An early tangible harbinger...

During each calendar year, METRO puts out three sets of Service Adjustments for local, Park & Ride, light rail, and anything else METRO does for the general public regarding mass-transit: January, June, and August.  June and August are scheduled around the end and start of the school year with 'school-tripper' buses going offline in June and starting up again in August.  These 'school-trippers' are not publicly advertised, but are around to help alleviate overcrowding in mornings and afternoons due to scads of kids out and about getting to their classes and home again.

January and August have historically been times with greater numbers of service changes than June (timed for scuttling the school trippers for summer), but 7 June 2015 will mark a bigger June service adjustment than usual: the Mother of All Service Adjustments with the 'switching-on' of the new and re-imagined local bus network in one fell swoop: there will be a last sunset on our current local bus network.  The following sunrise will see the new network come online.

Thursday 25 September 2014 will see the regular METRO Board meeting in which the System Re-imagining Final Plan approval will more-than-likely come.  From the moment onward when Chairman Gilbert Garcia declares the vote to be (hopefully) in-favor, a massive logistical project begins which I have described in an earlier post: getting the new network implemented.

From 25 September 2014 onward, the Re-imagined network becomes a living, breathing thing.  From that Board meeting onward, every Service Adjustment will be directly reflective of the tangible reality of this new network and for a time, the demise of the old.

1 July 2014 saw a remarkable moment that brings out the sentimental part of my nature: the release of the last set of proposed service changes (for implementation in August 2014) with the old network still in full-force and the new network still nothing more than corporeal fog in a somewhat-misty future.

No doubt, January 2015 service changes will reflect the new network in at least some small way.

June 2015 service changes will on the normal pamphlet be written thusly: "o... m... g..."