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]
Although moving ahead on the Crenshaw Line project was the big news out of yesterday’s Metro Board of Director’s meeting, there was one other item voted on near the end of the meeting worth mentioning. The Board also extended labor contracts with four unions until June 30, 2010 (see item [continue reading]
I posted a link to a column by Joel Epstein in the Huffington Post the other day. In his column, Joel wrote that Metro should be pushing hard to find corporations or other entities to pick up the cost of subway stations and other transit infrastructure — kind of like [continue reading]
The Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority is an independent agency that was set up to build the next phase of the light rail line from Pasadena to Azusa. The Authority last week released a letter to Metro about ongoing negotiations for a funding transfer agreement with the agency. [continue reading]
I posted recently about the new clock tower at the Gold Line’s Lake Avenue station. I didn’t have a pic at the time, but here’s one sent in by alert reader Ken Sterling. You might have guessed: the photo was not taken today. Also, here’s a link to a recent [continue reading]
