Here is a look at some of the transportation headlines gathered by us and the Metro Library. The full list of headlines is posted on the library’s blog.

UITP marketing awards: public transport as part of modern urban lifestyle (The City Fix)

The above video is part of a series of clever, Pixar quality spots promoting an often neglected advertising market – public transit. The spots come from De Lijn, a Belgian transit agency that won top prize at the 2009 International Association of Public Transport (UITP) Marketing Awards. The awards promote the importance of marketing in public transit and according to a UITP executive, are “aimed at changing attitudes on public transit to influence performance, and, hopefully, demand.” You can watch another award-winning spot from De Lijn – this one featuring mass transit penguins – here.

LA County Metro puts new light rail line through its paces (KPCC)

KPCC hits the streets for this report on Metro’s Expo Line testing. Folks along the line seem excited about the testing and even more excited for full service to arrive. Another neat fact: this is the first time since 1950 that a passenger train has run along the Expo right-of-way.

A green lesson from the world’s most romantic cities (The Atlantic)

What do the romantic cities of the world – Paris, Venice, Rome and Vienna – have in common? Among other things: they’ve got no freeways running through their city centers. Instead, surface streets and boulevards handle the cars while wide sidewalks and public transit take care of the people (and lovers). Compare that to most American cities (L.A. included) where freeways and their massive (and unromantic) expanses of concrete tend to slice city centers into disconnected pieces.