It’s a new year and the Metro Board of Directors is back in business for its January round of committee meetings and full Board meeting on Thursday, Jan. 29.

Perusing through the committee agendas, here are a few items that may interest the casual Metro rider and/or observer:

•The monthly update on transit policing, including crime statistics through October 2014. Staff report

•A staff update on a potential bus route between the Gold Line in Pasadena (Del Mar or Lake stations) and Bob Hope Airport in Burbank. Also, here is another staff report updating ongoing studies of two potential bus rapid transit routes — one serving Vermont Avenue and the other between the Orange Line in North Hollywood and the Gold Line in Pasadena. Funding would need to be secured for all these potential lines.

•Metro staff is asking the Metro Board to “ADOPT the following Official and Operational names for the eight stations that comprise Metro Rail’s Crenshaw/LAX line:

Official Station Name          Operational Station Name

Expo/Crenshaw                          Expo/Crenshaw

Martin Luther King, Jr.            Martin Luther King, Jr.

Leimert Park                               Leimert Park

Hyde Park                                   Hyde Park

Fairview Heights                       Fairview Heights

Downtown Inglewood              Downtown Inglewood

Florence/Hindry                        Florence/Hindry

Aviation/Century                       Aviation/Century

•A proposal for a contract with Google to place ads on metro.net as a way to raise revenues for the agency. Staff report

•A motion by Board Members Eric Garcetti and Sheila Kuehl asking Metro to prepare an analysis of a greenway and water filtering project along the Expo Line between Westwood Boulevard and Overland Avenue.

•An update on Metro’s Project Labor Agreement, which seeks to “encourage construction employment and training opportunities to those who reside in economically disadvantaged areas on Metro construction projects,” according to the agency. The gist of it: most of the contractors are meeting most of their hiring goals.

The committees meet on Wednesday or Thursday at Metro headquarters adjacent to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. You can listen to a web stream of the meetings online by clicking here — a link will appear after the meetings begin.