Musk Shows off hyperloop demo tunnel; Bird fights ban in Beverly Hills; LA spending roughly $13 per voter
Bird Sues Beverly Hills, Fighting Scooter Ban
Santa Monica-based Bird Rides Inc. filed a Nov. 1 lawsuit filed against the City of Beverly Hills after the City installed a six-month ban on its e-scooters. The suit alleges Beverly Hills police have issued over $100,000 in fines for improper scooter use and accuses the police of embarking on a “campaign of indiscriminate seizure.” ArsTechnica reports the Beverly Hills City Council, which initiated the ban after a July 24 meeting, called the use of scooters dangerous, noting police have responded to “several vehicle collisions involving motorized scooters” in recent weeks.
LA County Spends Less Per Voter Than San Mateo, San Diego
A new report from Techwire analyzes election spending per voter by county in California. Los Angeles County ranks fourth with a 2018 fiscal year election budget of roughly $81 million. With an estimated 6.2 million eligible voters (the largest voting group of all surveyed counties), LA County spends roughly $13 per voter. San Mateo County spent the most per voter ($53.48), while Riverside County spent the least ($7.17). San Diego, the closest comparison to LA County, spent roughly $23.9 million, or $10.76 per each of its 2.2 million voters in 2018. Techwire notes that there “does not appear to be a correlation between total spend on elections and a per-voter spend.”
Boring Co. Chief Executive Elon Musk posted a video of his two-mile tunnel underneath suburban Hawthorne Nov. 2, the Boring Co.’s first attempt at creating high-speed hyperloop transportation infrastructure. Musk said his goal is to circumnavigate LA’s “chronic traffic” using an underground hyperloop to transport up to 16 passengers per shuttle at 150 miles per hour underground for a fee of $1 per trip. On Dec. 10, The Boring Co. plans to show the tunnel to the public during an opening party, according to The Washington Post.
