Zach Behrens

A Metro local bus in Chinatown | Photo by Fred Camino via Flickr Today Metro made a big step with an announcement that will give programmers a new tool to make and computer savvy commuters ecstatic. They launched a new beta developer website (and blog!) with two downloadable data sets--GIS and GTFS, or Google Transit Feed Specification, which is used in Google Transit. "This data set is a collection of tabular data describing route,...

It's been heard on the streets, but Metro says no date has officially been set. That's not to say August will end up being the opening date, as rumored, but there's no telling when it will really open, says Marc Littman of Metro in an e-mail: "Ignore the rumors. No official opening date has been announced and won’t be finalized and announced until we complete critical testing of tunnel ventilation and other safety systems...

SAG president Alan Rosenberg Finally. "The nine-month stalemate between the Screen Actors Guild and producers came to an end Tuesday night as SAG members overwhelmingly voted to approve the union’s new TV/theatrical contract with the AMPTP. The final tally: 78 percent voted 'yay', and 22 percent voted 'nay'," reports the The Warp. "The contract includes a 3 percent wage increase, a .5 percent increase in pension and health contributions and residuals for new-media work...

Last night, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tweeted, asking followers to try to fix the budget themselves on LA Times' wicked-cool budget calculator. "Tell me how you do," he said. Now that's Government 2.0, or whatever, at its prime. So, this is how we did, amazingly earning the state an extra $840 million. Of course, that came at the expense of the education system and your taxes. Here's how we solved the budget crisis, making enemies the whole:

If it hasn't already (photo taken in 2007), this bus stop at Jefferson and La Cienega could use some improvements | Photo by Fred Camino via Flickr The U.S. Department of Transportation announced that $400 million from the economic recovery package is headed to make capital investments in transit throughout California. It's not going to build us the Subway to the Sea or anything sexy like that, but is headed to more functional improvements,...

Curbed LA has heard it twice now--Metro's Gold Line Eastside Extension between downtown LA and East LA will open in August. Little Tokyo UnBlogged took a safety walk with officials around the tracks and found that people had many concerns about crossings and signage: "The other questions that came up time and again were the lack of language-appropriate signage (some of the signs that were up did have Spanish translations). Many in the group...

Since a moratorium went into effect on new dispensaries, the exact opposite happened--more than 500 opened because of a hardship exemption loophole in the ordinance. Today, a few months shy of the moratorium being lifted, the City Council will vote on to whether or not close that loophole, as recommended by its planning and land use committee, and will look at 16 (of the many hundreds) hardship applications, either passing them or denying them....

View this map in very high resolution here | Map Courtesy of the Santa Monica National Recreation Area, National Park Service The state parks that are proposed to be cut are quite beautiful and very popular--still, if they close, it's not like there's nothing left. State parks make up 23% of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, leaving a good amount of acreage to the National Park Service and another state park agency...

Remember right before Labor Day weekend, officials at Lake Mohave were puzzled at why hundreds of dead carp were all of the sudden washing up on shore dead? Scientists have finally figured out the probable cause: Koi Herpes Virus (KHV). Good thing it poses no threats to human health. To fish, however, it's a different story, according to the Arizona Game and Fish Department via the Lake Mead National Recreation Area: "The virus, which...

Photo by Atwater Village Newbie via Flickr Every month LAPD Senior Lead Officer George Aguilar takes a look at his area's traffic patterns and behaviors and focuses enforcement on one issue. In the past, he's done pedestrian crosswalk stings along Ventura Blvd., catching drivers who ignore those walking across the street, and enforcement on the various no left turn signs on Van Nuys Blvd. This month, he's going after speeders in these general areas,...

From Culver City to the West Valley, police officers will be supporting the Special Olympics today in a torch relay from the Westside and South LA through Hollywood and across the south rim of the Valley. It's all for a good cause--raising money and awareness--but it will cause traffic. It began this morning at 6 a.m. with the Culver City Police Department soon to hand off the torch to the LAPD, who will run...

In a unanimous vote by the Los Angeles City Council this afternoon, a loop hole in a medical marijuana moratorium was filled. "Hopefully that will bring this matter to success," said Councilman Dennis Zine, a former LAPD officer. Although a ban on new medical marijuana dispensaries went into effect in 2007, the hardship exemption language created a loophole, prompting over 500 new storefronts to pop up around the city. With today's action, hardship exemptions...