay McShane examines the uniquely American relationship between "automobility" and urbanization.

Writing at the cutting edge of urban and technological history, he depicts how new technology, namely the private automobile, and the modernization of the American city redefined each other.

The author motors us across the country -- from Boston to New York, from Milwaukee to Los Angeles and the suburbs in between -- chronicling the urban embrace of the automobile.

The New York Times calls this work "A treat to read, loaded with interesting facts...a notable book about urban transportation."

Barron's wrote that "this fascinating, well-researched history of the automobile industry...is written from a social and cultural perspective rarely included in traditional books about the business."

The Whole Earth Review claims "this fascinating treatise is the most credible look yet at how automobiles have changed American society for better or worse."

Everyone is calling for smart growth...but what exactly is it?

In The Smart Growth Manual (New York: McGraw-Hill Professional, 2009), two leading city planners provide a thorough answer. From the expanse of the metropolis to the detail of the window box, they address the pressing challenges of urban development with easy-to-follow advice and broad array of best practices.

With their landmark book Suburban Nation, Andres Duany and Jeff Speck "set forth more clearly than anyone has done in our time the elements of good town planning" (The New Yorker).

In this long-awaited companion volume, the authors have organized the latest contributions of new urbanism, green design, and healthy communities into a comprehensive handbook, fully illustrated with the built work of the nation's leading practitioners.

This work also features a valuable Smart Growth Directory, with contact information for national, regional and state organizations.

Lieutenant Governor-Elect Gavin Newsom, writing as Mayor of San Francisco, touted The Smart Growth Manual as "an indispensable guide to city planning. This kind of progressive development is the only way to full restore our economic strength and create new jobs, new industries, and a renewed ability to compete in the first rank of world economies."

An extensive interview with the authors is featured on the American Society of Landscape Architects "The Dirt" blog.

The conventional wisdom says that we need strict planning to build walkable neighborhoods around transit stations - even though these neighborhoods are like the streetcar suburbs that were common in America before anyone heard of city planning.

In reality, many of our greatest successes in urban design have occurred when we treated the issues as political questions - not as technical problems that the planners should solve for us.

According to Unplanning: Livable Cities And Political Choices (Berkeley, Calif.: Preservation Institute, 2010), the anti-freeway movement of the 1960s and 1970s and the anti-sprawl movement of recent decades were both political movements, and citizen-activists often had to work against projects that planners proposed and approved.

This book uses an intriguing thought experiment to show that, in order to build livable cities, we should go further than the anti-freeway and anti-sprawl movements by putting direct political limits on urban growth.

Political choices about how we want to live can transform our cities more effectively than planning.

From animal paths to superhighways, transportation has been the backbone of American expansion and growth.

Asphalt And Politics: A History Of The American Highway System (New York: McFarland, 2009) examines the interstate highway system in the United States, and the forces that shaped it, includes the introduction of the automobile, the Good Roads Movement, and the Lincoln Highway Association.

The book offers an analysis of state and federal road funding, modern road-building options, and the successes and failures of the current highway system.

Since its founding in 1965, the California Transit Association (CTA) has been a primary advocate for public transportation in the state.

The Association's team of legislative advocates works to promote multi-year transit funding and to represent transit's interests before the California State Legislature, the Governor and regulatory agencies on the local, state and federal levels.

CTA is dedicated to a collaborative approach to advocating for improved transit operations throughout California. Key to that approach is engaging our members in the advocacy process.

Members are frequently updated on policy developments through a variety of communications processes, and their participation is enlisted in numerous outreach efforts, including personal visits with elected officials, testifying before legislative committees and regulatory agencies, and conducting media relations campaigns.

To cultivate support and increased member activity, the Association strives to strategically mobilize members in key political districts and to build statewide coalitions to focus pressure on policy development.

Of increasing importance is the mobilization of organizations other than transit providers in the
cause.

CTA's partnership with such "non-traditional" transit advocates has supplemented the advocacy effort and has helped members to forge relationships with and utilize the resources of everything from nationwide public interest organizations to local ridership groups.

With support and active engagement from member organizations and other community interests, CTA is focused on implementing transit-friendly policy, a balanced transportation system, and increased transit funding.

Each year, CTA publishes a Legislative Summary that provides a synopsis and analysis of state legislation affecting public transportation and the transit-relevant components of the state budget process.

Compiled by the Association's team of legislative advocates, the annual publication is a great reference tool for those seeking information about statewide transit and transportation legislation.

The report for the 2010 legislative session (31p. PDF) is divided into three catagories:

Significant Transit Legislation: identifying and describing high-priority legislation supported by the Association, pending the Governor's signature in 2010

2010-2011 State Budget: describing the budget's impact on public transportation and the State Transit Assistance (STA) Program, and Proposition 1B allocations

Matrix Of Significant Transit-Related Legislation: Identifying the most significant transit-related legislation considered by the Association's Legislative Committee during the 2010 Legislative Session, whether enacted or not.

Once an information-seeker has located legislation of interest, they can visit the CTA's Advocacy webpage to search for the full-text of bills (as well as fact sheets, links to other reports, etc.)

The CTA website also features Legislative Bulletin Resources for recently passed legislation, and an Advocacy Archive featuring resources such as a Summary Of Provisions And Impact Of The Gas Tax Swap, as proposed earlier this year.

That’s good. You can get the link to the pattern from the group.

Hey friends, I thought today I’d just spend some time chatting about how life in isolation is really going around here. A brain dump of sorts. Maybe some of it will help you, maybe some of it will entertain you or maybe if nothing else it’ll distract you for at least 5 minutes. Since I […]

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Happy Friday y’all. We made it to the end of the week, yay! And what better way to celebrate than with a little comfort food. I haven’t shared a recipe on here in a long time. Remember when I use to do it monthly? One of those recipes from long ago, the Chocolate Chip Walnut […]

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The Salute to Veterans Trading Scholarship will be awarded to 100 U.S. veteran or active military reservists who want to learn how to trade the futures markets.

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