Public Transportation

This is a nation addicted to speed. And to ride Japan's super Shinkansen, or bullet train, is to zip into the future at speeds reaching 186 miles per hour. From Nagoya to Tokyo, the scenery whizzes past in a dizzying blur as the sleek engine with its bullet-like nose floats the cars along elevated tracks -- without the clickety-clack of the lumbering U.S. trains that make you feel as though you're chugging along like cattle to market.

It's hard to appreciate how truly pitiful our public transportation system is until you spend some time with a system that works. Over the course of two weeks in Japan, I rode just about every form of public transit imaginable -- bullet trains, express trains, commuter trains, subways, street cars, monorails and buses. Nearly every ride was smooth, on schedule and affordable.

According to a timetable set by transportation officials overseeing Measure R, one of the most significant projects to speed travel on Los Angeles' Westside -- the "Subway to the Sea" -- is set to go very, very slowly. The proposed rail line doesn't figure to pass engineering and environmental muster until 2013, just in time to see its biggest booster, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, leave office if elected to a second term.

A potential corridor for passenger trains between Las Vegas and the Los Angeles area has become part of a federal initiative to modernize the nation's rail networks and develop high-speed service between cities. Thursday's announcement, however, might doom a 30-year-old proposal to build a high-tech magnetic levitation, or "maglev," train from Anaheim to Las Vegas if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) gets his way.

The head of the Boston-area transit authority said Saturday that he would ban all train and bus operators from even carrying cellphones on board after a trolley driver told police that he was texting his girlfriend before a collision Friday. About 50 people were hurt in the underground crash in downtown Boston, though none of the injuries was life-threatening.

Orange County transit officials voted Monday to eliminate predawn bus service at the end of the year, apparently signaling an end to a program designed to help graveyard shift and low-wage workers get home. The change is part of a general budget-cutting move that will result in reduced bus service throughout the county. The Orange County Transportation Authority is facing severe budget problems and needs to make up for a $33-million shortfall in the coming year's budget, officials said.

Public support for Measure R, the new Los Angeles County sales tax for highway and transit improvements passed by voters in November, remains hearty despite the recession, but there are concerns that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is not building projects fast enough, a new MTA poll shows. The survey of 605 registered county voters found that 68% generally favor Measure R, which is expected to provide up to $40 billion during the next 30 years for highway and transit projects.

As workers finished exploratory drilling Thursday for the planned Westside subway extension, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other elected officials said they want to speed up construction of the $4.1-billion transit project, which has been scheduled for completion in 2036. An outspoken advocate for the so-called Subway to the Sea, the mayor has long been frustrated by the project's timetable, and that was evident again when he and other officials gathered for a news conference in a UCLA parking lot. There, final soil samples had been drawn for a route that would follow Wilshire Boulevard from downtown Los Angeles to Westwood.

It was to be a little aesthetic touch added to the Eastside extension of the Gold Line as it neared completion. But no one imagined what gremlins would be unleashed when workers added a layer of paint to the concrete at "cross-over" points where the light-rail trains could switch tracks. The coloring agent was made of iron oxide. And at intersections like 1st and Clarence streets in Boyle Heights it caused the painted concrete to conduct an electrical circuit that basically told a lie. "It was sending out a false signal that the train was there," said Dennis Mori, the Gold Line Eastside extension's project manager.

Citing poor on-time performance, overcrowding and a shortage of service, several thousand transit riders gave low marks to the bus system run by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, according to a survey released Friday. "The MTA got a D for the overall quality of its bus service," said Esperanza Martinez, an organizer for the Bus Riders Union, an advocacy group that conducted the survey. "People are paying way too much and waiting way too long for a bus that will likely pass them by."