Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | M | Mass Transit

Culver City: green buses, green transit: Culver City's CNG buses help keep the air clean.

Article Excerpt
Centrally located between the beach and downtown Los Angeles with a population of about 40,000 is Culver City. The local transit agency, Culver CityBus, was established in 1928 and currently operates seven routes, serving about 5.9 million passengers annually within a 22.5-square-mile area.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Art Ida, Culver CityBus' transportation director, ended up in transit by chance and has stayed in it by choice. "When I graduated from college I started out working in corporate America," he says as he talks about working for Xerox and then TRW Aerospace in the contract area.

"I saw the government contracts that TRW had and we would build accordingly and we would get the money," he explains. "Well, I started to see all the contracts get closed out early so I kind of saw the writing on the wall that aerospace was about to take a huge dive.

"I looked in the paper and I saw a position at Long Beach Transit for a grants administrator, didn't even know what a grants administrator was," he says laughing. "But it was close to my house, so I applied, got an interview."

As he explains, he was accustomed to working with federal agencies, it was a similar task, but working with the Federal Transit Administration as opposed to the Department of Defense.

"I got the job there and on the second day I was there, one of the things that Long Beach used to require, they used to require that employees go out and do a line ride," he explains. "I got on the bus, took a bus ride and remembered everything about riding the bus.

"When I was young, we only had one car that was used for my dad's business," he shares. "Going back and seeing the people on the bus, remembering my mother taking me to...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!