Infrastructure

California plans to sell $4 billion in tax-free bonds next week to fund infrastructure projects, and the state is hoping for robust demand from individual investors. The offering is expected to be a big test of California's standing in financial markets amid a still-precarious budget situation. The last state bond sale was in June.

Sitting on a cheap vinyl chair in a cramped office, his desk topped with a small green-and-blue flag and a plastic ice cream container holding pencils, Magosi Tumagole could be a small-town accountant, not the royal elder of Africa's richest tribe.

The timing could hardly be better for "The Infrastructural City," a new collection of essays on Los Angeles edited by Kazys Varnelis, director of the Network Architecture Lab at Columbia University. A book with a title like that, unless written by Mike Davis or John McPhee, would typically have a tough time steering clear of the remainder bin. But in recent weeks, as the details of the stimulus package were being hammered out in Congress, the same few questions moved near the top of the political agenda not just in Washington but in cities around the country: In 2009, what is infrastructure, exactly?

One warm August afternoon in 2003, a power failure originating in Ohio coursed through the electrical grid in the Northeast, sparking the nation's largest blackout and leaving millions in eight states without air conditioning, traffic lights and cellphone service. Energy experts say that shutdown, which cost an estimated $6 billion, might have been averted by a "smart grid."

Some cities have decided the best way to use their federal stimulus funds is to barter with other municipalities, prompting a warning Tuesday that some of these transactions are prohibited. At least three Southland cities are proposing to swap their anticipated share of federal money earmarked for highway improvements for funds that they could use as they see fit.

The 22nd floor of the new Solair building, a residential, retail and transportation hub at Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue, is still just a concrete platform -- the building's official opening is months away. But from that high up, it's easy to see how the building stands at the crossroads of change along the storied boulevard.

Despite $240 million in improvements to the Costa Mesa Freeway since 1998, traffic is as bad as ever on Orange County's central corridor, and a persistent bottleneck remains a vexing problem for drivers and transportation officials. Congestion on the 55 Freeway between the San Diego and the Garden Grove freeways has steadily increased since the 1990s.

There is wide agreement that the nation needs to upgrade the aging system that delivers electricity from power plants to consumers -- a grid that is already overtaxed and facing a 43% increase in demand over the next two decades. But opposition is growing to the way the Bush administration has interpreted Congress' instructions to improve the grid.

Mexico's government is preparing to open bidding on the largest infrastructure project in the nation's history, a $4-billion seaport that could transform this farming village into a cargo hub to rival the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. If completed as planned by 2014, the port would be the linchpin of a new shipping route linking the Pacific Ocean to America's heartland.

A blast that killed one firefighter and injured another this week in Westchester was a freak occurrence and indirectly the result of the decaying underground infrastructure, officials said Friday. Firefighter Brent A. Lovrien, 35, was fatally injured Wednesday when a spark ignited combustible smoke behind an electrical panel door that he was trying to open with a circular saw. Smoke had migrated into the electrical room from the underground burning of a conduit 200 feet away.