Dana Gabbard

My metaphor of choice to describe transportation funding and policy making is an onion, in which there are a succession of layers representing complexities and multifaceted cross-jurisdictional dimensions. And one cannot be complacent since there are always new aspects to explore and try to fathom.

Originally Stephen Villavaso of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition was scheduled to be the guest speaker at the Southern California Transit Advocates May 14th meeting, only to have a conflict force him to request to be rescheduled to our June meeting. As I scrambled to seek a replacement Nick Matonak who handles the Facebook page for SO.CA.TA suggested we have Stephen Box as a speaker. And upon being contacted Box with great enthusiasm said yes.

The Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority is co-sponsoring workshops with the cities in the 12.6-mile corridor between Azusa and Montclair along which the Authority hopes to extend the Gold Line. The subject of the meetings are proposed station sites in Glendora, San Dimas, La Verne, Pomona, Claremont and Montclair. The meetings begin this coming Monday.

Last year Culver CityBus briefly stopped running its buses onto the campus of West Los Angeles College as Culver City Vice Mayor Micheál O‘Leary noted at the August 2, 2010 City Council meeting "with the understanding that the College would be providing service from the street into the College. ... since the College failed to keep that commitment the City saw the need to resume the service again and to also resume discussions with the College regarding the issue." Ari Noonan in his recent article "Almost with a Smile, West Accepts Bus Sked Compromise. Residents Don’t" delves into the actions of former West L.A. College President Mark Rocha that resulted in the brief removal of service.

As Metro prepares its budget for the forthcoming 2012 fiscal year (which commences July 1) certain assumptions underlie the numbers. These budget planning parameters are outlined in a document being presented to the Metro Board Finance and Budget Committee on Wednesday March 16th. Here are a few of the revelatory highlights of the assumptions:

As Damien has noted the California High Speed Rail Autjority is coming to L.A. this week, specifically to the Metro Board Room (3rd floor of the Taj Mahal, as some of us like to call the Metro Headquarters Building). Wednesday afternoon its Executive/Administrative Committee is meeting at 1 p.m., followed by the Finance Committee at 2 p.m. and the Operations Committee at 3:30 p.m.

I was gratified that my commentary Memo to Metro: “Additional Details” on Bus Cuts AWOL provoked illuminating comments plus at the behest of The Source's Fred Camino Metro updated its website adding a link to the additional details I had futilely sought. Chalk one up for L.A. Streetsblog helping make the world a better place.

The Feb. 1st "all regions" public hearing for the June service change proposals had a good turnout. My estimate is it started with about 150 attendees and even with comments limited to just a minute per speaker the whole thing took some 2 and a half hours.

(Update: As noted in the comments section, The Source linked to an update on January 13th in a short article on that site.  Anyone interested in reading that update can do so here: http://www.metro.net/around/service-enhancements/metro-service-enhancements-proposed/)