Buses

Yesterday Dodgers owner Frank McCourt held court at a Town Hall Los Angeles luncheon where he addressed how the Dodgers are progressing in their $500 million renovation to Dodger Stadium and their $100 million spring training venue in Arizona according to a report in the Times.  He also mentioned that he believes it to be the city's responsibility to help deliver people to the stadium via public transit so he can turn a profit.

This morning, the Bus Rider's Union, including members from South and East L.A., and civic leaders from Koreatown gathered to ask the MTA to support the BRU's Clean Air and Economic Justice Plan.  Their plan calls for increased funding and expansion of Metro's bus fleet and a rollback fo the 2007 fare hike by using Measure R and federal stimulus dollars over time.  They also pointed out that while Metro staff had released a report earlier in the week that called for some short-term improvements, there was also language in the report that called for fare hikes in the next couple of years and long-term cuts in bus service as different rail projects come online.

Remember last year when the Dodgers announced that for the first time in years transit service would come back to Dodger Stadium?  It was a pretty great event, the Mayor was there and over 700 people a game used the free bus service to get the people to the stadium every day.  All in all, it was a pretty great story from last year.

Forbes Magazine recently conducted a survey to determine which cities are getting better and which are getting worse for commuters.  Surprisingly, Los Angeles appears on the list of top ten cities for improving commutes, coming in at #6.

The House version of President Obama's stimulus plan has left bus riders with nothing to look forward to but stiff fare hikes and painful service cuts. Bus systems got zero in immediate operating support from the bill that passed yesterday -- stunning neglect compared to the $150 billion in educational "operating assistance" to local schools and universities and $127 billion in emergency health care "operating assistance" to state Medicaid and private insurance programs. A relatively puny request for $2 billion in transit operating support was shot down before even reaching committee.

Today on the Streetsblog Network we're hearing from Santa Rosa CityBus, the only blog on the network (so far) that is written by employees of a municipal transit agency. Their latest post laments the lack of positive press for the bus in general:

Watch this instructional video from the Transit Authority of River City (that's Louisville, Kentucky), and trust me, you won't be able to dislodge the chorus from your head for days. I never thought of bus-mounted bike racks as the stuff of infectious music videos, but I was wrong -- egregiously wrong.

Last Year, Bus Rider's Fought for Late Night Service