Dana Gabbard

Metro's Deputy Executive Officer of Service Planning and Scheduling Conan Cheung made nearly identical updates on service planning at the agency to the November 13th meeting of Southern California Transit Advocates and the November 17th meeting of Metro's Citizens' Advisory Council. Those who are unfamiliar with Metro's practice of semi-annual service changes (known as "shake-ups") should review the explanation in my Dec. 11, 2009 post "Metro Tweaks Schedule This Weekend. New Routes to Start on Monday".

Gloria Ohland's overview of the recently held 9th Annual Southern California Transportation Summit certainly provides a neat snapshot of the livability aspects of the event.  But a lot else was going on, which is no surprise for such a large event, and I have some observations of my own from attending.

(Note: As we did in 2008, Streetsblog encourages the submission of op/eds about the ballot propositions on the November ballot.  Have something transportation related to say?  Feel free to email me at damien at streetsblog dot org.  None of these op/eds should be considered an endorsement by Streetsblog.)

Friday and Saturday Oct. 1st & 2nd the 5th annual AltCar Expo will be held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Admission is free. A map of the venue are on the event's website along with a map showing which Big Blue Bus routes serve the site and a page extolling the free bike valet.

Earlier this month the L.A. Times headlined its coverage of the release by Metro of the draft environmental studies for the Purple Line westward extension "Proposed Westside subway will do little to relieve traffic congestion, report shows" as if this was a searing revelation. Just proof again of the sad decline of the Times these past few years.

About 10 years ago I attended a meeting of local activists held at the Southern California Association of Governments to hear a presentation about the proposed high speed rail network. This was back when few people were aware such an effort was underway. Attendance was heavily grassroots and environmentally oriented. Few present had knowledge of the project or the magnitude of the challenges it entailed. So after the slide show (this was pre Power Point) the questions were along the lines of was there any danger it would facilitate sprawl in the Central Valley, turning Fresno and Bakersfield into bedroom communities.

Well, here we are on the cusp of another compressed period of hyper activity with multiple transportation meetings being held in the next 10 days or so.  Here are the details:

You might have noticed there has recently been much media attention centered on the problems of Metro's TAP system and the gating of some of the Metro Rail stations. It all started when reporter Troy Anderson at the Daily News stumbled across this long festering situation that has been the object of much righteous criticism among activists and on the blogsphere. Anderson's classic reporter instincts realized this was a hot story worth pursuing. You have to say the headline "MTA's $46M system of locking turnstiles sits unused, waiting for fare cards to be adopted" is eye-catching and even accurate!

I was recently cruising the web and came across a query posted on Curbed L.A. about the stub end of the Harbor Transitway north of Adams and whether there are any plans to extend it. Dredging up memories of events over the years relating to the topic I posted two monster sized paragraphs of comment.

Looking over the agenda for the Metro Board meeting Thursday I see no sign of any items being included relating to the impending fare increase and/or the holding of any public hearings to consider a delay or rescinding of same.