    {"id":1483,"date":"2012-01-31T15:16:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-31T15:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/advocacy\/inside208\/post\/Lahood-Dedicates-Transit-Center-in-Grand-Rapids.aspx"},"modified":"2012-01-31T15:16:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T15:16:00","slug":"u-s-transportation-secretary-ray-lahood-dedicates-transit-center-in-grand-rapids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mml.org\/inside208\/2012\/01\/31\/u-s-transportation-secretary-ray-lahood-dedicates-transit-center-in-grand-rapids\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood Dedicates Transit Center in Grand Rapids"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan<\/strong> &#8211; After years of planning and construction, United States Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood helped dedicate the new state-of-the-art bus transit facility in Grand Rapids on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012. The Wealthy Operations Center project will house the Rapid bus system&#8217;s dispatch center, maintenance facility, and training center. Secretary LaHood was joined at the event with U.S. Senator Carl Levin and Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/Z22jPsR0VPY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Watch the WOOD-TV video<\/a>, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wzzm13.com\/news\/article\/197178\/14\/The-Rapid-opens-new-operations-center\">WZZM TV&nbsp;video<\/a>&nbsp;and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mlive.com\/news\/grand-rapids\/index.ssf\/2012\/01\/us_transportation_secretary_ra.html\">read the article<\/a> about it from the Grand Rapids Press.<\/p>\n<p>Successes like this show what Michigan is capable of when it comes to the future of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mml.org\/resources\/21c3\/transit.html\">transit<\/a>, a key to revitalizing Michigan as outlined in the League&#8217;s Center for 21st Century Communities&nbsp;(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mml.org\/resources\/21c3\/about.html\">21c3<\/a>) initiative.<\/p>\n<p><em>Jason Mancini works for the Michigan Municipal League handling transportation issues. He can be reached at 517-908-0303 or email at <\/em><a href=\"mailto:jmancini@mml.org\"><em>jmancini@mml.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img class=\"lazyload\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-orig-src=\"\/advocacy\/inside208\/image.axd?picture=2012%2f1%2frapid-transit-grand-rapids-by-matt-edited-small-for-web.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/><em>The Rapid transit system in Grand Rapids, Michigan. (Photo by Michigan Municipal League)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan &#8211; After years of planning and construction, United States Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood helped dedicate the new state-of-the-art bus transit facility in Grand Rapids on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012. The Wealthy Operations Center project will house the Rapid bus system&#8217;s dispatch center, maintenance facility, and training center.  [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"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":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transportation-transit","mml-onemagnify-plugin"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood Dedicates Transit Center in Grand Rapids - Inside 208<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mml.org\/inside208\/2012\/01\/31\/u-s-transportation-secretary-ray-lahood-dedicates-transit-center-in-grand-rapids\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood Dedicates Transit Center in Grand Rapids - Inside 208\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan &#8211; After years of planning and construction, United States Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood helped dedicate the new state-of-the-art bus transit facility in Grand Rapids on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012. 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