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.

Bike-friendly? Check the city’s mass transit system (NYT Green Blog)

When writer Felicity Barringer noticed that the nation’s top biking cities — Portland, San Francisco, et al. — also had good transit systems, she wondered if there was a correlation there. Specifically, does a transit agency’s embrace of cycling, or lack thereof, encourage more people to ride? The evidence seems mixed at first glance. New York, for instance, has made great strides in increasing the number of cyclists, even though its commuter rail system offers only “grudging” support to cyclists.

L.A. bikeway implementation improved but short of stated 40 miles annually (L.A. Streetsblog)

Over the years, the city of Los Angeles has approved two ambitious bike plans that left something to be desired on the implementation side. When the city signed off on a major plan update in 2010, it came with an aggressive implementation schedule — 40 new route miles per year — funded in part through the city’s Measure R local return dollars. However, Streetsblog’s Joe Linton checks in on the progress and he finds it somewhat lagging out of the gate. The good news: Mayor Villaraigosa has written a directive (PDF) to city departments instructing them to actively support the plan’s implementation.

RTD learns transit lessons from the City of Angels (Daily Camera)

Is the L.A. area’s car-centric image waning? In June a contingent of transportation officials from Colorado came to L.A. to study Metro’s Orange and Silver Lines in order to learn how to successfully design their own BRT system. One of the big takeaways was that branding BRT service is important. If an agency commits the resource to improve service frequency, speed and comfort, then they should make sure that the public can easily identify those enhancements.