>> Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed state budget is anti public transportation. Not only does the governator want to take $1 billion away from public transit, he also wants to make gas cheaper for drivers:

One of the proposed budget’s biggest losers is public transit — and its riders. Through a complex gas tax swap, which would simultaneously eliminate the sales tax on gas and raise the per-gallon excise tax, roughly $1 billion would be siphoned off from bus and rail funds.

The shift would gut Proposition 42, a voter-approved measure that determines how gas tax money is currently split. Mass transit, which now receives 20% of the taxes, would be cut out of the equation. Drivers would pay slightly less at the pump.

>> Schwarzenegger’s anti-mass-transit proposal’s especially bizarre considering the fact that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed the nation’s strictest smog limits ever — limits that really require cracking down on driving. Reports the L.A. Times:

The EPA’s new standard could force the state to crack down further on vehicle pollution…. Air districts also would be likely to increase efforts to control sprawl and force more concentrated land development. Statewide, the number of car trips has been growing faster than the population.

The proposed limit would allow “a ground-level ozone concentration of between 60 and 70 parts per billion, down from the 75-ppb standard adopted under President George W. Bush in 2008.”

>> Despite Schwarzenegger, slow work on extending the subway to the sea continues. Metro’s going to start seismic testing in the Century City/Westwood area on Monday.

>> Last but not least, the doctor that intentionally braked in front of a couple cyclists on Mandeville Canyon, seriously injuring them, has been sentenced to 5 years in prison. “Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Scott T. Millington called the case a “wake-up call” to motorists and cyclists and urged local government to provide riders with more bike lanes.”

Photo by andropolis

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