CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
October 10, 2013 | By Maura Dolan
SAN FRANCISCO -- Negotiations to avert another Bay Area Rapid Transit strike this year continued Thursday as a court-imposed 60-day cooling-off period was close to ending. BART warned riders to be prepared for a shutdown Friday and hired buses to shuttle a small fraction of commuters in and out of San Francisco in the event of a strike. A cooling-off period requested by Gov. Jerry Brown and approved by a judge will expire at 11:59 p.m. Thursday. A spokesman for the unions said both sides had been close to an agreement Wednesday night when management suddenly withdrew an offer.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
July 3, 2013 | By Maria L. La Ganga and Lee Romney
SAN FRANCISCO -- Negotiations between Bay Area Rapid Transit management and two striking unions lasted through the night failed to produce an agreement, BART officials said Wednesday morning. The two sides met until 3 a.m. Wednesday and will resume talks at 1 p.m., said BART spokesman Jim Allison. The announcement that the strike is continuing into its third day comes a day after California's controller, insurance commissioner and lieutenant governor wrote to the parties involved urging that talks resume because of the effects on the busy region, which, they noted, is “served by the fifth-busiest transit system in America, with nearly 400,000 daily riders.” The Bay Area Council on Tuesday released an estimate of the environmental cost of the transit strike, calculating that increased traffic congestion is generating almost 16 million pounds of carbon and using up almost 800,000 gallons of gas every day at a cost of almost $3.3 million.
OPINION
June 14, 2013
Re "Growing pains," June 10 Transit-oriented development is one thing when you have a clean slate to work on; it is another when you are inserting a light-rail line into an existing (and thriving) community like West Los Angeles. You can't just plop a huge development like the proposed 638-unit Casden West L.A. next to the rail station, call it transit-oriented development and ignore the surrounding conditions. Casden uses its adjacency to a future Expo Line station as an excuse to overbuild.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 7, 2012 | By Ari Bloomekatz, Los Angeles Times
With a county transit tax measure he backed teetering between failure and approval, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Wednesday he will go "back to the toolbox" if necessary to accelerate several projects, including a subway to the Westside. The sales tax extension proposal, Measure J, came up just short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass, with 100% of precincts reporting. The vote tally Wednesday was 1,367,357 votes or 64.72% in support and 35.28% against, according to the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
June 28, 2012 | By Richard Simon and Ari Bloomekatz, Los Angeles Times
As he seeks to build a legacy as a big-project transportation mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa on Thursday made gains at home and in Washington in his efforts to speed expansion of the Los Angeles region's transit system. Congress is expected as early as Friday to approve a long-awaited transportation bill that includes a measure sought by Villaraigosa during at least two years of lobbying federal officials. The bill would expand a federal loan program that could provide the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority with at least $350 million over the next two years and $3.3 billion more in the future for transit projects.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
June 11, 2012 | By Gale Holland, Los Angeles Times
Scene : The corner of Hollywood & Vine. Clumps of young women tumble out of the Metro Red Line subway station, all sequins and sparkle, their skirts as short as their heels are high. Someone tweets that Jamie Foxx is upstairs at Drai's glassed-in nightclub. A girl crouches at Latin pop singer Shakira's sidewalk star waiting for her friend to snap a picture. "See, the night is just getting started," Javier Romero says as the escalator drops us into the subway station, beneath a ceiling preposterously lined with faux film reels and supported by pillars shaped like palm trees.