The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the region’s largest carrier, lost more than 10% of its boardings from 2006 to 2015, a decline that appears to be accelerating. Despite a $9-billion investment in new light rail and subway lines, Metro now has fewer boardings than it did three decades ago, when buses were the county’s only transit option.
An expanding economy and dramatically cheaper gas prices have lured Americans back onto the roads, where they’re racking up record mileage, new data shows.
Even before the current marathon drought, turf replacement subsidies have long been touted by the state government as a powerful way to get California homeowners to stop having water-guzzling lawns. But the federal government sees these subsidies as taxable income.
The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority will lose about $120 million that would have helped buy light rail cars, widen State Route 138 and build a new pedestrian bridge to connect the Burbank Airport with the Metrolink station.
The farmers and cities that rely on the California State Water Project got some slightly encouraging news Tuesday – the state is raising their water allocation to 15 percent of what they requested.
California is pursuing major reforms on many fronts, including health care, corrections, and K–12 education. But the state faces a wide array of challenges, from housing costs, to climate change and water management, to higher education funding. Policymakers—including California’s voters—need more and better information about the future consequences of policy choices made today. This multi-topic publication highlights the state’s most pressing long-term policy challenges in several key areas.
Despite recent rains and above-normal snowpack, and increasing reservoir levels, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is cautious about this year’s water allocation for California growers.
The commission said Friday that it has reduced estimated funding available for the state’s transportation program by $754 million over the next five years.
. . . the U.S Bureau of Reclamation Friday released a report showing storage for six key Central Valley Project reservoirs – Shasta, New Melones, Trinity, Folsom, Millerton, and the federal portion of San Luis – is down by 963,000 acre-feet, as compared to this time last year. The report also shows that the CVP’s reservoir carryover storage from Water Year 2015 into WY 2016 was 2.9 million acre-feet, just 24% of capacity and 47% of the 15-year average.
While respondents gave the governor high marks for his handling of the state budget — which was drowning in red ink when he took office in early 2011 — the survey shows that slightly more than half of residents are ready to bag the $68 billion rail line and that tackling the state’s water woes, not global warming, should be California’s top priority.
The Port of Long Beach reported a 7% increase in imports, while neighboring Los Angeles reported a 4.5% decline from a year earlier.
Especially muddy water from winter storms is among the factors that risk sweeping some of the world’s few remaining Delta smelt off course and into giant water pumps that draw water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin river deltas, U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials said.
Each of the two major lawsuits, introduced within weeks of each other 27 years ago, offers enduring lessons – in law, in politics and in the long, long time it takes to get things done in Washington.
It turns out “emergency drought relief” can take up to two years to distribute. On Wednesday, California regulators awarded the final pieces of the $680 million drought aid package Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers approved in March 2014.
Drought, climate change and environmental curbs on water deliveries are fueling campaigns for more water storage in California. Sites Reservoir — as it would be called after the tiny settlement it would wipe off the map — is one of a handful of resurgent proposals challenging the notion that the era of big dam building is over.