As you probably know, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered his State of the State address this morning in Sacramento. It’s a runup to his release of the state budget on Friday — a budget that Metro officials are closely watching to see what, if any, the impacts are on public transportation [continue reading]
I just posted yesterday about efforts to recover transit funds previously raided by the State Legislature — and an accompanying ballot initiative in the works to prevent more raids in the future. Well, it appears the future is now. Here’s the L.A. Times’ story on the latest proposal to balance [continue reading]
As you may have heard, the Legislature in the past few years has diverted hundreds of millions of dollars that were supposed to go to mass transit to other uses — namely balancing the state budget. On behalf of local transit agencies — many of whom had to cut service [continue reading]
Such is the ways of Washington D.C.: the defense spending bill that President Obama signed yesterday also includes money for transportation programs, including $50 million for the development of rail safety systems called positive train control to help prevent trains from colliding. Experts say such systems may have prevented the [continue reading]
Metro has released ridership numbers for November and there’s relatively little news to report. Rail ridership across the system increased slightly from Nov. 2008 — due to the opening of the Eastside Gold Line Extension — and bus ridership dipped from one year earlier. Metro officials believe the weak economy [continue reading]
Remember all those stories about soaring mass transit use in the summer of 2008, when gas prices soared? Well, here are the first two paragraphs of a story published by the New York Times: The Metropolitan Transportation Authority approved a punishing slate of service cuts on Wednesday that would amount [continue reading]
As I posted last month, the funding game for the Westside Subway Extension and the Downtown Regional Connector projects was shifting from Los Angeles County to Washington D.C. Now it’s official. Earlier this month, Metro CEO Art Leahy submitted a formal request for $77.6 million to the federal government, with [continue reading]
The Metro Board has called for an audit of the agency’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program. The DBE program attempts to create a fair and level playing field for small businesses competing for federally funded contracts. Board members believe an audit is necessary to review the program and find ways [continue reading]
I was in Boston about six weeks ago for the 2009 Rail~Volution Conference. The conference focuses on a wide range of topics related to “building livable communities with transit.” I was there as a panelist for the session on “New Media, New Tools” talking about my role in utilizing social [continue reading]
The commuter railroad Metrolink — which is funded in part by Metro — announced Friday that David Solow was being replaced as chief executive and that Solow was moving to another position overseeing implementation of a new safety system for the agency. The official press release from Metrolink is after [continue reading]
