Melanie Curry
Recent Posts
The Legacy of S.B. 375: Transforming Planning to Transform California
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Climate Plan, a coalition of more than fifty nonprofits working on California climate policies, released a report [PDF] about what we’ve learned from S.B. 375, one of California’s policy efforts to grapple with climate change. The coalition held a day of presentations in Sacramento on Monday to celebrate the release. Presenters—people who’ve been working in […]
Bay Bridge Bike Path Set to Open to Yerba Buena, Close Weekdays
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Update: Caltrans officially announced the opening of the island end of the path will happen at noon on Sunday [PDF]. The press release includes a map of the shuttle route, which will run every 30 minutes between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekends and holidays. And here’s an explanatory video they made. At long […]
Contra Costa County Transportation Sales Tax Measure X Pleases Some
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Contra Costa County voters are considering whether to tax themselves to pay for transportation, and the plan accompanying the measure has a few potentially game-changing aspects. That doesn’t mean that sustainable transportation advocates all support it, however. Measure X, like most of the other county measures on November ballots, is a thirty-year ½ cent sales […]
Time to Fix Oakland’s Streets: Vote Yes on KK
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Oakland voters, as with voters throughout the Bay Area and the nation, will have quite a slew of decisions to make on November 8. KK is one of the easiest. Measure KK is a $600 million general obligation bond to invest in Oakland infrastructure and affordable housing. As the Yes on KK campaign writes, it […]
Transportation Sales Tax Measures on the Ballot: Sacramento’s Measure B
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Sales taxes may not the best way to fund transportation, but there are fifteen new sales tax measures on November ballots in California. Streetsblog has already written about similar measures in Los Angeles and the Central Valley, and will be covering Bay Area ones in the coming days. Here, we take a look at one […]
Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Projects Funded by SGC
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Today the Strategic Growth Council approved 25 projects for funding under the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) program. All of them combine affordable housing development and transportation improvements for either transit, walking, biking, or a combination of all three modes. The council also briefly discussed preliminary rulemaking for a new program, the Transformative Climate […]
Active Transportation Program Gets a Little More Money, With a Few Strings
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The most recent cap-and-trade allocation bill, A.B. 1613, allots $10 million to the Active Transportation Program. The money comes with a few strings attached. Any projects funded by cap-and-trade have to show that they reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Also, the money must be allocated by 2018 and spent by 2020. This is not likely to […]
CA Celebrates Ten Years of Finding—and Applying—Climate Change Solutions
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The USC Schwarzenegger Institute held a small congratulatory celebration of the tenth anniversary of A.B. 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act, at the California Museum in Sacramento today. A roster of luminaries who participated in the state’s efforts to pass climate change law honored California leadership in rising above politics as usual to win not […]
California Legislative Wrap-up: Session Over, Bills Signed
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Today is the deadline for California Governor Jerry Brown to sign or reject any bills passed by the legislature this session, so there has been a flurry of activity in the last few days. Here’s a quick look at few freshly signed laws pertinent to sustainable transportation and the climate. Transportation Safety We’ve written about […]
Cap-and-Trade May Not Be Working
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At last week’s California Air Resources Board hearing to discuss its plan for meeting climate change goals, the cap-and-trade system that has underpinned much of the state’s efforts got raked over the coals. But not by the industries subject to the emissions cap. Instead, representatives of the communities that are supposed to benefit from investments […]
High Speed Rail Update: Animations of Potential Palmdale-Burbank Routes
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The California High Speed Rail Authority released three simple animations showing possible routes for the Palmdale to Burbank section. The animations appear on separate maps, so it’s hard to compare them side-by-side, but they give a pretty good idea of how very, very long the proposed tunnels are. The routes vary slightly in the San […]
Report: For Best Results, Address Equity and Climate Change Together
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California Governor Jerry Brown just signed major new climate change legislation, and people will be grappling for a while with what the new laws will mean on the ground—and how California will be able to achieve its new greenhouse gas reduction targets. Tomorrow, several state agencies will be tackling the question of how to reach […]