Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority

The sun had not yet risen when the first commuter train in nearly half a century set off from downtown to East Los Angeles, extending a new line of public transportation to some of the city's most underserved neighborhoods. At 3:40 a.m. Sunday the first passengers were train enthusiasts, students and workers for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which built the six-mile Gold Line extension. A few hours later, the neighborhood showed up. More than 50,000 people were estimated to have taken part in a festive day of celebration and free rides.

In a sprawling plant on the eastern edge of Carson, the light-rail passenger cars of Los Angeles' future are being welded, molded and riveted into shape. The cars--the first such vehicles made in the United States in 50 years, their builders say--will be faster and sleeker than the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's existing light-rail cars. They will be quieter and more automated. And they will be called L.A. Standard Cars.

Three weeks before a giant subway digging machine got stuck under the Santa Monica Mountains last month, parts of the tunnel were already caving in and shrinking seriously enough to alarm inspectors and slow excavation to a crawl, according to Metro Rail records obtained by The Times.

A Metro Rail subway builder will delay the resumption of tunneling through the Santa Monica Mountains for at least another week because it must replace 22 more support arches weakened by settling ground, the county's transit agency said Thursday. The postponement is the third since the contractor's digging machine became trapped in the mountains over the Fourth of July holiday.

The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to pay a long-overdue $200 million to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for subway construction, adding provisions meant to ensure that the east-west line across the San Fernando Valley follows the favored Burbank-Chandler route. That route, chosen after years of dispute, is contested by those who favor a line down the median strip of the Ventura Freeway.

Los Angeles transit officials pulled 120 natural-gas-powered buses off the streets after a gas tank ruptured in one of the vehicles last week, increasing delays for some riders Monday. Replacements were found for all but 38 of the vehicles as Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials scrambled to keep disruptions to a minimum. The low-polluting buses represent about 6% of the MTA fleet.

Cal State Northridge neighbors, at a meeting earlier this week, blasted a planned campus transit center that would serve five city bus lines. The $1.3-million center, one of six proposed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to streamline the San Fernando Valley's bus system, would be a place where multiple buses converge to allow easier transfers between lines.

An off-duty sergeant with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was killed early Wednesday in an apparent drive-by shooting in Echo Park, police said. Officials say Sgt. Jose Garcia is the first Los Angeles transit police officer to be shot to death. Garcia, 32, graduated this summer from Cal State L.A. with a bachelor's degree in criminal justice, his wife said. "We were just closing escrow on our first house today," Noritza Garcia said in a phone interview.

A state audit released Wednesday concludes that Los Angeles County's long-range plan for delivering a new array of bus and rail lines appears "flawed" and that it may be necessary for transit officials to again scale back their vision of how to relieve gridlock in the 21st century. The report concluded that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's $72-billion, 20-year blueprint may contain a $1.

With evident relief, a county transit official announced Thursday that a giant subway tunnel digging machine that had become stuck deep in a tricky section of Santa Monica Mountains shale since July 4 has finally been freed.