Category Archives: Transit

On the agenda: Vulcan, jazz and transit

New Birmingham, Alabama logoThis morning’s Birmingham City Council agenda is the longest in some time, consisting of some 44 pages.

Item 21 asks the Council to approve an amendment to their contract with the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority (better known to most of us as MAX). It would allow the council to provide up to an additional $3 million to the cash-strapped agency, increasing their allocation to more than $8 million. The routes and hours are to be established by the City Council Transportation Committee.

Item 28 gives us a first glance at the Jazz in the Park Concerts sponsored by Magic City Smooth Jazz. The free concerts would be held every Sunday from July 4-25, 2010 at several locations throughout the city. The item includes the city agreeing to provide up to $10,000 towards the cost of the series.

Item 33 allows The Big Guy atop Red Mountain to have some necessary repair work done to his pedestal. Vulcan Painters of Bessemer submitted the low (and only) bid of $27,672 and acceptance of the item allows repair work to the pedestal to proceed.

The meetings are streamed live via the city’s website and archived.

A new circulator for downtown Birmingham?

breeze-busThat’s what the topic will be at tomorrow’s Operation New Birmingham breakfast briefing, particularly why it would make sense to get on these new buses, the Breeze circulators. Charles Ball, executive director of the Regional Planning Commission of Greater Birmingham plans to be available to answer questions about the current status of the three year old In Town Transit Partnership and about how the downtown circulator would serve as the basis of a rethinking of the region’s transit system. You’ll be able to see portions of the presentation on the ITP website beginning late tomorrow morning.

It was also the last topic of conversation during last night’s first #bhamchat; the recap’s up over on my Birmingham.

The reason for the paratransit stall

Remember yesterday’s On the agenda post? Well, according to sources, some City Council members said they needed extra time to determine whether the $1.7 million paratransit expenditure would be deducted from the BJCTA’s FY2009 operating budget or would be in addition to that amount, leading to a two-week delay on the item.

Well, I’m in New York City and I’ve got an interesting (or frustrating) take on it – check it out over on My Birmingham.

Find your way on MAX online

Screenshot of BJCTA’s new website

Before we return to silent mode, we figured it would make sense to stress to folks to check out the tranist authority’s new website. New features include a ticker-style rider alert, planned integration of Google Transit, and most importantly, an easier to read and understand map for the system’s users.

Check it out and let us know what you think below.

Riding on hydrogen

One day if you ever feel so inclined to ride the bus, the one you’re on may be powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Whether or not that’s a viable option or not will depend on how a demonstration bus called the EcoBus, being used by the BJCTA next year as part of a study at UAB, does in field tests around metro Birmingham. The announcement was made last week by the university, the bus will be built in Georgia and The Birmingham News has more details.

Transit chief heads to the West Coast

Remember the series I was going to file about San Francisco? Well, we’ve held off because of the prominent role transit was going to have in it – didn’t make sense to talk about their system when ours was going through (and continues to go through) a period of turmoil. Well, now David Hill will be responsible for that city’s Muni System bus fleet as he resigns as executive director of the BJCTA on October 17. He’ll also be able to do something we can’t right now; ride one of our old street cars. Or he can ride the commuter rail down to Riverside, CA and compare notes with another former BJCTA executive director, Mark Stanley.

Don’t stop the bus

A $4 million shortfall in the Birmingham Jefferson County Transit Authority (a.k.a. the folks responsible for our MAX bus system) has the potential to do just by causing them to cut Saturday service and downtown DART service among other things. Check out the Birmingham News’ story so you have an idea of what’s going on before you head out to this afternoon’s city council transit committee meeting  (at 4 p.m.) called by Councilwoman Carol Duncan to figure out next steps.