California’s signature environmental law needs to be reformed because NIMBYs are using it to block smart growth.

Parker Place provides a case study in how CEQA could be reformed.

Ali Kashani thought he had a sure thing. In 2008, the longtime Berkeley developer proposed to build one of the greenest housing projects in East Bay history. Kashani has long been an advocate for smart-growth development — dense housing and mixed-use projects built on major transit corridors in urban areas. And the architect that he commissioned for his smart-growth project in Berkeley designed it to meet LEED Platinum standards.

….In other words, the Parker Place project is a liberal environmentalist’s dream.

…But nothing’s ever a sure thing in Berkeley, a city that is home to some of the most vocal and stubborn anti-growth activists in the state. In November 2010, after the Berkeley City Council approved Parker Place, a small group of these activists sued to block the project, using the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to do it. And now, more than four years after Kashani unveiled his proposal, it’s still tied up in litigation. “They really don’t like infill projects,” Kashani said, referring to how anti-growth activists view urban development. “And they’re holding up good projects that could be on the market.”

“The law has become so dysfunctional,” said Jennifer Hernandez, an attorney for the Holland & Knight firm and a Berkeley resident who advocates for broad reforms of CEQA. “To call this environmental protection anymore … it’s really about quality-of-life” issues.

The California Legislature has approved minor reforms to CEQA during the past decade in an effort to spur smart growth. But CEQA still allows anti-growth activists to pervert environmental law. For example, the group that sued to block Parker Place contended that the city’s environmental study was “inadequate,” essentially because the project involves the cleaning up of polluted soil and groundwater.

Yes, you read that right. A project that would not only help fight climate change, but also would clean up contaminated soil and groundwater in downtown Berkeley has been blocked in court thanks to a law that’s supposed to protect the environment.

read more: eastbayexpress, 13.03.13.

A Protest on Two Wheels

A bike ride from Oakland to Sacramento aims to halt cuts to education funding.

..They felt elected officials in Sacramento were not holding up their end of the public school bargain. So they got on their bikes and rode east to demand more money for their school and for all of California’s public schools. “What happens in Oakland is a preview for a whole erosion of schools in general,” Napolitano said.

In the three years since, the state has continued to slash education funding, and the four-parent delegation has morphed into a multi-school force of more than one hundred parents, teachers, students, and community members pedaling to the capital to demand better funding for K-12 schools.

ebx, 02.05.12.

saturday, may 11th, 2013.

thinking about doing this, since i was too lazy to register and raise money for climate ride.. 105 miles from Oakland to Sacramento. doable, yeah?! and gotta root for California public schools!

jamisonwieser:

I woke up this morning to a news report that the 15% of Californians would likely vote against the water bond based on the $11.1 billion price tag, though a majority would be willing to vote for a cheaper bond.

Likewise the study found a majority of Californians now oppose the $58 billion California High-Speed Rail project.

Both the water project and the High-speed rail line don’t seem that expensive to me given the importance of safe, clean drinking water and the alternative to high-speed rail is three times as much on roads that still couldn’t carry the capacity.

And that’s the thing that gets a lot of the opposition is about big numbers and not the actual merits, relative costs and the scale of these mega-projects.

High-speed rail service to Disneyland will be the end result of hundreds of interconnected projects. Many are already underway and will start paying off in other ways long before the last spike is driven.

Along the Peninsula, HSR will share the Caltrain corridor and this week the CA High-Speed Rail Authority approved its share of electrification funding.

The old diesel trains could be ditched by 2019 in favor of all-electric propulsion according to Caltrain’s Jayme Ackemann. …

Caltrain modernization, which boasts a cleaner approach to travel, will arrive a decade before high-speed rail service to Los Angeles becomes a reality.

Maybe we just need to reframe the costs for statewide projects. $0.058 trillion looks a lot smaller than $58 billion.

Last week, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) introduced a bill that would require drivers in California to officially recognize that cyclists exist.

Reading from Assembly Bill 840:

This bill would require the [driver’s license] examination to also include a test of the applicant’s knowledge and understanding of the provisions of the California Driver Handbook relating to bicycling, including, but not limited to, bicycle markings, bicycle lanes, and bicycles in travel lanes.

Which begs the question: How is this not already law?

Also, does the fact this hasn’t been on the books explain why so many motorists don’t seem to know what they’re doing when driving around cyclists?

With my sincerest gratitude to the many drivers out there who adeptly share the road with their two-wheeled friends, I have to ask: What’s wrong with the rest of you?

… And so, as we await the passage of AB 840, here are a few laws that every driver should know to follow:

• If the cyclist needs the whole lane, the cyclist gets the whole lane.

All my Emily Post-ing about being considerate notwithstanding, the law really is pretty clear on this. Even if you think the cyclist made a poorly considered choice in opting to ride on the street that you happen to be on, sharrow or not, you seriously aren’t allowed to edge the rider off the road. Cyclists should try to stick to the right side of the lane — but not if there’s a reasonable chance that he or she will get hit with a door while doing so. So ease up, driver. Wait to pass when it’s safe and we’ll all get there on time and with our collarbones intact.

• Check behind you before swinging your door open onto the street.

Seriously, guys, this one is so obvious, I’m only including it because it offers a logical transition from the above and because I am still being victimized by car doors all the goddamn time.

• Please stay the fuck out of the bike lane.

I understand your complaints, I know that the cyclist cruising slowly up the Valencia Street bike lane scoping out spare tables or friends or women at your five most favorite restaurants, is annoying. But you know what else is totally annoying? Intracranial bleeding. So unless your vehicle has a siren, a towing winch, or rear compartment full of deliverables, please get out of my legally designated safe space.

sfweekly, 01.03.13.

thank you, sfweekly/ben christopher! now if everyone can reblog the shit out of this, print it out and paste it everywhere, like on parking meter machines, that’d be rad.