Public Transportation

Times are tough enough for Californians; they're even tougher for Californians' teeth. "One-quarter of all adults and 28% of children in California have untreated dental caries [cavities]," says Len Finocchio, a senior program officer at the California Healthcare Foundation, a health advocacy group. "Our research tells us that many people in California have been avoiding routine care that might have cost about $100 for a checkup and cleaning, and then find themselves in the emergency room, where they get only an antibiotic, a bill that can average over $600 and instructions to see a dentist."

Tadasana International Festival of Yoga and Music When : Friday-Sunday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Walking, biking, carpooling and public transportation highly encouraged. Where : 2600 Barnard Way, Santa Monica Cost : 1-day passes $99; 3-day passes $295. Children younger than 14 are allowed onto festival grounds free when accompanied by a parent or guardian. Info : http://www.tadasanafestival.com

Al Vogel is partial to Philippe's purply pink pickled eggs. His grandchildren, he knows, probably won't be. But he wants them to get if not a mouthful, a good eyeful. So at breakfast on their first full day in Los Angeles, he orders one from the big jar on the counter, lops it in half and holds it up to Deveraux, 7, and Angel and Spencer, both 8. Hands-on is how this high school science teacher-turned-farmer wants his family to soak up this city. Al, 65, and his wife, Shaaron, 60, live in a small town 10 miles south of Chico, Calif.

THE BEST WAY TO VERMONT From LAX, United, US Airways, Delta and JetBlue provide connecting service (change of planes) to Burlington. Restricted round-trip fares, including taxes and fees, begin at $508. Public transportation outside the Burlington area is minimal, so plan to rent a car. WHERE TO STAY The Middlebury Inn , 14 Court Square, Middlebury; (802) 388-4961, http://www.middleburyinn.com . A New England landmark with views of Middlebury's town green.

Re "What to do about $4 gas," Editorial, Feb. 23 Who wrote this editorial? Not someone who lives in Upland but works in Irvine. Not someone who is an outside sales representative and needs to visits clients. Not someone who is keeping his old car because he cannot afford a car payment. How could someone live in Los Angeles and say that if you are not able to afford an expensive electric car, you can ride public transportation? In Los Angeles, what percentage of the workforce lives close to a public transportation line that will take them to work without any transfers?

Florence, Italy , has recently joined Rome and Naples in offering a single entry card, this one good for admission to 33 museums and passage on all its public transportation. The Firenze Card , which costs 50 euros (about $70) and is good for 72 hours, grants admittance to sites large and small, including The Uffizi for the Botticelli masterpieces (without endlessly standing in line – look for the special entrance for card holders) The Academia to see Michelangelo’s David.

Nora Zamichow's July 17 column, "Rethinking Our Transportation Dollars" (special section, The Next Los Angeles) is misleading in its portrayal of national public transportation ridership. Zamichow claims that "nationwide, despite billions poured into erecting elaborate rail systems, fewer and fewer people use public transportation." The fact is that between 20% and 53% of workers use public transportation in 17 U.S. cities including New York, Washington, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia.

Re "With Traffic at a Crawl, Planners Talk of Tunnels," Sept. 18 Twenty-three-mile-long tunnels through the mountains in order to relieve traffic congestion at a cost of billions -- you're kidding, right? If ever there was an idea demonstrating the poverty of current thinking about our automobile obsession, this is it. It's time to remove fantasy from public policy debate about the design for our cities in the 21st century -- the notion that we can continue single-passenger, longdistance commutes from suburbs to job sites in the coming decades with falling supplies and rising prices for fossil fuels.

In the early 1980s, when I lived in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area, I was a regular bus commuter. I'd get on the bus with my Washington Post and have a virtually undisturbed 45 minutes to read on my way to work. Similar thing on the way home. On weekends, we'd take the car to the Pentagon, park and then ride the Metro subway to our destinations within the District of Columbia. This saved us both time and the cost of parking. I was a champion of mass transit.

Will Staples Center revitalize L.A.'s downtown? ("Taking Center Stage," Oct. 10.) Not with the current emphasis on driving and parking. It doesn't matter where the center is located. You drive there, park in one of the vast lots and then drive back to where you came from. The huge parking lots defeat the kind of intimate, bustling urban atmosphere necessary to encourage extended stays. The preoccupation with car-based transportation is a form of dementia worn like a badge of honor in these parts.

The developer of a proposed downtown football stadium is counting on a dramatic change in the behavior of L.A. sports fans, releasing a report Thursday that bets 1 in 4 ticket buyers would come to the 72,000-seat venue without a car on weekdays. With more than 19,000 vehicles expected to flood downtown for games at Farmers Field, Anschutz Entertainment Group's strategy for traffic hinges, in part, on convincing ticket buyers to travel via the Metro Blue Line, the upcoming Expo Line and other public transit routes.

Re "What to do about $4 gas," Editorial, Feb. 23 Who wrote this editorial? Not someone who lives in Upland but works in Irvine. Not someone who is an outside sales representative and needs to visits clients. Not someone who is keeping his old car because he cannot afford a car payment. How could someone live in Los Angeles and say that if you are not able to afford an expensive electric car, you can ride public transportation? In Los Angeles, what percentage of the workforce lives close to a public transportation line that will take them to work without any transfers?

Greece's precarious financial and political situation was shaken further Friday by a nationwide strike and a wave of Cabinet resignations over demands by the European Union for ever-deeper spending cuts. Four Cabinet members — two Socialists and two far-right conservatives — quit their posts in protest over the demands. Their exit forced Prime Minister Lucas Papademos to consider an urgent reshuffle to stanch the tide of defections before a crucial parliamentary vote on the austerity measures, scheduled for Sunday.

  You throw your hand in the air, and the groaning beast, resembling a banged-up bread box, slows to let you board, but never really stops. You press coins into the driver's palm and grab quickly for a hold before he guns the motor to continue his breakneck run across Mexico City. Hang on - you are passenger, and captive. Life in this hive of 20 million people is much about movement. There are subways, fast-lane buses, light-rail trains, far too many cars and taxis and a small but encouraging number of publicly lent bicycles for the stout-hearted.

The public got its first peek Monday at a transportation plan for a proposed 72,000-seat football stadium in downtown Los Angeles. During a Los Angeles City Council committee meeting, officials with developer Anschutz Entertainment Group laid out preliminary proposals on how to ease traffic congestion and improve public transit near the stadium. They described a parking strategy that would direct game-day drivers to parking zones based on the direction they're traveling from and explained plans for an AEG-funded expansion of a light rail station on Pico Boulevard.

Al Vogel is partial to Philippe's purply pink pickled eggs. His grandchildren, he knows, probably won't be. But he wants them to get if not a mouthful, a good eyeful. So at breakfast on their first full day in Los Angeles, he orders one from the big jar on the counter, lops it in half and holds it up to Deveraux, 7, and Angel and Spencer, both 8. Hands-on is how this high school science teacher-turned-farmer wants his family to soak up this city. Al, 65, and his wife, Shaaron, 60, live in a small town 10 miles south of Chico, Calif.

Kingston is a bustling commercial center, one of the West Indies' educational hubs, and the heart and soul of Jamaican art, music and history. The capital began to gain a reputation as a dangerous city when it was wracked by political and economic unrest in the late '70s and early '80s. Since then, tourists have, for the most part, avoided it. Last August, the U.S.

More people than ever are driving alone to work as the nation's commuters balk at carpools and mass transit. Regardless of fuel prices, housing and work patterns make it hard for suburban commuters to change their gas-guzzling ways. From 2000 to 2005, the share of people driving alone to work increased slightly to 77%, according to a Census Bureau report Wednesday. Carpooling dropped and the share of commuters using public transportation stayed the same.

Florence, Italy , has recently joined Rome and Naples in offering a single entry card, this one good for admission to 33 museums and passage on all its public transportation. The Firenze Card , which costs 50 euros (about $70) and is good for 72 hours, grants admittance to sites large and small, including The Uffizi for the Botticelli masterpieces (without endlessly standing in line – look for the special entrance for card holders) The Academia to see Michelangelo’s David.

If you plop a green building in the middle of nowhere, is it still green? That's exactly what businesses, sustainability experts and planners are trying to find out. The growing "green buildings" movement is taking a new direction with the development of computer models that go beyond measuring a building's carbon footprint and attempt to quantify the amount of energy people consume to reach that building. Take electric utility Exelon Corp.'s uber-green headquarters in downtown Chicago, with its energy-efficient lighting, intelligent heating, ventilation and cooling systems that power down on command, and lights that shut off automatically when a room is unoccupied.