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]
A new report that updates the planning progress on the Westside Subway Extension is being presented to the Metro Board of Directors this month. Work on the draft environmental impact report is now 60% complete, according to the report. Other news in the report: *The subway planning team at Metro [continue reading]
Enjoying the rain? Look at the bright side: construction work on the northbound 405 carpool lane project has been postponed for Tuesday night due to the inclement weather. Construction updates are available on the project’s page on the Metro website and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/I_405. I’m writing this post at [continue reading]
It’s hard not to be a grumpy bear when it rains like this, so naturally I started my morning with a story from the San Diego Union-Tribune about the roll-out there of plastic, reusable fare cards that are tapped against machines that read them. Riders don’t seem to like them [continue reading]
A dog capable of sniffing out chemical and biological weapons that will be used in Los Angeles County was introduced at a press event this morning by officials from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and Metro. The dog, a 17-month-old black lab named Johnny Ringo, can detect anthrax, ricin and [continue reading]
