I really should have been a scientist. Fox News reports that slime mold expands in a way that mimics road and rail networks and that slime mold is perhaps better at building such networks than, say, urban planners. In other words, give me a map and some slime mold and [continue reading]
Metro CEO Art Leahy included this item in his daily email to staff on Friday: Proposed Second Federal Stimulus Bill On December 16, 2009, the House passed a second fiscal stimulus bill, H.R. 2847. The Senate will begin consideration of their version of a stimulus bill later this month and [continue reading]
The National Transportation Safety Board has posted presentations explaining its investigative findings of the Metrolink crash in Sept. 2008 that killed 25 on its website. There are several presentations, including an introduction and a review of signaling issues associated with the crash.
Budget news has been bad at all level of government for months and Metro doesn’t appear to be any exception. A report released by agency officials and discussed publicly on Wednesday at a Metro Board of Directors budget committee meeting spelled out the problem: in the fiscal year 2010-11, which [continue reading]
I had the chance to listen to a conference call on Wednesday that was organized by the American Public Transportation Assn. (APTA), a Washington D.C.-based group that promotes – as the name implies – mass transit. The group has also set up a website on high-speed rail efforts. The purpose [continue reading]
The rain today has again postponed construction work Thursday night on the northbound 405 carpool lane being constructed between the Santa Monica and Ventura freeways. Work is scheduled to resume Friday night and Metro officials have said that the contractor will be working on weekend nights to make up for [continue reading]
This item led Metro CEO’s daily email memo to agency staffers on Wednesday: Today, I wrote to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood to encourage him to hold a public listening session at our headquarters on the New Starts reforms he announced last week. On January 13, 2010 the U.S. [continue reading]
What better way to spend a gloomy morning than contemplating federal transportation bills? The Hill takes a look at the progress — or lack thereof — of the next massive federal transportation bill. The last such bill, providing $286 billion in funding, was signed into law by President Bush in [continue reading]
The National Transportation Safety Board is meeting this morning in Washington D.C. to consider a draft of the final report on the Sept. 2008 Metrolink accident in Chatsworth that killed 25 people when a Metrolink train collided head-on with a Union Pacific freight train. The draft report concludes that the [continue reading]
The rain keeps falling and as a result construction work on adding a carpool lane to the northbound 405 over the Sepulveda Pass has been postponed for both Wednesday and Thursday nights. On a related note, there’s an open house being held this afternoon about the project at the Westwood [continue reading]
