The Metro Board of Directors meet on Thursday for a meeting that should be fairly subdued compared to some of their recent monthly get-togethers.
The item likely to be of interest to most people: The Board must formally approve free subway and Orange Line busway service on the weekend of July 16-17, when the 405 will be mostly closed between the 10 and 101 for the partial demolition of the Mulholland Bridge.
The free subway service had been previously announced; the addition of free Orange Line busway service is now being sought. I don’t expect this to be very controversial, given that public officials — including many on the Board — have been encouraging the public to plan ahead for the 405 closure and/or to avoid driving that weekend.
Categories: Policy & Funding
It would be nice if Metro could periodically have free weekends, say once a year. It would be an ongoing opportunity to convince people who have never tried transit to get their feet wet.
All I can say is: I’ve been trying to ride my bike and/or take the subway when I can. I wish more people could (notice I didn’t use ‘would’) do that because I feel great from the exercise, I save money on gas and parking fees, and I leave a smaller footprint on earth. I just wish more people can see the benefits of public transportation and be made aware of it.
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@ Justarider
I would not consider not having the entire system being free being truly a ball dropper. Metro is already ensuring that all rail lines and busy bus corridors are having weekday level frequencies on a weekend. Plus i doubt providing free service is good for the agency’s pocket book.
Second Only commuters who use 405 to go between the valley and the westside are going to be the most impacted. Offering freeway service on the Orange and Red Lines seems like a reasonable market strategy to get valley residents to try the system. I doubt offering free service on the green line will really help alleviate their inconvenience
Metro Marketing once again dropped the ball BIG TIME! They should have pushed to have the entire Metro system FREE for the entire closure time. Then people who normally drive could have had an incentive to not only fully explore Metro’s entire system; but that could have been an opportunity to encourage people to visit and shop other areas of the county away from the closure area. Why has the board waited until less than a month before this catastrophe to vote on this?
Do people on the East Side get free service as a consequence of the havoc caused by construction related to the Congestion Relief Demonstration Project?
Perhaps this free Orange Line exposure will result in local support to make some small necessary improvements to the service without making a complete transition to light rail. Adding quadgates and purchasing of higher capacity 80 ft buses.
Having free service that weekend will encourage more, typically non-transit users, to use transit and will potentially convert many people to using transit more often as an alternative to driving. This very well may help overall ridership which would be great.