Photo by Simon Shek via Flickr On Tuesday night at 5:23 p.m., a train heading towards the Valley got stuck between Hollywood and Universal City. For 80 minutes, one half of the tracks was out of service while Metro engineers tried to figure out what stopped the rush-hour train with around 400 passengers aboard. Metro officials called the situation "extremely rare," but reports from frequent riders say a 40-minute delay happened on Monday evening......

Taken Friday night at the Universal City Red Line Station | Photo by Zach Behrens/LAist Finally. After being delightfully teased for months on end by Metro with their new LCD screens hanging in subway stations with blank "next train arrival" info, the moment has finally come. Late last week, Metro began to "phase in" the arrival info starting in the Valley and Hollywood. Metro says expect to see this operating system wide within the......

Metrolink's ridership got a shot of adrenaline yesterday as ridership jumped to an all time high of 50,232 passengers -- a 15.6% increase since Tuesday for the regional commuter train service. Metro Rail has jumped 6% since last month (especially the gold line) and freeway traffic has dipped 1.5% since last year ("91.7 million miles traveled in March to 91.4 million in May"), reports the LA Times. For the last week, average gas prices in......

In Santa Clarita, transit officials will roll out a plan within the next nine to twelve months that will make bus commuting less frustrating. GPS tracking on all buses will fill up interactive maps on the city's website as well as ones placed at the city's 35 busiest bus stops, reports The Signal. Additionally, when busses are running late, the system will automatically notify authorities and text message or call commuter's cell phones. Over the......

Earlier this afternoon, boingboing highlighted an incident that occurred involving Keith Garsee last night at a Metro Red Line station. He was taking photos when he was stopped by a Metro employee: "Hey! It's against the 9-11 Law to take pictures down here man!" It led to a little back and forth, then the loudspeaker came on: "Attention to the gentleman in the plaid shirt: You are not allowed to take photographs in the Subway.......

It looks very smooth in real life, doesn't transfer to video well If you weren't sleeping on the northbound Metro Red Line between Hollywood/Highland and Universal last week, then you may have noticed a Speed Racer movie trailer all of the sudden playing inside the tunnel. Officially announced today, the high-tech subway tunnel advertising tool is a first in North America for this type of digital advertising. It is "an LED system composed of......

Update, 8:37 a.m.: The person was a male who apparently jumped or fell in front of a train. He was transported to USC Medical and police are investigating the incident.Update, 7:38 a.m.: The good news as of right now is that the person has been found awake and alert and is being assessed. At this point, the type of injuries are unknown and if they were actually hit by a train or not.If the Red......

UPDATE!!! The event has moved to in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater. Check Facebook for updated details.Coming on the heels of the announcement for Los Angeles' participation in World Pillow Fight Day scheduled for Saturday March 22 downtown, there's yet another spectacle of an event planned for the night before at Hollywood and Highland, sans bouncers and lines to wait in (h/t again to Bored-LA). According to the Facebook page, at 10:00 p.m. on Friday......

Photo by Lush.i.ous via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Speaking of that 14-car pile-up this morning on the 101 freeway, how about this fact via the Daily Breeze? There's a near $11-billion price "cost to society" due to car crashes according to a study called "Crashes: What's the Cost to Society?" According to the study -- conducted on behalf of the American Automobile Association by the transportation policy firm Cambridge Systematics --......

Now here's the quote of the day via the Daily News: ""I think if there were laws that required mayors to take transit, you'd see transit systems improve remarkably." That's Ted Balaker, a policy analyst for the Reason Foundation who spoke to transit beat writer Sue Doyle, who wrote a piece on Mayors across the country and their public transit use. Locally, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa vowed to take public transit once a week last month......

Alternative 9 combines a Wilshire and Santa Monica alignment for two subways Update*: Metro called to strongly emphasize that the projected 10-year-period (three for environmental studies, seven for construction) is the reality under the most ideal circumstances (that circumstance is if we had the funding today). Metro confirms this is the timeline and the 5-year hypothetical may have been misheard or said. At the meeting, the freakily fast timeline was mentioned in the context......

'Santa Monica Subway: Alternative 4' is one of the 17 routes presented by Metro Last night, a packed room of community members at LACMA listened attentively to Metro present nineteen options to serve the Westside. This first in a series of three public input meetings (two more meetings next week) was exciting -- wheels are in motion to get Los Angeles moving, even if that reality be around ten years from now. One of......

17 potential route alternatives consolidated on this map will be presented starting tomorrow at Westside Transit Corridor meetings with the public | View larger image In an ideal world, one of the routes in solid black, pictured above, could be a reality in nine and a half years -- that would be the year 2017. Generally speaking, a project the size of a major public transportation extension to the Westside, towards the sea, could......

Metro's Westside Extension Transit Corridor Study Area covers approximately 38 square miles. Download a larger PDF of this map. Last October, Metro held early scoping meetings for a study to help guide the development of alternatives addressing the growing traffic and congestion in a 38 square mile study area (see lighter colored area above). Nearly 500 individuals attended these meetings and over 450 formal comments were submitted by the close of the comment period......

Know how to raise billions of dollars for public transportation? Metro wants to chat with you today at noon in their third live internet chat. "Tell Metro Board Chair and Santa Monica City Council Member Pam O'Connor where you think the money should come from to pay for future transit projects and keep the system running," a press release states. "Should it be a half cent sales tax? Public/private partnerships? Parking fees? Toll roads? Or......

The fountain at the LA Central Library is rather strange and fantastical "I'll have a footlong Subway club on white, hold the mayo, and GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY!" Police are looking for the man who held up a Subway sandwich store at gunpoint Monday on Beverly in the Wilshire area. The owner and manager of a Burbank apartment building was found liable for their role in the murder of one of his tenants, who......

After questioning 1200 Los Angeles County residents in a survey, Metro might be confident it could get the two-thirds stamp of approval from voters if such a measure went to the ballot. If passed, it could generate $4.5 billion within 6 1/2 years, according to an investigation by the Daily News. That amount is nearly enough to pay for the 'Subway to the Sea' Purple Line extension. But unless county residents as far as......

Why is the Red Line running a little slow Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights? Probably because these orange-vested types are cleaning out the pipes under the tracks. Metro's repair guys and gals send a little camera snaking down the pipes to look for gunk – I'm not sure if "gunk" is the technical term for it, actually – and they follow it with what looks to me like a giant vacuum cleaner. "The water......

Tomorrow is the first day California residents can apply for an absentee ballot - the 29th is the last day to submit a request. (Click here for the online absentee application). The first wave of Stormwatch 2008 has largely faded into nothingness today as sun peeked through clouds and puddles began to dry. But another storm of equal or lesser value could follow soon. Downtown received about 5.3 inches, well above its total last......

City Councilman Jack Weiss and O'Melveny and Myers law firm partner, Carolyn Kubota, teamed up yesterday in a Daily News op-ed piece urging the need to explore funding public transportation in Los Angeles by private sources. Chicago did it with the Skyway and Denver with their transit plan. So why not us? They say everyone can agree on three things. One, a subway between downtown and the Westside is absolutely need; two, the subway......

Earlier this month, Metro announced the usual free rides on Christmas and New Year's Eve special that they do every year. Tonight, we received a short and brief, but extremely exciting e-mail: "On New Year's Eve Monday, December 31 (into Tuesday, January 1), all Metro Rail lines will run all night, every 20 minutes." Yes, that's all it said. No further details were mentioned (we're sure they are forthcoming, we are curious what "all night"......

Today, in his weekly city hall column, Steve Hymon takes on funding that darn 'Subway to the Sea.' It's projected to cost a dazzling $5-billion and we can't seem to find a tree that grow this amount of money. Here are the funding ideas Hymon uncovers: The feds tend to contribute half, but some say they won't if the next bullet item is not repealed. In 1998, voters declined the government to use local......

Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Fiscal Year 2008 Omnibus Appropriations bill, which included a provision authored by Congressman Henry Waxman to lift the prohibition against federal involvement in the construction of the “Subway to the Sea” (less we not forget that it was Waxman himself that authored the original ban in the 1980s). We've reported on this before and it was likely to pass, but it's nice to know that day is......

There I was, minding my own on the Red Line, screeching along toward Hollywood and Western, reading the ad copy on the walls. I'd seen the cross-promotional Metro-Wicked ads before, but I noticed something different this time: the witch is reading a copy of the Los Angeles Tribune. (Hed: "Metro Named America's Best Transportation Agency.") Two questions: First, why isn't she reading the Times? It's probably because Metro's marketing department wanted badly to include......

The Holiday season is in full swing in NYC, with holiday lights in Brooklyn, a giant snow globe in Bryan Park and Chanukah specials for ham. One citizen decided to go vigilante on annoying car alarms, a murder suspect used a fake Asian accent on the stand and a video of a man being beaten up by teenage girls on a subway shocked the city. And we interviewed soon-to-be-leaving-Gawker editor Choire Sicha, who said,......

Our trust and honor system on the subway, at the light rails and over at the Orange Line has been stripped away. Last Thursday, Metro voted to install the first phase of gates at stations, 275 to be exact (what's going to happen to those TAP Here machines that are everywhere?). The original intent behind the current honor system is "to buck East Coast practices and reduce operating costs," according to the New York......

A new blog has appeared on the blogLAsphere called ditch the car, take the metro and blogger, John, has created, revised and tweaked his idea on LA's future subway transit. "My LA subway plan is based upon latent but unrealized relationships that organize Los Angeles," he explains in an early post. "The core of the system is built upon two parallel corridors (the Red and the Purple Lines) connecting three central business districts (Downtown,......

A complete listing of street and parking closures for the Sunday, Nov. 25th Holiday Parade in Hollywood. ...

This week, Fodor's online published a little Q & A with editor Jennifer Paull who recently spent a long weekend in our dear city. She wanted to catch up on all that's been recently new to her as a frequent(ish) tourist. Among that was the Griffith Observatory, The Getty Villa, restaurants Osteria Mozza and Röckenwagner Café in Venice and Moss, the high-design housewares store on Melrose. What caught our attention the most, though, was her......

The state says the Mayor should get an automatic $8,283 salary increase retroactive to July 1. The mayor says not so fast: “With the City of Los Angeles facing a tough budget year, I do not believe now is the time for me to accept an automatic and retroactive pay raise. Being Mayor of Los Angeles is reward enough, and I’m committed to working twenty-four-seven to protect essential services.” (via a press release) The......