Bay Area commuters stayed up late into the night to find out if the BART strike was on. It wasn't. Not yet.
From the NYTimes Erica Goode: "Panicked commuters here got another reprieve early Tuesday when transit workers, who had threatened a strike at midnight Monday, stayed at the bargaining table."
"Union officials representing employees of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, or BART, San Francisco’s main commuter railroad, had said earlier Monday that it would take a “Hail Mary” to avert a strike. But at 1 a.m. on Tuesday, George H. Cohen, the director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, who had flown in from Washington to attend Monday’s bargaining session, announced that trains would be running Tuesday and that negotiations would continue"
"Many Bay Area residents had stayed up late on Monday to learn whether transit workers would walk off their jobs"
If BART commuters were hoping to rely on AC Transit to get around during a strike, that may not work either.
From the Mercury-News' Mike Rosenberg: "AC Transit workers on Monday morning issued a 72-hour notice that they would walk off the job on Thursday morning -- a move that, in tandem with an impending BART strike, could leave the second- and third-biggest transit operators in the Bay Area shut down."
"AC Transit carries 100,000 people round trip each day and was expected to carry the bulk of the transit riders during a shutdown of BART, which carries 200,000 people round trip each day."
"The AC Transit strike threat came as a surprise after the unions and the East Bay bus provider twice came to tentative agreements this summer after their contract expired at the end of June."
California's bullet-train is still on track, although construction hasn't even started, authorities say.
From Capitol Public Radio's Ben Adler: "California’s High-Speed Rail Authority is asking contractors that want to build the second stretch of Central Valley track to step forward. It also says work on the project’s first phase is “under way.” But actual construction has not yet begun – despite promises that it would by now."
Construction on California’s high-speed rail project was supposed to have started by the end of last year. At least, that’s what Governor Jerry Brown promised in his 2012 State of the State address. The governor referred to the upcoming release of a new business plan “that will enable us to begin initial construction before the year is out.”
"Then, this past February, as the High-Speed Rail Authority reviewed contractor bids for the opening phase in the Central Valley, here’s how CEO Jeff Morales described the timeline: “We’ll go through a negotiation to reach a contract and expect to award that contract and be under way June/July – construction starting this summer.”
The problem-plagued San Onofre nuclear power plant is shuttered, and its operator says customers should help pay the costs of the closure and cleanup.
From the LAT's Marc Lifsher: "For the second time in two months, Southern California Edison Co. has put advertisements in local papers to make the case that customers should help pay for the closing and cleanup of the San Onofre nuclear power plant."
"Ratepayer advocates accuse Edison of trying to shift the cost of the plant's decommissioning from its shareholders to its ratepayers."
"A full-page ad scheduled to run Tuesday in the Los Angeles Times boasts that Edison stills gets power from hydroelectric plants that were paid off in 1954. The low-cost electricity, the company said, is the result of what it calls the "regulatory compact" between the investor-owned utility and its its 14 million ratepayers."
The agency that is putting into effect federal health care changes in California inadvertently released a medical and hospital directory prematurely, then removed it from the web a day later.
From the Bee's Christopher Cadelago: "Covered California removed the directory within a day of release after discovering it was plagued by inaccuracies and sluggish performance. The search tool was designed to allow customers to determine whether their providers were included in health plans offered by the exchange."
"In an interview with The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board Monday, Covered California Executive Director Peter V. Lee said the directory never should have been launched."
"Staff needs to do a better job of reining me in," Lee said. "I want to have great customer service and I push us to get stuff out there. But I and we need to be careful about not pushing too fast. That was an example of actually being out there too fast."
Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/10/covered-calif-doctor-hospital-directory-release-premature.html#storylink=cpy
