{"id":5280,"date":"2015-04-23T09:41:33","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T13:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=5280"},"modified":"2015-04-23T09:41:33","modified_gmt":"2015-04-23T13:41:33","slug":"hogan-restructuring-mta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=5280","title":{"rendered":"Hogan Restructuring MTA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/news\/maryland\/commuting\/bs-md-mta-smith-out-20150421-story.html#page=1\">fired Robert Smith<\/a>, a Democratic appointee, as head of the Maryland Transit Administration. This move is part of a larger effort to restructure MTA in the face of problems of facing the agency:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The agency is a year late in producing a promised plan for improvements to its beleaguered Baltimore bus network, is facing a class-action lawsuit from transit riders with disabilities who use its Mobility service, and hasn&#8217;t met a state mandate that it provide 35 percent of its operating budget through fare revenue since 2005.<\/p>\n<p>Ridership across all MTA transit modes \u2014 including local buses, light rail and MARC train service \u2014 was down in 2014, though it has rebounded some this year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Baltimore bus network has been a particular problem. MTA&#8217;s inadequate slow motion plan to improve buses is scheduled over 18 years. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/news\/maryland\/commuting\/bs-md-mta-smith-out-20150421-story.html#page=1\">Baltimore Sun reports<\/a> that the Transportation Secretary plans to review the plan.<\/p>\n<p>Smith explained that aging infrastructure is a big part of the challenges that MTA faces:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s an aging system. The Metro itself is 30 years old. The light rail is at mid-life,&#8221; he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, has fired Robert Smith, a Democratic appointee, as head of the Maryland Transit Administration. This move is part of a larger effort to restructure MTA in the face of problems of facing the agency: The agency is a year late in producing a promised plan for improvements to its beleaguered Baltimore &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=5280\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Hogan Restructuring MTA<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[208,49],"tags":[1370,1355,1369],"class_list":["post-5280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baltimore","category-mta","tag-maryland-transit-administration","tag-pete-rahn","tag-robert-smith"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-1na","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5281,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5280\/revisions\/5281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}