The Hollywood Coalition of Neighborhood Councils is hosting a Town Hall on Thursday night to address "Parking, Planning and Transportation." In an effort to entice attendees, the Coalition promises "plenty of free parking," thereby demonstrating a commitment to an old, tired paradigm of transportation that will continue to result in the gridlock, congestion and frustration the Coalition purports to address in the Town Hall. The Coalition is missing a big opportunity to encourage the community......

Every Monday morning, Rick Orlov of the Daily News and Steve Hymon of the LA Times write their weekly "what's going on at city hall" columns. Orlov brings an interesting story about City Council Member Dennis Zine, who represents the 3rd District in the West Valley. Zine has been given a cease and desist order from Warner Bros. over a lapel pin he has used for years as a political token to supporters. It......

While it is hard for most to understand or imagine, once you have become entrenched in the archipelagic enclave of skyscrapers and bona fide mass transit that is Manhattan Island, it is difficult to leave. For a New Yorker, geographic displacement can fester into a self-induced internalized affront (even if just for a few short days). But the compelling lure of a free trip to Los Angeles to accompany my aunt on a business trip......

Fueled in part by the injustice described in this post, the Midnight Ridazz will get their protest on this morning at the crack of 7 in the morning. We meet at Vermont/Santa Monica Red Line Station at 7 am and ride at 7:30 am Two weeks ago a cyclist was assaulted by a motorist and then ticketed by a Beverly Hills cop. We think cyclists deserve better! Join us as we encourage Beverly Hills......

Just when you thought the public transportation and traffic situation in Los Angeles couldn't possibly get any worse... it did. Yes, in a true stroke of brilliance, the State Assembly decided to cut close to $1.3 billion in funding from mass transit transportation in this year's budget bill. As Siel over at green LA girl notes, this means we can probably kiss that planned Expo line expansion from Culver City to Santa Monica good-bye.......

And this 'Subway to the Sea' is not just about funding at this point and time. Try planning studies, preliminary engineering, and environmental clearance according to Metro CEO Roger Snoble in the LA Times. But hey, all those steps take funding. Villaraigosa's office over the last year has been quietly gauging whether the public would agree to foot the bill. In one of the many private polls it has commissioned on a variety of......

Attention uber transit nerds! Now you can carry Metro Local buses in your pocket, play with Metro Local at work on your desk and send Metro Local on mad missions to crash into every other car in your MatchBox collection. Attention Metro haters! Did someone take time out of their busy "make transit better in Los Angeles" job to make a deal with a toy company? Probably, but probably not enough. Toys are cool. They......

It's hard to find people as passionate about LA's underrated downtown as some of the folks at LAist, but we have to admit the readers of Los Angeles Downtown News might give us a run for our money in the downtown passion department. In particular a reader by the name of Frederick, who had a "glass half empty" response to the downtown BID's recently published (and very self-congratulating) 2006 Demographic Study of New Downtown......

According to their little graphic flash animation, you will be able to get from Irvine to Union Station in 27 minutes. Then from Union Station to Santa Clarita in 15 minutes. All this by 2012? So they say: "The $18.7 billion project is planned to be privately funded with a target date for beginning operation as early as 2012." Welcome to the California Orangeline Development Authority, which is trying to gain momentum for a......

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

As 2006 ends and 2007 begins, the -ists look back not at the past week, but at the past year. So here it is, your Best of 2006 Spectacular. And from all of us at the -ists, happy New Year! Austinist was all about controversy as new construction to increase urban density ran rampant in 2006, as did threats to the city's image from gigantic corporations looking to set up shop in town, leading......

LAist and Goodbye Cruel Releasing want to send you to the movies this weekend. We've got tickets to Andrew Bujalski's "Mutual Appreciation" which is screening at Laemmle's Music Hall this weekend in Beverly Hills. All you have to do is fire off an email to info@mutualappreciation.com. 10 LAist readers will be contacted to let you know that you're on the list for any of the Friday - Sunday showings. For the exception of the......

Earlier this week kissy couples were wading through roses and red tissue paper deeper than an east coast snow dump and singles shook a tiny, lonely fist (no ring!) at it all. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 - Valentine's season is in the can, finally. Austinist is already pulsing with SX energy and posting on the People's Choice Award nominees and the short films that will be playing while the......

The high temperature in New York City today reached a balmy 35 degrees. Same goes for tomorrow, too. Unfortunately, about 7 million New Yawkers had to hoof, bike or cab-it to work today -- if they went at all -- because of a massive public transportation strike. While LA had its own public transportation strike a few years back, our car-loving culture barely batted an eye. Those most effected were the lower-income brackets who......

We've recently surrendered to the abyss that is public transit in LA. We're adept users of mass transit, having logged in some serious train, bus, and streetcar time in some of North America's biggest cities. And it's hard to explain to people outside of our fair metropolis what it's like to use the MTA here on a regular basis. Sure, our subways are much cleaner than New York's--of course they're 100 years younger, too.......

Drugging and driving is never a good idea. Especially for the hapless folks who become targets of out of control vehicles driven by apparent tweakers. That's the lesson we take away after reading about this heinous bus stop incident in Van Nuys on Sunday. We're sad to learn about this because we encourage people to take mass transit as much as possible, but this incident gives even this LAist pause. NBC4.tv reports that a......

Angelenos who do not suffer from an eating disorder (or who lack access to a skilled liposuctionist) and are subsequently trying to shed the subcutaneous remnants of a month's worth of rich holiday foods now have a new ally in the battle of the bulge: the MTA. Yes, your friendly local transit agency wants to help you become more fit by, you guessed it, encouraging you to forego driving in favor of of commuting......

Look out LA, there's a new neighborhood in town, a brash young up-and-comer that's looking to upset the status quo. Does this new 'hood have the cachet of an exclusive Westside address? Nope. The cool ocean breezes of a Santa Monica or Venice? Nope again. Easy access to plenty of trendy shopping and clubs? Triple nope, unless you consider Magnolia Boulevard to be home to the trendsetters. That's right, we're talkin' NoHo (or North......

With the redesign and reconstruction of Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood still a fresh memory, West LA residents, commuters, businesses, and a handful of pedestrians are bravely tolerating another major improvement project now taking place along a westerly swath of the Boulevard. A $68.5 million dollar Santa Monica Boulevard Transit Parkway Project attempts to transform the idiosyncratic (some might say disjointed) 2.5-mile long streetscape that follows the spine of the Century City corridor......

According to the L.A. Daily News, a German study funded partly by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has determined that people prone to a heart attack face triple their usual risk as a result of traffic whether they are in cars, on bicycles or on mass transit. Here at LAist, we did a little bit of our own research, taking the German study one step further in talking to Los Angeles residents. Our goal......

We just knew Southern Californians couldn't resist the charms of public transport. Los Angeles Times reporter Christiana Sciaudone filed a piece called "Friendships Forged On the Rails" in the 10/11/04 edition about bonding amongst commuters aboard Southern California commuter trains. Folks stuck on the train are conversing with their neighbors, throwing potlucks and planning vacations together. Another point in favor of mass transit. When's the last time someone had a pot luck on the......

Developers will finally have their way with the Ballona Wetlands, as the Los Angeles City Council has given the go ahead to plans to construct a second phase of the Playa Vista mixed-use development (click on the project web site just for the corny flash intro and mind-numbing Muzak soundtrack. Priceless schmaltz!). City officials who backed the expansion, which would be everyone besides Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, presented it as the sort of smart-growth, high-density,......