Talking transit with Streetsblog

From “people powered transportation” to the Westside subway, I tackled a wide-ranging series of questions this week from readers of Streetsblog Los Angeles on our region’s pressing  transit challenges—past, present and future.

Among many other things, I called for a break with “dated, auto-centric models” in favor of bicycling, walking and public transportation. I explained why I believe it is imperative that we finally bring mass transit to the Westside in the form of projects such as the Exposition Light Rail and the Westside Subway Extension. And I offered my views on the tensions that have erupted between Beverly Hills and Metro on the subway’s route, stressing that decisions will be based on evidence and science, not emotion.

Looking farther down the road, I talked about the possibility of someday building a 405 rail corridor between West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley and extending the Red Line subway through West Hollywood.

For the full text of my two-part Q & A with Streetsblog, you can click here for the first segment on regional transit needs and here for the second one on cycling and pedestrian issues. Feel free to let me know what you think at zev@bos.lacounty.gov

Posted 7/28/11

A helping hand with the phone

For folks who have trouble using a standard telephone, help is available–and it’s free. The California Telephone Access Program provides specialized telephone equipment to residents who have difficulty hearing, seeing, moving, speaking or remembering.

When the program was established in 1979, it only provided Teletypewriter machines for the deaf. It has since evolved, and now serves more than 500,000 people with a broad range of disabilities. It provides more than 60 kinds of equipment, including Braille devices, hands-free phones, phones with oversized numbers and phones that amplify outgoing or incoming speech. What’s more, a companion program, the California Relay Service helps deaf and speech-disabled callers by reading teletype aloud and putting speech into readable text.

The services are part of the Deaf and Disabled Telecommunications Program (DDTP), which is administered by the California Public Utilities Commission, mandated by the state legislature, and paid for by a 0.5% surcharge on all telephone bills.

According to program officials, one in three people will have some degree of hearing loss by age 60. More than 3 million Californians now have disabilities that make using a normal telephone difficult or impossible. With the first round of baby boomers turning 65 this year, even more people stand to benefit from the service.

They won’t have to jump through a lot of hoops to sign up, either.

“It’s very simple,” said Elena Heredia, field operations supervisor for DDTP. “A lot of people, when they learn about a government program, think ‘Oh, there has got to be a long list of info I have to provide.’ This is just one form.”

To qualify for assistance you must be a California resident, have phone service (cell phones count) and have a doctor certify the disability or impediment. The program is available regardless of age or income, and there is no need to re-register once you have been accepted. Application forms are available via DDTP’s website or by calling (800) 806-1191. If using a teletype device, call (800) 889-3974.

7/28/11

An ocean of appreciation

Take a break from the beach to honor the ocean this weekend.

The Santa Monica Pier Aquarium is hosting the Ocean Appreciation Celebration, an annual event that makes marine education and conservation fun for all ages.

The world’s oceans cover about 71% of the Earth’s surface–more than 139 million square miles. That’s a lot of territory for one weekend, so the focus will be on our ocean “backyard”–Santa Monica Bay. Explore the Bay’s four habitats: the sandy bottom, the kelp forest, the rocky shore and the open ocean.

These habitats and their resident flora and fauna are brought to life with games, arts & crafts, music, photography, and naturalists’ presentations. Scavenger hunts, face painting, and an ocean trivia contest with prizes are all part of the fun.

On Saturday at 1:30 p.m. scuba diver and aquarium volunteer Alexander Jaffe will offer a show-and-tell session on his underwater adventures. At 1:30 p.m. Sunday, director Douglas Rowell screens a sneak preview of his upcoming film based on the children’s book “All the Way to the Ocean,” by Joel Harper. After the screening, Rowell will lead a discussion on how humans are affecting the marine environment.

The Santa Monica Pier Aquarium is home to more than 100 species of native marine animals and plants. It is the public education center of Heal the Bay, a nonprofit organization dedicated to keeping the coastal waters and watersheds of Southern California safe, healthy and clean.

The celebration takes place on Saturday, July 30, and Sunday, July 31, from 12:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. The event is free with aquarium admission, which is $3 for adults and free for kids ages 12 and under. The aquarium is located at 1600 Ocean Front Walk, at ocean level below the carousel on the Santa Monica Pier.

Posted 7/27/11

The thinking person’s film fest

Plot twists set in motion by the viewer’s brainwaves? Neurocinema? MRIs that can trace an actor’s empathy?

If this weekend’s 7^th Annual Topanga Film Festival doesn’t sound like your ordinary day at the movies, it’s not just because Topanga Canyon is known for doing things differently.

The film festival, which opens Thursday, will bring big names to rustic settings, as always. Event director and co-founder Urs Baur says, in fact, that this year is the biggest ever, with about 50 films that will be shown over four days, including short film and feature documentary competitions judged by such respected names as director Randall Einhorn and actors William H. Macy, Felicity Huffman and Elijah Wood.

But it will also carry a theme you don’t see at every film festival: neuroscience. The backstory? “It all started when I lost my job,” says volunteer communications director L.G. Taylor:

A 30-year-old novelist and actress, Taylor says she had been earning her paycheck at an acting studio until the recession forced them to lay her off.  When a friend steered her to a temp agency, she hoped for a studio gig, hoping it might bring her big break into show business.  Instead, she was sent to the Institute of Neurosurgical Innovation, a research foundation started by Dr. Amir Vokshoor, a Westside neurosurgeon, after Alzheimer’s Disease claimed his father’s life.

For the next six weeks, Taylor says, she was immersed in brain research, a field that, she discovered, has increasingly been applied to film marketing.

“When the position ended, I had this passion,” she remembers. “But I was left with ‘Now what?’”

Fortunately, she says, the festival was approaching. A suggestion that the organization include a single panel discussion on creativity and neuroscience morphed into a decision to build this year’s event around the intersection of art and the brain.

“This is really an interesting time in the movie industry,” says Baur, a Topanga local who works as a branding consultant when he’s not organizing the festival or running its new year-round presence, the Topanga Film Institute.

“Content creation is changing, business models are changing. Hollywood has begun employing neuromarketing in its advertising. It’s no longer enough to ask what you think about a movie. It’s become more interesting for Hollywood to measure what you feel.”

This year’s event will feature a new, cutting-edge screening in which special headsets will let viewers determine the plot of a film by the state of their brain waves. Panels on filmmaking and creativity will feature not only Hollywood A-listers, but also a surprisingly renowned cross-section of scientific rock stars.

One panel on directing will include California Institute of Technology’s Steven Quartz, whose groundbreaking brain research is helping to shape the next generation of movie trailers. Another session, on acting, will feature both Oscar-winner Melissa Leo and Jonas Kaplan of USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute, whose research uses functional MRIs to search for the roots of empathy and self-awareness.

“It’s pretty revolutionary,” says Vokshoor of the Institute for Neurosurgical Innovation, who will also participate as a panelist. “We’re in a period right now where we are really speaking collaboratively across various disciplines.”

Vokshoor says his Institute focuses on such collaborative research because “from quantum mechanics and basic neuroscience to metaphysics, religion and the creative arts, we’re all trying to answer some of the same kinds of questions.”

“If I were to name one great life goal for neuroscience research, it would probably be: Where is the molecule for consciousness, for inspiration, located?” says Vokshoor. “I’m not sure we’ll find the answers, but these kinds of collaborations are exciting, because they say, ‘There’s something here.’”

The Topanga Film Festival runs from July 28-31. For tickets and more information, click here.

Posted 7/28/11

State prisoners, meet your minders

After a rare public tussle between two powerful local criminal justice agencies, the Board of Supervisors has unanimously picked the Los Angeles County Probation Department to oversee thousands of freed California prisoners who, as part of the governor’s budget plan, will no longer be charges of the state.

Chief Probation Officer Donald Blevins was given the nod over Sheriff Lee Baca, who had forcefully argued that his department was better suited to monitor an estimated 8,000 inmates who’ll be heading back to the streets of Los Angeles County during a nine-month period.

Critics of Baca’s proposal argued that such sweeping new duties would create public confusion over the mission of a department charged largely with suppressing crimes, not rehabilitating those who commit them. In Los Angeles and throughout the state, that job traditionally has been the responsibility of probation and parole agencies.

The board’s decision on Tuesday was based on a motion by Supervisors Michael D. Antonovich and Don Knabe, who noted that the Probation Department “has been providing supervision and rehabilitative services to adult probationers for over a century.” For that reason, they said, the agency has the kind of infrastructure and expertise that makes it best qualified to run the so-called “post-release community supervision program.” But the supervisors also called for a role for the Sheriff’s Department in identifying and, when necessary, apprehending high-risk parolees in the program.

The truth is that county officials at all levels wish they’d never had to confront the issue in the first place. Earlier this year, they argued strongly against being forced to take responsibility for the freed inmates, a key facet of Gov. Jerry Brown’s “realignment” budget strategy to save money and reduce prison overcrowding. Faced with the county’s fears about funding and strains on a local jail system already tearing at the seams, the state agreed to pay for the first year but has yet to fulfill its promises for funding beyond that.

The ex-inmates, whose releases are scheduled to begin October 1, are known as “non, non, nons”—meaning non-violent, non-serious, non-sex offenders. Under a new state law, those who violate the terms of their release will no longer be returned to state prisons. With few exceptions, they’ll serve a maximum of 180 days in county jails.

That same law also mandates that counties create an operational plan—including staffing, budget needs and re-entry services—through new multi-agency Community Corrections Partnerships. In L.A. County, the CCP will submit a plan to the Board of Supervisors for approval in August, one that is likely to include a role for the Sheriff’s Department.

Indeed, during Tuesday’s meeting Baca made clear that his department would not be relegated to the margins. “When it comes to managing high-risk parolees,” he said, “I’m not going to ask the chief probation officer for permission. I’m just going to do it.”

Obviously irritated, Baca also criticized Blevins for statements in a report to the chief executive officer in which he “literally had kind of drawn a moat around his department and looks upon me and my department as some kind of threat to the traditions of rehabilitation when, in fact, we are at the forefront of rehabilitation for parolees.”

During the meeting, Blevins, who chairs the county’ CCP, did not address Baca’s comments. But he later told the Daily News that the Sheriff’s Department would have a role in the oversight of the soon-to-arrive ex-inmates, albeit a limited one.

“Our original plan,” Blevins was quoted as saying, “was for absconders or individuals who have been working with probation but need a higher level or more intensive supervision, we would ask [the sheriff’s] assistance on those kinds of cases…The sheriff has indicated they are 24/7  and they can provide those kinds of services.”

Posted 7/27/11

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