Bus Stops

As president of Southern California's largest bus shelter company, Jean Claude LeRoyer knows about manufacturing and advertising. He also has learned a little about censorship. After some recent complaints, LeRoyer decided to pull the plug on a series of bus shelter ads for a rock music radio station in several Orange County cities. The ads depicted a "flasher" in a raincoat confronting an elderly woman. "We're in an awkward position," said LeRoyer, who heads Bustop Shelters of California.

NEW YORK — Gone are the quiet streets and the loading docks, replaced with hordes of shoppers ducking into stores selling scented body butter, premium denim and high-end furniture. But one thing remains unchanged on the narrow stretch of Prince Street in SoHo: the haunting memory of Etan Patz, a 6-year-old boy who left for school one morning in 1979 and never came back. It is one of this city's — and the nation's — most chilling unsolved mysteries, a case many had forgotten or never knew about until Thursday, when police and FBI agents began searching the basement of a building on the same block as the little boy's apartment.

Orange County Transportation Authority buses will maintain their regular Sunday schedules New Year's Day.

It's still unclear whether Sarah Palin's road trip is an educational family tour of historical America or a dry run for her potential Republican presidential bid. But Monday, two things became clear: She will not shy away from unscripted encounters, and she isn't going let anyone know in advance where she's going as she wends her way across the country this summer. In an impromptu news conference Monday evening in the parking lot of her Gettysburg hotel shortly after taking a four-mile run in steaming heat, Palin said she thought the current crop of Republican presidential contenders is "strong" and that any campaign she might wage "would definitely be unconventional and nontraditional, yes, knowing us, yeah, it would have to be. " And that was as far as she would go, leaving the former Alaska governor's intentions, like much of her bus tour, a mystery.

The city has eight new bus stop shelters with the recent completion of the first phase of a transit shelter program. The city, in a partnership with Eller Media Co., will eventually install 54 shelters and 150 bus benches throughout Irvine. The white shelters comply with all provisions of the American With Disabilities Act of 1990.

A $50,000 construction project to replace eight more Southern California Rapid Transit District bus stops throughout Lynwood is expected to start within a month. Cracked and damaged asphalt pads will be replaced with concrete at RTD stops on several major streets, said Emilio Murga, acting assistant director of public works. The City Council recently approved the project, which is being funded with money from Proposition A, the half-cent county sales tax for transit projects.

Dear Traffic Talk: This is something that has been on my mind for several months and, subconsciously, maybe years. It has to do with a bus stop at Oxnard Street and Woodman Avenue. Buses traveling west on Oxnard cross Woodman and stop at a bus bench between two driveways in front of a gas station. However, vehicles traveling behind the buses often stop in the intersection because the bus pulls over in front of them to pick up or drop off passengers at the bench.

A bus stop that was eliminated as a conciliatory gesture toward neighbors protesting a Wal-Mart plan to move into the Orange Mall will soon be restored. The stop at Heim Avenue and Canal Street was one of two closed last year to reduce traffic, which was one of the primary concerns of neighbors against Wal-Mart.

After protests by senior citizens, the City Council has voted to restore three bus stops that were recently canceled. The three stops at the intersection of Glassell Street and Almond Avenue were discontinued the first week of December after the Orange County Transportation Authority rerouted bus lines to facilitate access to the city's new commuter rail facility, which opened Dec. 6.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has stepped up its posting of route maps and schedules at its bus stops and is exploring ways to equip all 18,000 stops throughout Los Angeles County with better information displays, officials said Thursday. The MTA initiated the measures after The Times reported in January that only 2.7% of its bus stops displayed route maps or schedule information, while 22% of those in San Francisco and more than 85% of those in New York City do.

Since iconoclastic actor-writer-producer-director-artist Dennis Hopper died in May after a long battle with prostate cancer, screenings of his 1969 masterwork, "Easy Rider," have been popping up around town. However, the Silent Movie Theatre is the first to schedule a tribute screening series to Hopper. "Dennis Hopper: Wasn't Born to Follow," kicks off Friday evening with "Easy Rider," which marked his directorial debut, and the 1971 documentary "The American Dreamer," which chronicles his post-"Easy Rider" success and the making of his next film, the ill-fated "The Last Movie."

A disgruntled bus driver stopped his vehicle and allegedly sprayed gunfire Tuesday on a construction crew he was transporting to a work site south of Cairo, killing six laborers and wounding 16, security officials said. A security official told the state-run Middle East News Agency that Mahmoud Taha Swellem was driving 22 people, including a finance manager and a department head, to a site near Giza when he suddenly took out an automatic weapon and opened fire. Swellem, who had worked for the company for 20 years, was arrested at the scene.

The perplexing public-service announcements began turning up two weeks ago, splashed across bus-stop advertisements in America's 15 biggest cities, including Los Angeles. "Bus bench for humans only," the ads' banner copy proclaims, accompanied by a rough rendering of an outer space alien that has been crossed out, "Ghostbusters" style, with a strike-through circle. "Beware! Non-human secretions may corrode metal!"

A former Border Patrol officer said Thursday that constant demands to meet monthly arrest quotas led agents in the Inland Empire to cruise streets, bus stops and even medical clinics looking for illegal immigrants.

Police arrested a man who they say fled after crashing his pickup truck into a bus stop, injuring two teenage girls, one severely. Police said 35-year-old Michael Tweedie of Rohnert Park was being held on suspicion of hit and run causing serious injury and driving under the influence in the Saturday crash. The girls were waiting at a bus stop with their father when the accident occurred. The father, Asefredo Pineda, said the truck hit a van before coming at them.

Investigators were searching for a gunman who shot and killed a man Saturday at a bus stop. The shooting occurred about 2 a.m. in the 2100 block of North Long Beach Boulevard, near East Pine Street, said Deputy Bill Brauberger of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Investigators said the assailant walked up to the man and began arguing with him. During the argument, the assailant pulled a gun and fired several shots at the man's chest. The victim was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

As a result of budget cuts, parents with children in Irvine schools will see fewer bus stops next school year and a $30 yearly increase in transportation fees. The trustees of the Irvine Unified School District voted late Tuesday to eliminate more stops and to increase the yearly bus fee to $180. The changes will save the district about $243,000 a year. The board voted to eliminate 14 bus stops in addition to the 23 it cut June 9.

More than 125 bus stops in northern San Diego County will be illuminated by solar-powered lights as a cost-effective alternative to running electrical wires to remote areas. Pressing a button on the street lamp turns on the light for 10-minute intervals during the nighttime only. Each street lamp costs $1,500 and is part of a bus stop improvement program financed by a $350,000 county grant and a $600,000 rural transit improvement grant from the California Department of Transportation.

A 14-year-old boy was killed and four other teenagers were injured Monday when a van jumped a curb and slammed into a bus shelter in South Gate. The crash occurred on Firestone Boulevard at Otis Street about 3:30 p.m., just after classes let out for the day at South Gate Middle School, across the street from the crowded bus stop, South Gate police said.

A 16-year-old boy was killed in a drive-by shooting in Hyde Park, authorities said Friday. The Los Angeles boy was gunned down while waiting at a bus stop in the 2100 block of West Florence Avenue about 10:15 p.m. Thursday, said police spokesman Richard French. A light-colored vehicle with several occupants drove by and stopped next to the victim, French said. A black male occupant drew a handgun and fired multiple shots at him before the vehicle fled east on Florence, he said. The victim collapsed on the sidewalk and was taken to a hospital, but was declared dead upon arrival.