Category: All Posts

All Posts

Resources To Know: The MUTCD — A Book In The News This Week You May Never Have Heard Of That Impacts You Every Day

A relatively obscure book is receiving its 15 minutes (or more) of fame this week, The Manual On Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). This set of federal standards for traffic signs, road surface markings, and signals is a primary resource…

New And Notable: Los Angeles From The Air Then And Now, Makeshift Metropolis & Down The Asphalt Path

Avid readers of local history are usually intrigued by photos of historic sites juxtaposed against contemporary images. This format of visual history has a particularly strong impact when the subject is Los Angeles: a city that grew up — and…

New And Notable: Sprawl Repair Manual, Republic Of Drivers & Urban Mass Transit’s Life Story

There is a wealth of research and literature explaining suburban sprawl and the urgent need to retrofit suburbia. However, until now there has been no single guide that directly explains how to repair typical sprawl elements. Sprawl Repair Manual demonstrates…

Digitization And Transportation: Northwestern University’s Google Books Project

Beginning today, Northwestern University’s Transportation Library begins its Google Books Digitization Project. The University Libraries and Google are partnering to digitize hundreds of thousands of print volumes from their collections, rendering the contents readily available to scholars and researchers worldwide.…

Los Angeles In Maps & The Curious Case Of Miss Laura J. Whitlock

One the most exciting new books in a long time has been released this month: Glen Creason’s Los Angeles In Maps (New York: Rizzoli, 2010). Creason is the Map Librarian at Los Angeles Public Library and co-curated the landmark 2008-2009…

Light Rail On Wilshire? Why, That Would Be Illegal!

The recent selection of a route alignment for the Westside Subway Extension, as well as the release of the Wilshire Boulevard Bus Rapid Transit final environmental impact report started us thinking about something we read aways back regarding Wilshire Boulevard.…

New & Notable: America’s Failing Infrastructure, "Climatopolis," & Why Do Shepherds Need A Bush?

In August 2007, the I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis, MN, collapsed, killing 13 and injuring 145 others. Investigations following the tragedy revealed that it could have been prevented. The grave reality is that it is a tragedy that threatens to be…

2010 Transportation Ballot Measures: An Examination Of Key Trends And Results

Election Day has come and gone. Yesterday, our daily Transportation Headlines highlighted the Center For Transportation Excellence‘s state-by-state results of all transportation ballot measures in 2010. 43 of 56 measures passed: a 77% success rate. But what does it mean…

Our National Archives At Risk: What The Government Accountability Office Has Found

We wanted to share important (and frankly, frightening) news with you regarding the findings released last week of an audit of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The audit (42p. PDF) was prompted in part by the loss of…