People

Some good news to end the week.  Yesterday, City Council Transportation Committee Chair Bill Rosendahl underwent successful surgery to treat atrial fibrillation, an abnormal rhythm of the heart.  The Councilman is resting comfortably and is expected to return home later today and resume duties next week.

A year ago, the Department of Transportation helped launch FocusDriven, an advocacy group for victims of motor vehicle crashes involving drivers using cell phones.

Streetsblog Capitol Hill is pleased to publish this guest post from Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director for NRDC.

In a recent interview with the Journal of Commerce, Transportation Chair John Mica (R-FL) indicated that he shares many transportation goals with the Obama administration.

In an odd quirk of L.A. City Council rules, a Committee can "meet" with just the chair present and move legislation along to the full Council for a vote.  Thus, with the majority of the City Council downstairs debating how to frame the outsourcing of political will to raise parking rates in a way that didn't make them look like a rubber stamp, Transportation Committee Chair Rosendahl served as a one man committee.  Rosendahl's office explained to me that if the Full Council Meeting was still happening, that the Chairman would not ask all the witnesses who trekked Downtown to come back later and would hold the hearing himself.

For the first time in three years, California public transit agencies could see a full dose of funding from the State Transit Assistance (STA) fund, thanks in large part to the passage of Proposition 22, which prevents legislators from raiding local government funds, and Governor Jerry Brown, who announced his "painful" budget plan yesterday.

Senator Barbara Boxer told reporters today that she had an "excellent", “wonderful” meeting with Rep. John Mica (R-FL), the new chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. She confirmed that they're working on a "longer-term" transportation bill and have come up with many points of agreement. We'll let you know more details about that meeting as we get them.

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.

Update: We just learned that Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV) has been confirmed as the new Ranking Member of the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee.