The mind reels that the MTA Board is actually caught up in the issue of what color to give rail lines and other fixed guideway projects. As I blurted to Lisa Mascaro of the Daily News ("MTA Trying Purple Prose," March 13) "We want good service. We don't want public relations". And I'll leave it at that. At least MTA has finally placed decent maps at the Patsaouras Transit Plaza to guide users looking for nearby bus stops. Of course this is an idea I first championed over 5 years ago when I was a Passenger Advisor. But at least it finally got done, even if belatedly.

Then we have this proposal to close the Orange Line the end of October to have a half-marathon run along it one Sunday morning. We submitted a letter (posted on the front page of our website) noting all the reasons why this was a bad idea. And thankfully the MTA Board has asked for further information. Can we hope sanity will reign and this idea is shelved? Stay tuned..

Meanwhile, another reason for consternation is Senate Bill 1507, introduced by Senator Bob Margett. This piece of legislation would take one of the citizen seats on the MTA Board held by Los Angeles and give it instead to the smaller cities (which currently have 4 seats on the Board). Our letter to the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee notes our opposition in rather blunt terms: "[SB 1507 is] a meaningless shuffling of the deck chairs that in no way addresses core issues of governance that plague the MTA Board. Instead this bill panders to the worse sort of parochialism fed by myopic anxieties against the city of Los Angeles held by certain interests." Hopefully in a month or so I'll be able to announce this misguided effort has been consigned to oblivion, where it belongs.

In one of the odder recent bits of transportation news a man whose rare Ferrari was destroyed in a high speed crash told officers at the scene he was police commissioner of the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority Police's anti-terrorism division. San Gabriel Valley Transportation Authority? I had never even heard of this entity, and it is my informal hobby to track obscure entities. Thanks to the diligence of some Los Angeles Times reporters ("Another Turn in Ferrari Saga", March 8) it was soon revealed the Authority is a tiny non-profit run by Yosef Maiwandi out of an auto repair shop Maiwandi owns in Monrovia. It owns a few buses and provides rides to disabled people and senior citizens in Monrovia and Sierra Madre. Amazingly the article quotes Maiwandi that he formed the Authority's Police Department "... in part because he has long been interested in police work. He also found that having a police department allowed him to do background checks on potential volunteers more quickly and seek federal money for security on the buses." Federal money? If you look at the Authority's website (http://sgvta.org/) it lists Committees, agendas and includes grandiloquent phrases such as "local, countywide and region wide roles of SGVTA must be balanced among the interests of individual jurisdictions, the county, and the region as a whole." As I asked on our member board, is somebody trying to build an empire out of an obscure paratransit provider? Weird!

After mis-handling by the Community Redevelopment Agency during the past few years MTA is taking the lead on rehabilitating the old Red Car depot in North Hollywood (adjacent to the Orange Line station). Sadly the delay means the cost has skyrocketed. In fact Ty Schuiling of the San Bernardino Associated Governments at a recent SCAG meeting I attended stated factors are causing construction costs to go through the roof and will have a great impact on our ability to build large-scale projects. Be prepared for some sticker shock...

I enjoyed the presentation on Access Services, Inc. presented at the March 22 MTA Citizens' Advisory Council meeting by Mark Maloney of MTA and Jess Sagovia of ASI. I am awaiting responses to some questions I submitted. Meanwhile one tidbit that puzzles me is that ASI may soon cut its night owl fares to match MTA's 75 cents fare that it charges at night. But that is done as part of the consent decree and may well expire in October. Hopefully ASI will endorse flexibility with the language in their Option 3 that specifies they charge "twice the lowest fare of comparable fixed route service available at that time". Otherwise they may have to revisit the issue in just a few months.

Flabbergasted is how I reacted to the news that San Francisco is actually studying the possibility of implementing congestion pricing ("Move to charge toll for driving in core of downtown area" San Francisco Chronicle March 28) much like they have in London, which involves charging a flat fee to drive downtown during business hours. London's program has reduced congestion and helped fund mass transit. I guess traffic is really getting bad in the Bay Area if they are contemplating biting this bullet for relief!

While perusing the Board agenda for MARTA, the Mountain Area Regional Transit Authority which provides service in Big Bear, Crestline, Lake Arrowhead, etc. I found this fascinating entry in the report of operating activities: 02/23/06 - Driver of #M47 forgot to remove the fuel nozzle from the bus before pulling away from the pump at the Crestline County Fuel yard. No damage to the bus; however, the fuel nozzle was damaged. The county has repaired it and all reports have been filed.

The San Gabriel Valley Tribune with its March 8 editorial "Don't divert Gold Line funds" acts as if a pot of money for the Foothill extension is sitting in some bank account and must be protected from evil Los Angeles interests that covet funds for the Red Line extension along Wilshire. Our friends in the San Gabriel Valley seem utterly in denial about the hard facts of transportation funding, and in fact seem to respond to every setback for their vanity project with howls. I suspect they want to set up the Wilshire project as the scapegoat when the Foothill project falls flat on its face when confronted with Federal Transit Administration cost/benefit criteria for funding.

Meanwhile we hope to begin work on organizing a series of workshops in the Wilshire corridor, in partnership with key stakeholders, that will conduct preliminary outreach on the subway project. Don't forget, the current transportation funding bill expires in 2010 so we need to start working now to build community consensus.

I'll conclude with my amazement that the review of MTA's Transit Security arrangements continue apace (agenda item #8, March 6 MTA Executive Management and Audit Committee meeting). And the staff report appears fairly honest despite all the politics surrounding this issue. But to paraphrase James Cragin, a former Gardena city councilmember who was on the MTA Board when the original security partnership was adopted, I am fairly sure the chances of MTA reconstituting its own Police Dept. are remote at best. Oh, well.