Transit Coalition

Tomorrow night at 7:00 P.M. Metro CEO Art Leahy will speak and take questions at The Transit Coalition's monthly meeting at Philippe the Original in downtown L.A.  Love him or hate him, the affable Leahy has been more open about his plans and vision for Metro with the press and advocates than either his contemporaries at other agencies or predecessors.  He even sat down for a Streetsblog interview last summer.

As the Los Angeles Department of Transportation prepares for five public hearings next month and in early March, activists are responding to their proposed series of cuts and fare hikes that will close the city's budget hole...at least when it comes to it's transit services.  Unlike the reaction we saw two years ago when Metro outlined a series of major cuts to its bus service, transit advocacy groups are not nearly as unified in opposing these cuts as they were two years ago.  For more information on LADOT's public outreach and other options to submit testimony, read the LADOT press release, available on Streetsblog here.

Local transit advocates are reacting with fury to the Governor's rumored plan to skirt a court ruling requiring that the state stop robbing transit funds dedicated in the gas tax by completely revoking the tax and reinstating it as an excise tax.

Last week, the Metrolink Board of Directors punted on the decision on how to balance their budget through either fare hikes, service cuts, or a mix of both until sometime in 2010.  While some riders breathed a sigh of relief that Metrolink didn't fill their Holiday Stockings with some regressive transportation policy; it seems inevitable that the Board is only delaying what will ultimately be an unpopular and difficult decision.

Two weeks ago, I celebrated that the Metrolink Board agreed to "look into other options" rather than raise fares by 6%.