Crash between bus, tractor-trailer on Highway 395 injures seven

This happened yesterday in the Victor Valley area of San Bernardino County. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bus that mangled before. Story from the Victorville Daily Press

 

 

A Victor Valley Transit Authority Bus and a tractor-trailer were involved in a traffic collision at the intersection of Highway 395 and Bartlett Avenue in Adelanto on Wednesday afternoon. The cause is under investigation. David Pardo, Daily Press

Paola Baker, Daily Press
Posted Jul. 13, 2016 at 2:35 PM

Updated Jul 13, 2016 at 5:25 PM

ADELANTO — A collision involving a transit bus and a tractor-trailer on Highway 395 left seven people injured Wednesday afternoon, authorities said.

The crash was first reported just after 1:30 p.m. at the intersection of Highway 395 and Bartlett Avenue and involved a Victor Valley Transit bus and a Kenworth tractor-trailer, authorities said. San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department personnel on scene said the bus was headed west on Bartlett Avenue while the tractor-trailer was headed north on Highway 395 when the collision occurred, but further details were not available.

A total of seven people on the bus, including the driver, were reported to be injured. Six were taken to local hospitals and firefighters had to use the “Jaws of Life” to extricate the bus driver, San Bernardino County Fire Department personnel said. She was then transported to a trauma center, but the severity of her injuries was not known.

Victor Valley Station Cpl. Robbie DeBois said it appeared that the driver of the tractor-trailer did not suffer any injuries.

County Fire Capt. Dan Nelson said five County Fire units responded. The northbound lanes of Highway 395 were initially shut down between Bartlett Avenue and Air Expressway while southbound traffic was diverted to Bartlett Avenue.

Caltrans said on its official Twitter account just before 3:30 p.m. that both northbound and southbound lanes of Highway 395 between Chamberlaine Way and Air Expressway were closed. It was not known when the lanes would reopen.

The cause of the crash remains unknown, DeBois said, and Victor Valley Sheriff’s Station deputies are investigating.

Paola Baker may be reached at 760-955-5332 or PBaker@VVDailyPress.com. Follow her on Twitter at @DP_PaolaBaker.

Where is the Metro Service?

I’ve said it before and I will keep saying it until it happens, THE PEOPLE WHO RUN TRANSIT SYSTEMS SHOULD HAVE TO USE THOSE SYSTEMS ON A DAILY BASIS!!! If they had to rely on the bus, subway, light-rail, train, etc to get to work on time or run an errand that should be simple but takes an hour, I honestly believe public transit could run so much smoother and more efficiently.

These people are so detached from who their customer base actually is. I don;t understand why everything stops running so early on Sundays, do they really think the poor only work M-F? No! We’re the ones who work two jobs and usually go straight from one to the next. We also work 7 days a week. I usually end up having to walk two miles on Sundays after woke because my connection stops running at 7pm. That’s insane!

While I do think expanding lines into all areas is important (especially the beach, get people in and out more efficiently), ignoring the people who actually NEED transit is pure BS. It’s just like how in my city we don’t have sidewalks and streetlights on a main fucking road, city leaders don’t see us as deserving these basic safety services because we’re poor, which means we don’t equal tax revenue.

From the Los Angeles Times, posted June 21, 2016

Opinion

Metro’s transit plan gives short shrift to L.A. County’s working-class cities. A state bill can fix that

Passengers ride the Metro Gold Line train from APU/Citrus station to Los Angeles Union station on March 5. (Los Angeles Times)

Karina Macias

Imagine there are several Los Angeles County cities that make up one of the densest urban areas in the country, where much of the young, transit-dependent, ethnically mixed population commutes daily to jobs in other parts of the county. This would be one of the first areas to get a new rail line to the regionwide transit hub at L.A. Union Station, right?

Not if it’s the board of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authoritycalling the shots.

This sums up the situation for residents of the Gateway Cities of southeast L.A. County, a collection of dense (my city, Huntington Park, has about 60,000 people packed into three square miles), mostly working-class communities conspicuously absent from Metro’s plans to build out its rail system over the coming decades. In fact, Metro’s board recently delayed its projected completion date of the long-sought Eco-Rapid light-rail line 20 years to 2047. This line would span from Artesia to Bob Hope Airport and connect the points in between to L.A. Union Station; by one estimate, Eco Rapid would be the second-most-traveled line in Metro’s network.

Meanwhile, Metro is spending billions of dollars chasing so-called choice riders in West L.A. and the San Gabriel Valley, opening the Expo Line to Santa Monica, the Gold Line to Azusa and slowly (and expensively) tunneling under Wilshire Boulevard to extend the Purple Line subway. Although it’s important to entice more drivers out their cars and into trains or buses, these areas can’t be described as economically transit dependent — and they’re getting rail decades before communities that are, including Huntington Park, Cudahy, Bell, Bell Gardens and other cities.

Metro’s plan for L.A. transit would be transformative… with one small fix

This is why those of us pushing to restructure Metro’s leadership believe that the agency’s governing board needs to be balanced with more voices.

In their June 1 op-ed article, Zev Yaroslavsky and Richard Katz accuse state Sen. Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia), who has written a bill to expand Metro’s board, as “meddling” in the agency, which they describe as “on a roll.” Those of us who live in the ill-served Gateway Cities don’t feel Metro is on much of a roll; Yaroslavsky’s and Katz’s insistence otherwise shows just how important it is for the agency’s board to gain new perspectives.

The Metro board currently has 13 voting members. Five are L.A. County supervisors and four are members of the Los Angeles City Council. The remaining four voting members directly represent the residents of the 87 cities in Los Angeles County that account for 51% of the population. This imbalance is reflected in Metro’s decision-making and priority-setting, such as its two-decade delay of the Eco-Rapid line. Mendoza’s bill (SB 1472) would, among other things, add five more members to the Metro board from those 87 cities. This is not a local issue, and it’s certainly not a power play, but rather an update to the original state legislation that created Metro in 1992 that will provide better representation for those who live in smaller, under-served cities.

For residents of the Gateway Cities, representation on Metro’s board and better transit service is about more than just fairness and social and environmental justice; it matters to our everyday lives. As a young woman growing up in Huntington Park, I thought of owning a vehicle as a luxury; this is still the case for many families in the Gateway Cities. I didn’t own my first car until I graduated from college in 2010, so bus and rail were the only transportation options available to me throughout my middle school, high school and college days. Yes, Los Angeles County has “progressed a long way toward developing a regional transit system,” as Yaroslavsky and Katz believe. However, that progress is still an elusive concept in my community.

The lack of progress isn’t for a lack of effort on the part of the communities in southeast L.A. County and elsewhere. These communities have worked tirelessly to make projects such as Eco-Rapid a reality, and yet they barely register on Metro’s radar. Sen. Mendoza’s bill to bring more voices onto Metro’s board will go a long way toward changing that and bringing rail transit to the residents of Los Angeles County who need it most.

Smells like Omnitrans

Dude in front of me on the bus. First off, stop using the seat as an arm rest, there is not enough space in between the seats. Second, take a shower and put on some deodorant. You smell like last nights alcohol and a lot of bad decisions. The bus is a public space, we’ve all gotta deal with each other, let’s at least try to make it tolerable

LA-area light rail now reaches the sea

Just in time for summer I can take the Metrolink to LA then the Expo Line all the way to the beach! This is really exciting, it gets way too hot out here and it will be nice to get away for a day!

(From the Associated Press)

LA-area light rail now reaches the sea

By Andrew Dalton

The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — Commuter light rail extended across metropolitan Los Angeles to the Pacific on Friday for the first time since the 1950s.

The opening of the 6.6mile final leg of the Expo Line connected seaside Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles and Metro lines stretching as far inland as suburban Azusa, some 40 miles from the coast.

The milestone fulfills a decades-long dream of public officials and transit fans, and its symbolic value is undeniable. Its true test, however, will be whether it can shake up the commuting status quo in sprawling and automotive LA.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority says the ride from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica will take 48 minutes. That may hardly sound speedy for a 15-mile trip, but the nearly constant congestion of Interstate 10, the usual car route for the trip, can often take just as long or longer.

An Expo Line train burst through a banner before the route opened to crowds of riders at noon.

“From the skyline of downtown to the shoreline of the Pacific, this Expo line connects this city for the first time in 63 years,” said Los Angles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Frequent Metro rail passenger Anwar Marcus said his last job was in Santa Monica, and to get there from the east side of Los Angeles he would take the Expo Line to its previous terminus in Culver City then ride his bike four miles to work.

Even traveling that way, he said that “during rush hour I would get home the same time on the train as if I drove.”

Marcus said the newly extend line would be “super convenient” for people in his circumstances, and that it’s likely to make some inroads in getting drivers out of their cars, but it’s also likely that it won’t be enough.

“It’s a driver’s city,” Marcus said as he sat riding a Metro Gold Line train into downtown’s Union Station on Tuesday. “I feel like it will always be that until they get the public transit system to where it’s more extensive, which is going to take some years.”

In some ways, the region is getting there. The Gold Line just opened an 11.5mile eastward extension to Azusa in March that means the line runs more than 30 miles into the northeastern suburbs.

If all the approved projects are completed by 2020 the Los Angeles County light-rail-andsubway system will be longer than Washington, D.C.’s Metro system.

For the first time since the 1950s, a Southern California light rail line extends to the Pacific Ocean. With the opening of the 6.6-mile extension of the Expo Line on Friday, riders can now take Metro rail from the far-inland suburb of Azusa some 40 miles to the sands of Santa Monica. NICK UT, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Bicycle Hubitat

Shop gears up to help cyclists fix own bikes

The Transit Center has the newest branch of the area’s Biking Alliance.

By RYAN HAGEN, Press Enterprise/ SB Sun

 A low-cost bicycle repair shop that shows people how to fix the problem themselves the next time it occurs opened May 9 at the San Bernardino Transit Center.  

Called Bicycle Hubitat, the workshop uses largely donated parts and is run by volunteers, said Mark Friis, as he waited for the day’s first customer.  

Friis is executive director of the Inland Empire Biking Alliance, a nonprofit organization that aims to make biking and walking safer and more accessible, and which runs the service along with Omnitrans and the nonprofit group San Bernardino Generation Now.  

“We supply the tools and show them how to do it themselves,” Friis said. “It’s like the saying: ‘Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, you feed him forever.’ ”  

The day’s first customer was Levi King, 46, of San Bernardino.  

Friis walked him through tightening his brakes and fixing his kickstand.  

“I really appreciate it,” King said, saying he had needed to fix the problem for a while. “I didn’t have the money to do it.”  

The service was free Monday. Going forward, the cost will vary by repair but be low cost, Friis said.  

The “Bike Hubitat” expands on other services the Biking Alliance offers in Loma Linda, Rancho Cucamonga and its flagship, the Redlands Bike BBQ, which started in 2010 and offers bike repair lessons Tuesday through Thursday and Saturday.  

“Our clientele generally is students – college and high school – and homeless people,” Friis said.  

It also will help the large number of Omnitrans riders who use bicycles, said Omnitrans spokeswoman Nicole Ramos.  

“Some of them are dependent on their bikes for transportation, so lowcost, expert advice right here (at the transit center) where they already are should be a huge help,” Ramos said.  

Ramos also asks people to take a selfie with their bike and share it on Twitter or Instagram with the tag #bikehubitatSB to be eligible for prizes.  

The San Bernardino Transit Center location, at 599 W. Rialto Ave., will be open from 3 to 6 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday.   

PHOTOS: JOHN VALENZUELA, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER   Mark Friis, executive director of The Inland Empire Biking Alliance, and program drector Nina Mohammed repair a bike during Bicycle Hubitat’s workshop at the San Bernardino Transit Center in San Bernardino on Monday.

Friis looks through his tools. He says clients of the shop are typically high school and college students, though a large number of Omnitrans riders also use bikes.

http://www.pe.com/articles/friis-803202-san-bernardino.html

I really need to get my bike fixed before next week! It needs a good tune-up and Bike to Work Week seems like a good time to get that taken care of!

Kudos to Metrolink! I still think they need wifi and to work with other public transit groups to make fares more affordable, but they have done a lot to get bicyclists on board in the last few years. So for this one I will say “Goodonya!”

Metrolink offering free rides during Bike to Work Week

By Steve Scauzillo, San Gabriel Valley Tribune

POSTED: 05/11/16, 11:58 AM PDT | UPDATED: 22 SECS AGO

0 COMMENTS

Metrolink is offering anyone with a bike a free ride during Bike to Work Week, May 16 – May 20.

Train riders must board with a bicycle and accompany their bike during the entire trip.

The promotion includes Bike to Work Day, Thursday, May 18.

May is National Bike Month, established in 1956 by the League of American Bicyclists.

Metrolink has transported 1 million bicyclists since the multi-county agency introduced its bike cars in July 2011, according to the agency. A bike car is usually on the lower level of a train and is equipped with multiple stalls designed to hold three bikes in each stall. A bike train can hold 18 bikes. A bike car has a decal on the side of the train or a train wrap.

Metrolink operates seven routes of commuter rail service in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. For more information, go to http://www.metrolinktrains.com.

Next year, you can take train to Coachella, Stagecoach festivals

From the Press-Enterprise:

This is really exciting. I still can’t believe there isn’t an Amtrak line to Palm Springs, but if there are enough people who use this for Coachella and Stagecoach, then maybe Amtrak will get serious and build a regular line for the desert cities. This is a growing region and Palm Springs is becoming more popular with younger adults for weekend get-aways.

Maybe those famous words from Field of Dreams will ring true again, “if you build it they will come.”

CHOO-CHELLA: Next year, you can take train to Coachella, Stagecoach festivals

Funds have been approved to underwrite LA-to-Indio ‘demonstration trains’ for both events in 2017 and 2018.

Transit and air quality officials say there will be special train service next year and in 2018 for both the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and the Stagecoach Country Music Festival to help reduce air pollution from the massive traffic both events bring to the desert. RODRIGO PENA, CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

By RICHARD K. De ATLEY / STAFF WRITER

Published: May 2, 2016

Updated: May 3, 2016 7:07 a.m.

Two of the desert’s most popular, and traffic-jamming, events will get train service for at least the next two years with special event runs from Los Angeles to Indio for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and the Stagecoach Country Music Festival, transportation officials said Monday, May 2.

Don’t sign up yet. Still in the works are ticket prices, the round-trip schedules, and possible stops along the way. Amtrak trains are planned for the 2017 and 2018 versions of the festivals, which are a week apart at the Empire Polo Club in Indio.

A festival train as a way to reduce traffic air pollution has been in discussion during previous years, said Riverside County Traffic Commission Deputy Executive Director John Standiford.

Now there’s money to fund it. The multi-agency member Mobile Source Air Pollution Reduction Committee has approved $1.2 million to run demonstration trains both years, said Greg Pettis, who is chair of the committee.

Pettis, who is also mayor pro tem of Cathedral City and represents the Coachella Valley on the RCTC, said in an email that the funds will subsidize ticket sales to make the trains possible.

Transportation and air quality officials have linked before for other special-run trains to venues that draw huge crowds and put lots of cars on the highways, such as Dodger and Angel games, the Orange County Fair and Fontana Speedway races.

The just-ended version of the Coachella Festival drew 198,000 people over two three-day weekends, and the Stagecoach Festival drew 75,000 for its single weekend.

For the two festivals “the trains will run from L.A. Union Station to Indio, where folks will either be bused directly to the site or go via taxi or other means to their respective hotels,” Pettis said in an email.

Planners are currently looking at outbound from Los Angeles on Friday and return trains at the end of the weekend’s performances, Sunday night or Monday morning.

“Price has yet to be determined but we want it to be cost effective vs driving, traffic, and time considerations,” Pettis said. He said a three-car train can carry “hundreds” of passengers, but more cars could be arranged, depending on ticket sales.

There is no passenger train platform in Indio, and the Riverside County Traffic Commission will build a temporary one to handle the three weekends of passengers Standiford said. The cost is still under review.

Festival promoter Goldenvoice, the RCTC and others involved will begin discussions in a few weeks to lay out details.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Standiford said. “I know it’s a year away, but it will be very busy between now and then.”

Metro’s New Gold Line Extension Is Bringing Thousands Of New Riders To Public Transit

From LAist.com

BY MATT TINOCO IN NEWS ON APR 12, 2016 11:50 AM

Pretty. (Photo by Metro via Facebook)

Metro’s new Gold Line Foothill Extension is drawing a higher than expected number of passengers, according to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. Even more importantly, the vast majority of the Foothill Extension’s riders are new users of the Metro system, showing that if you build it, they most certainly will come.

Each week, about 32,000 people board the Gold Line from Foothill Extension stations. A four-week Metro survey of new riders revealed that over 70 percent of the riders were new to transit altogether. Two-thirds of riders said they had traded a commute on the 210 freeway for the ride on the rails.

Daily ridership on the Foothill Extension right now is sitting somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000. According to Curbed LA, Metro believes this number will grow to 13,600 by 2035. If ridership continues to grow at the rate it has, Metro expects the Gold Line Extension could reach 65 percent of its predicted initial annual ridership in just two months.

Interestingly, Metro’s survey found that many of the new riders were not riding the train all the way in to downtown L.A., but were rather getting off somewhere along the line much closer to where they begin. Fifty-seven percent of those who boarded at a Foothill Extension station got off the train at a station in Pasadena, pointing out that Southern California commutes are far more diverse than slogs from the suburbs to downtown.

The fact that the Gold Line Extension’s numbers are this positive should come as good news for those who argued the Foothill Extension was a misguided attempt to bring mass transit to the low-density San Gabriel Valley.

On the flip side, even 13,600 people isn’t a particularly high number given the 210 freeway regularly carries more than 300,000 cars daily across the same stretch of city that the Foothill Extension covers. Metro has also been known to underestimate ridership values in the past too. Both theExpo Line to Culver City and the Orange Line significantly outperformed Metro’s initial predictions for ridership.

By the way, Expo to Santa Monica opens just over a month from now on May 20. Get pumped to never have to deal with the 10 again.

“Shoutout to the guy in charge of the train station”

It’s been quiet in the IE lately. I’ve noticed that when it gets cold out, the locals calm down. But when it’s 95+ is when people start to get crazy. Understandable, when it’s 105 I start getting very irritable too.

Found this on Facebook from a page I follow called “Humans of Tumblr.” I never could figure out how to use Tumblr, but I like that I can find a lot of stuff on other social medias!

Metrolink aims to rebuild ridership

From the Los Angeles Times

Metrolink aims to rebuild ridership with new scheduling on the San Bernardino Line and digital ticketing

Metrolink’s San Bernardino Line snakes its way along the 10 Freeway in Alhambra. The agency is adding two trains to the line during rush hour and eliminating express service.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Dan WeikelContact Reporter

In an ongoing effort to bolster customer service, the Metrolink commuter railroad has made mobile ticketing apps available throughout its system and plans major schedule changes on Monday to reduce problems for users of the San Bernardino Line.

The digital ticketing and scheduling adjustments to one of Metrolink’s most heavily traveled routes is part of a broad attempt to add amenities for passengers, reduce delays, improve safety and rebuild ridership.

“You need reliable, convenient service. Otherwise people just won’t use us,” said Art Leahy, Metrolink’s chief executive officer who has vowed to help turn around the 512-mile system that serves six Southern California counties.

Metrolink officials say the San Bernardino Line, which runs from Los Angeles Union Station to San Bernardino, will continue to have 38 weekday trains. However, the new schedule will eliminate express service and add two trains during the morning and evening rush hours.

It is expected that the changes will reduce overcrowding on passenger cars, provide riders more options at peak travel times and improve on-time performance.

“I like the new schedule,” said Gerry Salas of West Covina, who commutes on the San Bernardino Line. “The crowding was terrible, and under the old schedule, if I missed the 5 p.m. train, I’d have to wait an hour for the next one. Now there will be more options at night.”

The changes are the result of a comprehensive review of the route’s reliability and travel patterns. A customer survey conducted by Metrolink in mid-February found that more than 60% of riders supported removing the express train and adding service during peak travel times.

Last year, the number of delayed Metrolink trains surged from 2,382 in 2014 to 4,395 — many were on the San Bernardino Line. The delays were caused by a variety of problems, including conflicts with freight trains, breakdowns of locomotives and glitches in the railroad’s new positive train control system, which can automatically stop trains in an emergency.

The situation was made worse for passengers in October when a train was removed from the schedule’s peak hour, leading to overcrowded rail cars. The problems triggered an estimated 2,000 complaints.

“We’re tightening up the schedule and offering better peak hour service. The single express train that has caused some delays will be turned into a non-express train,” Leahy said. “There will be all around better service for everyone out there.”

Metrolink also will make minor schedule changes on the Ventura County Line from East Ventura to L.A. and the 91 Line from downtown Riverside to Union Station via Anaheim.

Starting Monday on the Ventura line, Train 155 will leave Union Station at 3:15 p.m. and arrive in Chatsworth at 4:05 p.m. Train 115 will depart from Union Station at 3:35 p.m. and reach Moorpark at 4:47 p.m.

To avoid conflicts with Amtrak on the 91 Line, Train 707 will operate five minutes later and depart downtown Riverside at 6:07 p.m. and arrive at Union Station at 7:45 p.m.

In another customer relations move, Metrolink expanded the use of mobile ticketing apps last week to all its routes. The app gives riders the option of buying tickets on their smartphones, tablets and laptops.

Mobile ticketing began in early March on the Inland Empire-Orange County Line. Since then, the app has been downloaded more than 7,000 times, and users have bought more than 4,700 tickets, or about 13% of all tickets sold on the route.

The app, which is available for free in the Google Play and Apple App stores, allows riders to connect to participating transit bus systems at no extra cost.

Riders who transfer to Metro Rail, Corporate QuickCard users and Metrolink riders participating in the Rail2Rail program with Amtrak should continue to buy paper tickets from Metrolink’s vending machines.

Railroad officials say they will introduce more improvements in the future to make mobile ticketing available to those customers.