Transit Advocacy

Metro and LADOT eliminating free transfers on Metro Monthly Passes: Thanks to Bart Reed of the Transit Coalition for tracking this down. As StreetHeat reported last week, the free transfer between Metro and Dash buses downtown will be eliminated on January 1, 2008 as part of Metro's roll out of the TAP cards. However, its going to be awhile until TAP is online on either LADOT or Metrolink buses. The TAP conversion target date for LADOT is late 2008 and Metrolink's is still to be determined. If you're concerned about the decision to eliminate this transfer, why not tell the boss at Metro about it?

(Hello readers from the Transit Coalition. You can read other Street Heat transit coverage from the past week here, here, and here.)

The debate over how ebst to build Phase II of the Expo Line continues to be the most-talked about transit issue out there. Yesterday Metro Rider published a letter from Damien Goodman pleading his case for better grade separations, and local civic groups did mass emails with similar pleas (below).

All:

Congratulations to Governor Schwarzenegger for being the first winner of the Once-ler of the week award. So far he’s managed to avoid any blame for Foothill Transit’s fare hike, but the root cause of the hike and the structure of the hike can be traced directly to state policy. At the end of the speaker’s … Continued

Tonight is the last chance to make your voice heard on the Foothill Transit proposed fare hike.

At a joint meeting of Metro and the Southern California Transit Advocates, both groups pleaded for greater involvement by the community in the "Subway to the Sea" (officially called Westside Extension Transit Corridor Study) transit extension. The meeting took place at El Rey theatre on Wilshire Blvd, and attracted roughly two dozen activists and residents.

A new poll by Smart Growth America shows that nationwide the tide is turning against road widening projects and other forms of highway capacity enhancement. Just over one in five respondents thought that the best way to fight congestion was to add more lanes, while 3/4 of the respondents preferred more funding for transit and development patterns that favored walking and biking.

The chart doesn't only show that light rail isn't always the "most fatal" form of transit, but also that the fatality per PMT rate was plummeting before the FTA decided to count suicides the same as other accidents.