The latest round of public meetings for the Westside Subway Extension begin tonight at 6 p.m. at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as Metro officials are finishing up work on the draft environmental impact study/report (DEIS/R) for the project. There are four other meetings scheduled between now and [continue reading]
If you’re interested in the Westside Subway Extension project, this letter from Rep. Henry Waxman is well worth reading. It’s short but addresses a CRITICAL topic — how the Federal Transit Administration evaluates the project to determine if it’s eligible for federal funding. In Waxman’s view, the entire Subway Extension [continue reading]
It’s a big day at Metro HQ in downtown, with Sen. Barbara Boxer and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood here for a town hall meeting on the next federal transportation bill. That is set to start in a few minutes and I’ll post about it this afternoon. In the [continue reading]
President Obama on Monday released his budget for fiscal year 2011, including his recommendations for transportation funding. The chart above, produced by Metro, shows how Obama officials want to dole out money from the federal New Starts program that helps local areas pay for big transit projects. The gist of [continue reading]
Federal officials have denied a request by Metro to provide $77.6 million in the coming year’s federal budget to be used for preliminary engineering on the Westside Subway Extension and Downtown Regional Connector projects. At the same time, federal officials say they are diligently working with Metro to advance planning [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]
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]
Some significant transit news out of Washington D.C. today: The rules that govern which major transit projects receive federal funding have been eased so that theoretically more projects can qualify. Why does this matter to Los Angeles County? Metro is currently seeking federal funds for the Westside Subway Extension and [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]
We launched the Source quickly last month in time to report on the October meeting of the Board of Directors. But I wanted to circle back and try to better explain something that happened at the September meeting — when the Board voted to seek federal funds for both the [continue reading]
