Students aged seven to 11 created this work, titled "Connections," for a Lehi, Utah transit station. Photo via UTA.

This weekly post features news from other transit agencies and planners from around the world. Did we miss a good story? Let us know in the comments.

UTA to debut local public art in Utah County

The regional transit authority for Salt Lake has not one, but three blogs: Trains of Thought, Mom Aboard and Urban Ticket. Mom Aboard writes that the new murals will go up at a commuter rail park-and-ride lot in the city of Lehi and at a bus shelter in front of the city hall of Orem, Utah. School children and local artists contributed the original works, which will join several others at transit stations in the Sal Lake City region. It’s nice to see Metro has a kindred transit agency both in terms of blogging and public art. More info on Metro’s Art program is available here.

What Gabe Klein is brewing up in Chicago: Pedestrian-safety mannequins

Quick background: Gabe Klein quickly earned a reputation as a visionary transportation commissioner while working for the city of Washington D.C. Klein has since taken his innovative brand to Chicago to work for Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Transportation blog TBD On Foot catches up with Klein’s Windy City work, which includes “the unveiling of 32 pedestrian-safety dummies throughout the city, one for each of the pedestrian lives lost in Chicago in 2010.” The project seeks to emphasize “how vulnerable pedestrian lives are in our overall transportation system.” Under Klein’s leadership, Chicago has a set a goal of zero pedestrian fatalities by 2020.

Spring Street in downtown L.A. to get green buffered bike lanes

Rendering of the proposed green bike lane by Valerie Watson, At-Large Director of the Downtown LA Neighborhood Council

Brigham Yen reports the exciting news that Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles will be one of the first streets in the city to receive a green painted lane — a recently approved treatment. The lane will stretch 1.5 miles from Cesar Chavez Boulevard southward to 9th Street, where Spring merges with Main Street. Blogdowntown notes that LADOT’s traffic analysis found that Spring Street was so unnecessarily wide that the agency could remove both a peak-hour bus lane and a mixed-use lane to make way for the bike lane and curbside parking. The coolest part: The new configuration could be in place as soon as December of this year.

New York MTA weighs unusual steps to curb trash

Garbage haulers can’t keep up with the trash generated by subway passengers so the MTA in the Big Apple is trying a novel experiment: getting rid of trash cans altogether at a couple of stations to see if people will throw away their stuff somewhere else. The Wall Street Journal reports that, so far, results are mixed (shock!). I hope a clever marketing campaign is in the works: “New York subway — leave no trace!” Hey, it sort of works in the Sierra backcountry!

GOP Governor Rick Snyder has a plan to expand Michigan transit — and pay for it

In the ongoing saga that is Detroit-area public transit, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has put forth a solution to a system stuck in neutral. According to the Detroit Free Press, Snyder has proposed raising the state’s vehicle licensing fee and changing the gas tax to a percentage of the sale price, instead of a per-gallon fee. Those new revenues — up to $1 billion — would help fund road repairs and expanded bus service.