Photo of the 605 Freeway by billaday via Flickr

It's about time. As of today, NYC Streets Renaissance's StreetsBlog has officially franchised out to our city, that is, you know, duhhhh, full of streets and the love and hate of them. NYC Blogger Aaron Naparstek welcomes the LA Editor and so do we!

LA.Streetsblog is edited and run by Damien Newton, formerly the New Jersey Coordinator for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and a recent LA transplant. With his New Jersey experience, Damien is well versed in the policies, politics and problems of suburban sprawl. He's also got a pretty good sense of the solutions. New Jersey, it so happens, is fortunate to have one of the most progressive State Departments of Transportation in the nation. Thanks to people like Gary Toth, currently working for Project for Public Spaces, New Jersey is way ahead when it comes to smart growth, context-sensitive design and viewing transportation policy as something more than just a way to move cars and trucks.

Newton has been dark blogging at Streetsblog LA fearlessly for months now and his most recent post deals with bicycle parking and Dodgers Stadium -- basically, it's a mystery, but Councilman Tom LaBonge promises to lead a bike tour next summer to the baseball stadium. By then, we're betting that the bicycle parking mystery will magically be solved.

Good things are to come from this new blog. Watch out Mayor Villaraigosa, Department of Transportation, Metro, City Planners, Councilmembers and other power players, here's one more reason to stay on the edge of your seat when it comes to moving people, not cars. Time to take Los Angeles back, one street at a time.