Results tagged “transit”

Today is the long-awaited launch of the Gold Line's Eastside Extension, which links Downtown's historic Union Station via light rail to Little Tokyo, Mariachi Plaza, and heart of East Los Angeles, ending at Atlantic. To celebrate, rides from one end of the Gold Line to the other are free today, and there are four events that include food and music from the communities scheduled to happen at or near stations along the line

Commuter rail service Metrolink is considering a fare increase to be implemented at the start of the new year, reports the Daily News. "The five-county Metrolink agency board is scheduled to meet Friday to decide whether to hike ticket prices for tens of thousands of daily passengers by as much as 6 percent."

Carpool lanes added to the Southbound 405 Freeway as part of a $167 million project were opened up this weekend, in the hopes this will relieve some congestion on the road. "Caltrans workers Saturday took out barricades on the southbound 405 freeway's carpool lanes from the Interstate 10 Freeway interchange south to the 90 Freeway," explains CBS2, adding that the last step was to replace the surfacing material in the center divider.

Last night during rush hour an MTA bus collided with a private vehicle near 1959 N. Glendale Boulevard and the 2 Freeway. "According to Officer Gregory Baek of the Los Angeles Police Department, the No. 92 bus was driving northbound just before the freeway ramp when the accident occurred," explains LA Now. As a result, 19 people suffered injuries, of which 10 "were taken to the hospital," and of those, one "was reported to be in critical condition," according to CBS2. The other nine injuries were described as being "as minor to moderate." Police are currently investigating the cause of the crash, however Sgt. Gregory Hoyte of the Central Traffic Division notes that "the driver seemed to have lost control of the bus and hit the middle divider [also going Northbound on the road] and another object before crashing into the car."

Books on tape? Podcasts? Daydreaming? Favorite albums? Drivers who commute out of the Inland Empire have the most time on their hands to fill while making long treks to their workplace, according to recent census data. "The data said the commute is almost 42 minutes for workers from Lake Elsinore. For Riverside County, the commute is 31.6 minutes...

The Amtrak Surfliner departed San Diego 10:35 a.m. last Saturday -- right on time. But Train 571, a weekend-only train filled with families and weekend adventurers, never made it to its final destination -- Union Station, LA.

It's very common for reporters to cross the line and become communicators for agencies they once reported on and investigated. Today comes the news that Metro is launching their blog (finally!) with two notable names behind it. From the LA Times is Steve Hymon, the paper's former transit reporter. And from the blogLAsphere is Fred Camino, the downtown resident who created the blog MetroRiderLA. It's called The Source and Metro says it "is your window into what's happening at" the agency. "We'll be writing about agency news, funding and policy issues, and how to get the most out of transit and Los Angeles."

This week, the Metro Transportation Library debuted an impressive set of historical maps depicting transit lines and proposals for routes and systems. Among the multiple versions of our current subway system and systems long come and gone is a proposed monorail from 1960, the transit vision for LA in 1974, the map produced based on the Kelker-Deleuw study of 1925 (when the city's first subway was built), and a map from the time when the Red Line was called the Orange Line.

But don't get too excited as it's just one step in a long process that's almost completed. Although the timetable (.pdf) for the Gold Line now include eastside extension stations, they've been left blank. What a tease!

If you see the Gold Line running through the Eastside and East L.A. on a regular basis next week, don't think you can hop on board at the nearest station. Metro officials announced today that pre-revenue light rail train testing will begin Sunday, lasting at least a month before opening to the public.

The Metro board yesterday directed staff to apply for federal grants in hopes of capturing start-up money for the a subway to UCLA and a the regional connector in downtown.

The Mobility 21 transportation summit (.pdf) is wrapping up for the day, but earlier a list was released, featuring 21 "Critical Transportation Projects 'In My Backyard' to Improve Mobility throughout Southern California." The same-named six-county coalition included sexy public transit projects like subway to Westwood and high speed rail between San Diego and San Francisco, but also other important projects such as Positive Train Control for safety and added freeway lanes.

But don't get too excited, the money from the feds going to the transit line is not for extending it northbound towards Burbank airport or anything close to that. Today's announcement from is about reducing energy consumption. The White Explains in a press release:

Next week, the first ever Los Angeles Bicycle and Pedestrian Count will take place all over the city in the hopes of gaining a better sense of the number of bike-riders and pedestrians who use the streets. With a better sense of who is out there on foot and two wheels, the city can take those numbers into account when planning for the future, explains the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC), who are running the count...

     

Yesterday, friends, family, co-workers, and community members gathered in Stoney Point Park in Chatsworth to hold a memorial service and dedication of a plaque to honor the lives lost one year ago in the Metrolink-Union Pacific train crash. In addition to the Chatsworth event on Saturday a memorial was held in Simi Valley at the Metrolink Memorial Plaza, which was where Metrolink 111 would have next stopped had the train not collided with a freight train. There at the station, "individual plaques bearing the name of each person who died in the crash, and messages suggested by their families," have been installed at the east platform, according to the Daily Breeze.

Metro has intimated that they'll be voting on a preliminary line for their proposed Wilshire extension later next year, and hopes to connect their "current terminus in Koreatown to the Westside," explains MetroRider LA. But where the stops will be are still very much in flux; "one of the stations along the line is still kept as optional: Wilshire Boulevard and Crenshaw Boulevard."

The MTA has "revamped its policy" and now the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department will assume responsibility for "supervising transit security guards," according to abc7.com. The changes to the transit system's supervisory structure most likely stems from the recent revelation that there have been 11 investigations launched in the past two years by the L.A. County's Sheriff's Department...

A new bus line between the Santa Clarita and the NoHo Metro Red/Orange Line stations will begin service next week. This is actually a pretty good idea for the fourth largest city in Los Angeles County as Metrolink trains run between the city and downtown, but only six days a week as opposed to the NoHo Express, which will run everyday. Additionally, this delivers commuters to a transit hub. Service will begin on August 1st with the first two weeks completely free of charge. Then if riders want to ride for the rest of the month for free, they can take an online survey to give feedback on the route. Wow, immediate feedback and evaluation so they can improve service right away? Imagine if all government agencies did that?

Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood visited Los Angeles last week and took a tour of the Gold Line Eastside Extension, which is expected to open soon (no date had been announced, though). The line will run between Union Station and East LA. "This whole rail line is way ahead what we are talking about in Washington," exclaimed LaHood. "This is what we mean by livable communities. You build it and they will come."

Tomorrow morning's public memorial service for Michael Jackson has not only been an epic ticketing drama and financial burden, but will also impact how vehicle and public transit traffic moves--or, rather, doesn't move--through the streets of Downtown Los Angeles tomorrow.

Last August, a young man sleeping inside Downtown's 7th/Metro Station was roused by an MTA security guard; during the incident the guard delivered a kick to the patron's head, which was not only not part of his job description, but also captured on surveillance cameras inside the station. The footage convinced a jury to find the guard guilty of using excessive force. Cases such as this one happen more frequently than perhaps reported, and today's LA Times offers a look at the the 11 investigations launched in the past two years by the L.A. County's Sheriff's Department into allegations of abuse.

Phase Two of Metro's Gold Line Eastside Transit Corridor project is poised to move ahead into the community meeting phase, as plans to add on rail service extending the line from East Los Angeles to cities further east are in motion.

Can a transit agency be considered "green" if they aren't meeting their emission level standards? The state Air Resources Board thinks not, and have hit Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus line with a $21,000 fine "for failing to conduct required diesel emissions testing and maintaining appropriate records, among other violations," according to LA Now. Per the regulator, the popular fleet of around 200 buses "also failed to keep emission levels at no more than 60% of 2005 levels as required." Recently, the Big Blue Bus announced they'd be further greening their fleet by purchasing hybrid buses from a SoCal company with federal stimulus funds. This fine stems from "a legal case settlement," that also stipulates the transit agency school their employees on being "green" and requiring their drivers spend less time idling.

When the state legislature and Governor Schwarzenegger signed off on this year's budget, it depleted transportation funding to countys and citys. That means transportation funds for city hall's transit lines will soon start operating in the red. We're talking about a $200 million yearly deficit. "How big is the deficit?" Damien Newton at Streetsblog asks. "It's so large that if the city cut every DASH, Commuter Express and charter bus route, the city would still have a transportation deficit in the coming years." Ouch. Yesterday, we found that DASH transfers will be eliminated beginning in April. Start saving those quarters!

Federal stimulus funds are bound for Santa Monica, where their Big Blue Bus has plans for the $12.8 million, according to Yahoo!Business. The funds come with the stipulation they be "used for capital expenditures and not for operating costs or service enhancements."

Heading west via Wilshire by bus is slowly getting faster, but better news for many might be that the Westside Subway Extension is prepping meetings for the next phase of planning. Subways are a century-plus old mode of transit, but these days to spread the word even Metro (who remain stagnant in getting hooked up with Google Transit) knows that Facebook is the way to go. CurbedLA points to the Westside Subway Extension's Facebook page, where they've begun to murmur audibly about April community meetings.

Turning curb lanes on Wilshire Boulevard between Downtown and Santa Monica into dedicated Rapid Bus lanes has been a project in the works for over a decade, and one that continues to crawl towards realization. Last fall a series of community meetings were held to discuss the conversion following the initiation of an Initial Study/Environmental Assessment (IS/EA) of the plan, which was to "determine whether any further environmental assessment is necessary," according to Metro. The goal was to have the report ready for viewing around this time, but in an update, Metro says "there has been a slight change to the original schedule as the environmental analysis is taking a little more time than anticipated." Now they say it will be late spring when the report is ready and more meetings can be held.

Google Transit has been working with Metro's schedules for over a year now, but Metro won't sign the final contract, according to sources.

With the $215 million in federal stimulus funds Metro received (it could go up to $315) for transportation projects, they are giving cities a minimum of $500,000. But the Pasadena Star News found that smaller cities were taking that money and trading it for as low as 62-cents to the dollar for money they could use on anything they wanted (Example, one city would trade their $500,000 earmarked for shovel ready transit projects with another city for $315,000 in cash that they could use for anything they wanted).

General Manager Gail Goldberg for the Planning Department on building a subway to the Westside to bottleneck blogger Steve Hymon: "We can accommodate more people, we can't accommodate more cars. And so we have to give people other options. Other cities do this.... I think we are going to have to bite the bullet and do the subway. We are going to have to find other ways to get people through the Westside other than getting in cars.... The car that gave Angelenos freedom in the '60s has turned into a cell in this era. We have to put a movie in the backseat of the car to keep the kids busy while we take them to school. This is no way to live."