Transportation Justice Reports from the Field

By Jennifer Medina

LOS ANGELES — The women shuffle back and forth as they wait just after 7 a.m. for the orange bus crawling down the street. It will be more than an hour before they arrive at work, and soon the same journey may stretch to nearly two hours.

Though the roads in Los Angeles routinely jam with honking cars in the morning, there is also an almost invisible commuter class — the millions of people, most of them poor, who depend on the sprawling bus system.

Local officials push public transportation as the path to an environmentally friendly future, with plans for a subway to the sea and miles of other rail projects in the region. But at the same time, the financially struggling Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is cutting back dozens of bus lines and shortening routes to save money that they say would be better spent elsewhere.

For Immediate Release
June 24, 2011

After close to three hours of lively and sometimes rancorous debate at their June 22 joint meeting, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) opened the door to advancing social equity in their long-term planning projects.

Under the banner of “One Bay Area,” MTC and ABAG have launched their work to plan how the Bay Area will grow in the next generation.  This planning process will implement SB 375, the important companion legislation to AB 32, California’s landmark climate law.

SB 375 requires MTC to partner with ABAG to come up with a “Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS)” to reduce driving and greenhouse gas emissions in the region by supporting transit service that links jobs and affordable housing. The SCS will be included in MTC’s Regional Transportation Plan that distributes more than $200 billion in state and federal funds.

By Ari Bloomekatz

Los Angeles transportation officials have unveiled the largest budget in the Metropolitan Transit Authority's history, a $4.2-billion plan that reflects the agency's heavy investment in rail projects around the region.

The budget includes money for a slew of rail lines, including the Crenshaw Line in South L.A. that should begin construction next year. The budget has operating funds for the Expo Line, which should open later this year.

There is also money for developing several more rail lines including the so-called "Subway to the Sea" and the "Regional Connector," which would link several existing rail lines through downtown L.A.

“Metro will be advancing one of the largest public works programs in the nation’s history in [fiscal year] 2012, with a dozen major transit and 15 highway projects in various stages of development,” Metro Chief Executive Art Leahy said in a statement.

By Zusha Elinson

BART has already spent $64 million on the controversial Oakland Airport connector. But Robert Raburn, a member of the BART Board of Directors, thinks he can derail the roughly $500 million project, which he’s nicknamed the “gold-plated” connector, before any more money is spent.

The tram is slated to run from the Coliseum BART station to Oakland International Airport and replace the shuttle bus that currently runs a similar route. It’s been called a “boondoggle” by critics; the feds yanked $70 million from the project last year over civil rights concerns. Others say the connector would be a boon to Oakland, bringing jobs and an easier way to get to the airport.

The BART board approved the connector last July — and a celebratory ground-breaking was held in October. But two of the project’s biggest champions have since left the transit agency.