Metrolink

Before the Metro board this month are studies on five Metrolink stations, in Claremont, Commerce, El Monte, Northridge, and potentially serving Rio Hondo College. In addition, the Metro board is expected to approve a study on potential upgrades to Metrolink's Antelope Valley line.

Good news! Metrolink will be running extra trains this Sunday so folks can get to CicLAvia - The Valley. This Sunday's event will the first CicLAvia without an on-route connection to Metro rail. Participants can bike to CicLAvia from the Metro Red Line North Hollywood Station, but that is a 7-mile ride (about three miles on the Orange Line bike path) to the southern tip of the CicLAvia route at Van Nuys Boulevard and Roscoe Boulevard.

The Metrolink board of directors voted unanimously this morning to hire Art Leahy as CEO.

(Editor's Note: Sorry to run this disappointing news announced by Metrolink, when we're otherwise really excited about CicLAvia this Sunday. Don't forget, though, bicycles are not required equipment. There are lots of great CicLAvia attractions located within easy walking distance from Union Station! Including a pedestrian zone in the Broadway Historic Theater area. Also, don't forget that there are plenty of Metro rail and bus connections to the route - see this article at The Source for details. What's the solution, readers? Should cyclists press Metrolink for better service? Should Metro press Metrolink? Can we get bike share? Host more CicLAvias? Should far-flung CicLAvia participants just drive? Let us know in the comments below.) 

One of the best transportation bargains on offer in Southern California is the Metrolink’s Weekend Day Pass. The agency, offers a ticket on Saturdays and Sundays that allows the holder to ride anywhere on Metrolink’s service, albeit reduced from weekday offerings, for just $10.

We are on the last lap approaching the end of my long exertions as self-appointed chief TAP (Transit Access Pass) watchdog for our region, my friends. This long troubled program has finally unequivocally turned the corner and is fast approaching victory lane. Kudos and plaudits from all quarters are raining down on David Sutton who laist recently dubbed "the guy at Metro in charge of TAP operations." Sutton built on the yeomen effort mounted by Matt Raymond (until recently Metro's Chief Communications Officer) who first was handed the unenviable task of fixing TAP after the TAPucrats who labored ten years and spent millions in creating TAP mishandled it in such egregious fashion that one feels as if Raymond was one day handed a broom and told to tidy up the mess left behind by the elephant herd that TAP had become. We now have an actual date for the gate latching that feels real (June 2013) AND promised expansion that will fulfill the long promised potential of the technology (from 9 agencies to 24) in the next 12 months. Who'd have thunk it?

(I want to be explicit this is solely my own opinion, and in no way endorsed by either Streetsblog or Southern California Transit Advocates - DG)

Starting in the 1990s OCTA worked on a light rail project that was to be known as CenterLine. Despite valiant advocacy by Orange County rail activists the project was buffeted by parochial NIMBYism resulting in multiple truncations of the proposed route. Finally, in 2005 the agency threw in the towel and cancelled the project. As a substitute to provide air quality improvements that the light rail was supposed to produce (and for which air confirmity was being relied on) OCTA undertook an expansion of intracounty Metrolink service, funded with the monies in Measure M that had been intended for CenterLine.

My last Metro Transit Access Pass (TAP) related post detailed the vexing situation regarding TAP and Metrolink's patrons and the ongoing inability of Metro and Metrolink to find a means for Metrolink riders to be able to pass through the Red and Purple Line station gates after they are locked. I couldn't hide my incredulity that after all these years of dancing around this situation the solution being proposed involved temporary paper TAP cards being distributed by hand to Metrolink patrons daily for three months after which temporary plastic 30-day TAP cards would be provided by Metro for distribution to Metrolink’s riders who purchase a monthly pass.