Freight Transportation

L.A. Is Dog-Bite Capital For Postal Workers

Among our many fine distinctions, smog capital, traffic capital, douche capital, is a new one: The U.S. Postal Service this week ranked Los Angeles number one among big cities where carriers are attacked by dogs. The USPS released the list of top dog-attack cities, based on the number of incidents, ... More >>

Carmen Trutanich Was Knocked Down. Can He Get Back Up?

Humiliated in the DA's race, "Nuch" is trying to hold onto his job as City Attorney

Best of Coachella 2013: Weekend Two

The Visual Stimulations for People Who Were High Coachella's art installations -- the ones designed to impress you while you're high, aka all of them -- were particularly impressive this year. There was the tesla coil, the crane that was formerly a flower but now a praying mantis, the giant floresce ... More >>

Toxic Train or Green Railway? L.A. Harbor Neighbors, Environmentalists and Long Beach Officials Fight Los Angeles

By Christina Schoellkopf The job-creating $500 million Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway plan is heading to the Los Angeles City Council for a vote on the Environmental Impact Report even as a top environmental group says working-class families and children in polluted Wilmington will be subject ... More >>

Daniel Villasenor: Postal Worker Chokes 11-Year-Old Girl At Eastside Park, Cops Say

Updated at the bottom with the U.S. Postal Service launching it's own investigation. Also, charges have been filed. First posted at 6:09 a.m. Vying to prove that postal workers are well-adjusted, mellow human beings, a mailman in Commerce was unsuccessful. Allegedly. Cops say 55-year-old Daniel Vi ... More >>

[Updated:] Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive: This Saturday

Update: 5/14 3:52 p.m. Did opportunistic thieves help themselves to some of the Stamp Out Hunger donations in Los Angeles? Unfortunately, yes. There were isolated reports on Saturday of unofficial vehicles driving down streets and taking off with the food bags, which were intended to be donations fo ... More >>

Amtrak's Ancestors: The Huntington's Exhibit on the History of the Transcontinental Railroad

Long before studios, hippies, method actors and reality-show wannabes headed out west, the Pacific Coast was a destination for farmers, miners, prospectors and other wagon-wheeling homesteaders who were looking for a new way of life. Two years after California struck gold in 1848, it became a part o ... More >>

PCP Bust in L.A. Worth $100 Million Reminds Us That PCP Still Exists

Cholos from the 1988 Dennis Hopper movie 'Colors.'​Who knew PCP was even around anymore? What is this, a 1980s gang movie with cholos wearing white t-shirts and puffing on "sherm?" Anyway, federal agents say they found a whopping $100 million worth of the drug -- by the gallon. One-hundred-th ... More >>

Villaraigosa's 'Clean Truck' Plan for Port of Los Angeles Fails in 9th District Court of Appeals: Greenwashing Failed to Impress

Sparkling clean truck: Los Angeles greenwashing almost worked.​Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's controversial "clean trucks" plan to squeeze independent truckers out of the Port of Los Angeles as a favor to the Teamsters -- a green-washing plan he sold as merely a wholesome effort to r ... More >>

Statue of Liberty on U.S. Postage Stamp Is Actually Newer, Hotter Vegas Version From 'New York-New York'

​​Everything's sexier in Vegas! Even New York's world-famous Statue of Liberty, apparently. Her likeness stands over the Las Vegas strip, torch raised...

Top 10 Bands That Should Have Broken Up Instead of the White Stripes

10 Bands Who Should Break Up

Van Lines Say More People (Who Can Afford Movers) Coming To California

Welcome to California, Oklahomans.​If you agree that California knows how to party, perhaps you're not alone. America's major moving van lines, United, Atlas and Allied, report that the Golden State, despite its subprime-housing crisis, a state government that's billions underwater and a rece ... More >>

Listen: New Dntel Tracks From Upcoming Album "After Parties" (Free MP3)

Listen: New Dntel Tracks From Upcoming Album "After Parties" (Free MP3)

Love That Dirty Water

Who Would Lose the Most from an L.A. Boycott of Arizona?

​Say hello to Swift Transportation. The Phoenix-based firm is one of the nation's largest trucking companies, and the biggest player in the Port of Los Angeles' Clean Trucks Program.It also has the most to lose from Councilwoman Janice Hahn's proposed boycott of Arizona -- $18 million, according t ... More >>

Trial Opens in Clean Trucks Case

​While Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was giving his State of the City address at the Police Administration Building yesterday, a federal trial was getting underway a couple blocks north. The trial will determine the fate of one of the mayor's most ambitious initiatives: the Port of L.A.'s Clean Truck ... More >>

World's Smallest Postal Service: How Small Can You Write?

​ Lea Redmond of Leafcutter Designs runs the World's Smallest Postal Service. She turns your regular-sized sentiments into very tiny letters. She says she has no plans yet to come to Los Angeles, but would certainly love to. If you'd like to see her here, send her an email. Or write her a lett ... More >>

Writing the Trains: Graffiti on Freight Cars

Are 19 L.A. communities losing their U.S. Post Offices?

By Donna BarstowThe U.S. Postal Service, hammered just like government postal services throughout Europe and North America by a massive drop-off in snail mail caused by the Internet and email, is deciding the future of 19 Post Office branches in Los Angeles. No word which ones will get shuttered. Bu ... More >>

Is L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich Screwing Over a Little Guy?

Ever since his arrival as the new Los Angeles City Attorney this summer, Carmen Trutanich has loved to come across as a man of the people.L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich​Trutanich has sparred with the L.A. City Council to the delight of many community activists; he has also personally held a t ... More >>

Update: Naser 'Jimmy' Nasralla Finds A Lawyer

Naser Nasralla, the homeless man known as "Jimmy" who lives in a tent near a stretch of railroad tracks in Northridge, woke up this Monday after only a few hours sleep. As usual, he fed the stray, abandoned cats in his neighborhood until the early morning. But now Jimmy needed to take care of himsel ... More >>

Jimmy On the Edge of Town

A Homeless Christian-Muslim From Palestine Pitches a Tent Behind Bed Bath & Beyond in Northridge. Then Come the Railroad Men and Feral Cat Activists.

NRDC Sues U.S. Over Clean Trucks Program

The Santa Monica-based Natural Resources Defense Council has sued the Federal Maritime Trucks Entering L.A. HarborCommission to learn why the government agency tried to block implementation of parts of the Clean Trucks Program that the L.A. and Long Beach ports are trying to enforce. The NRDC had fi ... More >>

MR. WILSON AND HIS PROFANE COPS

Train-ing Day Shocker: NTSB Releases Report on Metrolink Engineer's Ride-Along Program

Federal investigators have revealed for the first time that not only had Metrolink engineer Robert Sanchez allowed youthful train enthusiasts to ride along with him in his locomotive's cab, but also permitted some to work the train's controls. In fact, Sanchez, an avid text-messenger, was busy makin ... More >>

Morning Sixpack: A News Roundup

Prop 8 Donors Fear Outing Today's N.Y. Times looks at nervous supporters of the California measure banning same-sex marriage, now that a final report revealing their addresses  is due out.Lost in Space Actor Dies Bob May, the man inside the Robby the Robot suit in the 1960s TV series, Lost in S ... More >>

A Heavy Load

The ports say they have a plan for cleaner, safer trucks. But do they have a plan for the truckers?

Black Man Walking

Tank Goodness

A shipping giant volunteers to slash emissions at the port. But why?

Freight Train Graffiti

Air Board Revs Up for Clean Air

And truckers get in gear to protest low wages

Trucker Talk

The Greening of Ships

Can California stop air pollution out at sea?

Ports of Cough

What it will take to clean up the mess caused by ships and trucks

Enron Forgotten

Congress may stick us with a natural-gas rip-off

Lush Life

Bukowski in and out of his cups

Modestly Universal

Sleeping With the Pigeons

Port in a Storm

Dealing with the polluting ways of world trade

Ports of Cash

Out-of-court settlement could force shakeup at Port of Los Angeles

The Hobohemians

On the rails with the new freedom riders

Art & Commerce

At an intersection near you

Quack-in-the-Box

How did the U.S.'s biggest mail-order health-remedy peddler find my mailbox?

My Favorite New Year’s

A personal history of the ’60s

Letters

Box Busters

Post office puts squeeze on private mail service