Councilmember Blumenfield addresses reporters a July press conference on Orange Line improvements.

The Orange Line is the valley's only dedicated transit way and every day thousands of people rely on it to get to work, school, and home. Making the Orange Line faster and more efficient for riders is a priority for me. Yesterday, Metro Board staff presented some immediate, short, and long term options to improve this service. I'm very encouraged by their recommendations for the near future and will continue working with Councilmember Krekorian and the growing coalition of Valley stakeholders for the long term.  

Metro's The Source reports:

The Orange Line is Metro’s second-busiest bus line behind only the 720, the Rapid bus service along Wilshire Boulevard. With the Orange Line often crowded at peak hours, the Metro Board in July approved a motion asking Metro to investigate short-term fixes to speed up the Orange Line and add capacity, the feasibility of a possible bus rapid transit line between North Hollywood, Bob Hope Airport and the Gold Line in Pasadena and a possible conversion of the Orange Line to rail.The above Metro staff report explains how the agency plans to go forward.The gist of it: as for the question of rail conversion and extending bus rapid transit to Burbank and Pasadena, Metro plans to have those issues studied as part of an ongoing “mobility matrices” process. Yes, that’s a mouthful. In plain English, the matrices are evaluating potential transportation projects around Los Angeles County to see which should be included in an update of Metro’s long-range plan.

In July, I testified to the Metro board in support of a package of proposed improvements along the Orange Line--improvements that will make a huge difference in my West Valley council district, where each of my five communities touch the Orange Line. 

Today the Metro board received a staff report on that package, the first step in turning that plan into action. 

I'm happy to see some service level improvements that can be implemented in the short term while we await the February study on big impact changes. I will continue to push forward on these critical needs to make the Valley's most important public transit resource even better.

Thanks to Board Members Krekorian, Garcetti, Antonovich, Yaroslavsky, Fasana and Najarian for authoring this important resolution. You can read Source's full blog post at http://thesource.metro.net/2014/09/17/staff-report-on-short-and-long-term-improvements-to-orange-line/.

For more, check out my July blog post on the Orange Line at http://blumenfield.lacity.org/2014_orange_line_metro_blog.