Metro Orange Line

Los Angeles commuters next week will be greeted with a bus so long, it's technically illegal. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is set to unveil a 65-foot-long bus -- longer than four Toyota Priuses parked end to end -- to debut on its Orange Line busway. It is five feet longer than the longest bus allowed by California law, so the MTA had to seek an exemption from Caltrans to operate the prototype.

In response to noise complaints along the Orange Line busway, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority could soon start installing double-pane windows along the San Fernando Valley route, officials said. Of 41 complaints the MTA has received since the 14-mile busway opened in October, reasonable noise levels were exceeded in nine cases, Marc Littman, a spokesman for the agency, said last week.

The little transit line that could is about to get bigger. The Orange Line, the busway between North Hollywood and Woodland Hills that has broken ridership projections since it opened last fall, will be extended six miles to Chatsworth under a plan approved Thursday by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board. The Orange Line carries about 20,000 people a day -- three times more than transit officials expected.

A crowded Orange Line bus collided with a delivery truck in the east San Fernando Valley on Monday afternoon, leaving one person seriously hurt and 16 others apparently with minor injuries, authorities said. The accident occurred as local officials were preparing for today's ceremony to mark the one-year anniversary of the heavily used, 14-mile Orange Line service.

Barely a year after it opened, the Orange Line busway in the San Fernando Valley is crumbling and transit officials are locked in a battle with the contractor over who is at fault. The busway -- supposedly built to last 20 years -- began cracking even before the first bus rumbled down the Chandler Boulevard right-of-way in October 2005, according to a study released Thursday. The problem has only worsened.

When Jose Martin signed a lease with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to place his masonry business in Canoga Park, he was informed that he might have to move if the agency ever decided to develop the land on Canoga Avenue. "We were told it could happen someday in the distant future, with a big question mark," said Martin, whose MasonryClub sells a variety of natural stone products, boulders and cobble.

Every weekday morning, a few minutes before 8, Los Angeles City Councilman Dennis Zine steers his Ford Crown Victoria onto the 101 Freeway in Woodland Hills. From there, it's about 25 miles to City Hall -- or about 60 to 90 minutes. The only thing that makes the stop-and-start drive tolerable for Zine is passing the time by talking on his cellphone. "The 101 is making me crazy," he said. Beginning this fall, Zine will have an alternative.

The eastern terminus of the soon-to-open $350-million Metro Orange Line busway in the San Fernando Valley is just across the street from its most important transfer point, to the Red Line subway. But for years, government agencies argued over how to provide commuters with a safe and easy way to transfer between systems.

With its expansive geography and wide boulevards laid out in neat grids, the San Fernando Valley has always been an unapologetic symbol of California's car culture. So perhaps it's fitting that the first mass transit line entirely within the Valley will come not in the form of a subway or light rail but on rubber wheels.

THERE are other rewards for using mass transit besides saving gas. Those who take advantage of the new 14-mile, $350-million Metro Orange Line -- the first mass-transit line entirely within the San Fernando Valley -- will find art along the way. The work of 15 California artists will be incorporated into 12 of the 13 stations along the bus-only line extending between North Hollywood and Woodland Hills (it opens Saturday).