Buses

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.

Bill Lind is a big man. The director of the Center for Public Transportation at American Conservative stands well over six feet tall, and when he really gets going, he seems to loom even larger. Maybe that’s why he hates buses so much. “Those seats designed for garden gnomes,” he said.

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.

(In advance of the kickoff of tonight's hearings on Metro's bus cut hearings, Faramarz Nabavi was nice enough to send along some very well researched comments on behalf of The Transit Coalition.  If you care about bus cuts, take a moment to sit down and read through. - DN)

(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/)

Earlier this week, Metro announced another set of proposed cuts to its bus system.  Following so soon on the cuts from just last month, Metro CEO Art Leahy took to The Source to defend the changes.  Oddly, rather than defend the good work being done by the bus division at Metro and push for the state to finally restore funds pledged to transit operations but spent on closing a gap in the general fund.  Instead, he tries to sell the cancellation of nine bus routes and reductions on dozens more.

Late yesterday afternoon, the news broke that the federal dollars needed to construct the Wilshire Bus-Only Lanes project would not be put in danger if the one mile just west of Beverly Hills were excluded.

(Remember I told you we'd be adding new features to the blog?  If someone sends me an action alert that can be filled out online, we'll repost it here. - DN)