A little news out of the Metro Board of Director’s planning committee meeting on Wednesday: A funding transfer agreement with the Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority was moved to the full Metro Board for their consideration at next Thursday’s meeting. I know. That sounds like a bunch of bureaucratic [continue reading]
This year’s California state budget saga took another turn on Tuesday, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he would veto the latest Democratic proposal. Part of that proposal was to preserve some state funding for mass transit. If that funding does not ultimately survive the budget process, it could cost Metro [continue reading]
County Supervisor and Metro Board member Mike Antonovich made the announcement today that he secured a $300,000 anti-air pollution grant to restore bus service between Union Station and Dodger Stadium for the 2010 season. The best part: the bus ride is free to anyone holding a game ticket. The full [continue reading]
Metro CEO Art Leahy has been on the job for almost a year and yesterday he announced to agency staff his most significant initiative: he wants to “streamline” the agency, which involves eliminating some open jobs and through voluntary and involuntary layoffs. This is how it has been explained to [continue reading]
When voters approved Measure R in 2008, they were voting for a plan that proposed to raise sales taxes in Los Angeles County by a half-cent for 30 years. In return, voters would get about $40 billion in transit, road and other transportation improvements. But not $40 billion of fixes [continue reading]
Ara Najarian, Chair of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board of Directors, joined Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich and Metro’s CEO Art Leahy today to present Measure R sales tax money to the Palmdale City Council for use in improving transportation in the city. The Measure R [continue reading]
View Subway planning in a larger map The team of Metro staffers that are planning the Westside Subway Extension are holding a meeting on March 17 to discuss a significant issue: should the subway have a station at Wilshire and Crenshaw boulevards? Stations cost about $200 million to build and [continue reading]
In recent years, urban planners have been making a big push to locate new residential buildings as close to transit as possible. It’s certainly started to happen in Los Angeles County, with apartments and condos sprouting near rail lines in Hollywood, North Hollywood, Koreatown, Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles, to [continue reading]
There has been a lot of talk in political circles about the economic and employment benefits of the federal stimulus bill (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) signed into law in Feb. 2009. Fair enough. But in terms of hardware, Metro benefited from the bill when the first of 50 [continue reading]
We posted last Friday about a town hall meeting at Metro with Sen. Barbara Boxer and U.S. Transportation Ray LaHood. They came to Los Angeles, in part, to hear what locals wanted in the next federal transportation spending bill. President George W. Bush signed the last federal transportation bill into [continue reading]
