German
Spanish
French
Italian
Portuguese
Japanese
Korean
Russian
ChineseExpo/Aqua Nonsense Resolved(?)
Well, it’s finally happened. According to the Daily News, that new light rail project that will go from Downtown LA to Culver City has been given a name: The Expo Line. After a seemingly endless amount of discussion and time spent trying to decide what to call the city’s first bit of rail that goes further west than Koreatown a decision has been made and we can move on. Or can we?
Well not really because the train will still have to labeled on a map with a color, and that color is still up in the air. So in the end nothing has been solved because now all we have is a silly name that people will probably soon forget once they start refering to the line by its color on the map. Apparently, internally at the MTA this discussion about the name/color of the new line has been a “drawn-out debate” that many board members have grown to resent.
And why not resent it? A large number of people supported calling it the “aqua line”, including MTA staffers, Friends 4 Expo Transit, the city of Santa Monica and a handful of Westside groups the Daily News reports. You can add me to that group too, I fully support the name/color aqua. And if not aqua, at least some color, ANY color, so a cohesive naming system can remain. I don’t see why this kind of stuff isn’t spelled out in a sort of standards requirment at the MTA.
Begin patronizing paragraph:
At my work we work with a lot of computer files, and to keep things organized and understandable for everyone we have something called a “naming convention”, and it is a simple set of rules that we all adhere to when naming our files to make like easier and less confusing. Many companies and organizations use similar tactics, and the larger the bureaurocracy , the more important these kinds of standards are. Even things like hurricanes have a simple naming convention that has been adhered to over the years. It would be very off putting if one year hurricanes had proper names and the next year they were labeled by numbers and the next year by the neighborhoods they pass through.
End of patronizing paragraph.
And it seems a big part of this naming problem comes from a politician named Bernard C. Parks who pushed for the Expo Line moniker because he feels “the poorer communities it runs through could gain economic benefits by having a rail line that brands their area.” I hope that line of bullshit wins Mr. Parks some votes because it’s certainly not winning any awards in making sense. The name of a rail line “branding” an area? What does that even mean and how in the Supreme Creator’s good name is that supposed to bring these communities economic gains even if it did make sense? The rail line itself will most likely bring economic gains to these ‘hoods, but the fact that it will be called Expo will do very little in my opinion. Expo is still meaningless to most people, it’s poor branding, and it will most likely be forgotten once the line gets a color on the map. Mr. Parks has also decided that he wish for the Expo Line to be labeled in the color “rose” on the map to represent Exposition Park’s “landmark” rose garden. Since when do the colors labeling the trains have to hold deep symbolic meaning??? What does the red in the Red Line represent? The blood of our martyrs? And what color is rose exactly? In my mind it’s something very similar to red, which is a color that is already on the damn map.
Can we please just have a list of colors and everytime a new line is built assign it a color?
Discussion
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
um wtf, whats the big deal? The red line is colored red. The gold line is gold. its pretty clear they should just draw the line on the map for this line in “expo” color. just open your box of crayolas.. this isnt rocket science people..
Yes, this parks guy is absolutely absurd. All I’ve read that involves him has this kind of ass backwards thinking. EXPO, cuz it’ll brand an area… you mean “poor ethnics” mr. parks? isn’t that against the whole idea of breaking down racism, especially for something so important as public transit. let the BRU go nuts with that and their racist stance on everything. why don’t we change the blue line to the “negraz” line or something else equally separatist?
and all that aside… EXPO isn’t a damn color you stupid idiot!!! BLUE, GREEN, RED, GOLD… AQUA asshole. my god, such idiotic bureaucratic shit. but hey, now i know who this jackass is when i didn’t 6 months ago, so mission accomplished, parks. i hope you lose whatever election you have to run for. and why the hell doesn’t villaroigosa call this idiotic. him and parks are buddy buddy from what i’ve heard so perhaps that’s why he’s letting this moronic shit go down. come antonio, get your ass in gear and make aqua, aqua.
The color names for the lines should be all abolished. We should have interlining, with trains using more than one route. The trains should be numbered or lettered. The colors of the lines should remain, but only on the map for convenience. Trains: letters. Tracks: colors.
We could start doing this with the “Expo Line.” We could have a line that goes directly from Culver City to Long Beach, without turning up Flower and making the stop downtown. It only requires one extra track switch to be installed at Washington/Flower. This would save about 15-20 minutes for people traveling between Culver City and Long Beach. Here’s an example of what could be done in the near future (2010):
Current Blue Line: A train
Short Blue Line to Willow: AA train
“Expo” Line: B train
Direct Culver to Long Beach (no trip to 7th/Metro): C train
Red Line: D Train
Purple Line: E Train
Green Line: F Train
Gold Line Union to Pasadena: J train (rush hour only)
Gold Line Union to East L.A: K train (rush hour only)
Gold Line Pasadena to East L.A. (full line, runs off-peak times): L train
Let me know what you think.
i like the idea of culver connecting to long beach for sure without having to waste all the time of going to 7th/metro to make the switch. that’d be great, when the time comes that is. as for the switch to non color, i’m not sure i agree. there aren’t really enough lines along the same tracks that necesiate such a switch. sure in other major cities this might be needed because they have local and expresses as well a great deal more lines that go to different areas after seperating from their main line. a quick look at the nyc subway map can clear up any amount of confusion in my explanation. the lexington line (green) will share the same tracks for only so long before the 6 goes east in the bronx 4 goes north into the bronx and the 5 goes in between. the same goes with the rest of their lines. we dont have that situation here and until we do i think colors should be the main focus. when the time comes where we have such diverging routes along the same line we can always add the letter/numbers then to designate the routes final destination.
I like the idea of Trains having letters and Lines having colors. It makes sense and is a more “future proof” solution, which is how these things should be planned. While it’s nice that they’ve decided to label the Wilshire/Western spire of the current Red Line the Purple Line, it might make more sense if it remained the Red Line and instead had the (per Scott’s recomendation) D train to North Hollywood and the E train to Wilshire/Western (eventually the sea). Of course, these trains would have to be explicitly labeled unlike they are now to prevent the current confusion. But then you could have the D and E train on the Red Line which is the subway that leaves from union station and heads west, forking at wilshire/vermont.
I’m for banishing colors altogether. Trains should have letter designations.
The problem with colors is that L.A. is a city where just about every language in the world is spoken. Translating “blue,” “red,” “green,” “gold” and “orange” into every conceivable language to give directions is a big waste of time. Also, a letter, on its own, such as A, is read as a distinct symbol, more easily recognizable to anyone even if they don’t know English. Plus, colors don’t help blind riders.
Letters also avoid the racial connotations of colors. We can’t use white, black, yellow or brown. In fact, yellow was recommended to be the color for the Gold Line but was nixed because the line has a station in Chinatown. (Seriously, it’s in public records.) We were only able to get red because there isn’t a large Native American reservation along the subway line. More importantly, it forces the MTA board to actually think, and they muffed it bad with the Expo proceedings.
With letters, there are 23 effective lines available. You exclude I and O because they are too similar to 1 and 0, as well as X because transit riders assume that letter is reserved for express service.
Wad, in addition to blind riders, they also don’t help color blind riders! (That adds a few more people into the mix.)
Tramadol….
Tramadol side effects. Tramadol….