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ChineseDaily Transit Links Roundup
Contributed by Fred Camino on March 20th, 2008 at 11:24 am
- LADOT is not happy with Metro’s decision to cut bus lines.
- Ticket Vending Machines broken, and Metro don’t care.
- Radiohead won’t play in Glastonbury this summer because their public transit sucks.
- Bush transfers billions for public transit to highway fund, this upsets PIRG.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
Methinks ye meant “highway fund” not “highway fun.”
Bush did not transfer or raid or anything like that and there is no Mass Transit Account allocation beyond 2009. This is the allocation being proposed.
Relevant SAFETEA 2003 paragraph:
SEC. 8101. DISCRETIONARY SPENDING CATEGORIES.
…
“(C) The term ‘mass transit category’ refers to the following budget accounts or portions thereof that are subject to the obligation limitations on contract authority provided in the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation Equity Act of 2003 or for which appropriations are provided pursuant to authorizations contained in that Act:
“(i) 69-1120-0-1-401 (Administrative Expenses).
“(ii) 69-1134-0-1-401 (Capital Investment Grants).
“(iii) 69-8191-0-7-401 (Discretionary Grants).
“(iv) 69-1129-0-1-401 (Formula Grants).
“(v) 69-8303-0-7-401 (Formula Grants and Research).
“(vi) 69-1127-0-1-401 (Interstate Transfer Grants–Transit).
“(vii) 69-1125-0-1-401 (Job Access and Reverse Commute).
“(viii) 69-1122-0-1-401 (Miscellaneous Expired Accounts).
“(ix) 69-1139-0-1-401 (Major Capital Investment Grants).
“(x) 69-1121-0-1-401 (Research, Training and Human Resources).
“(xi) 69-8350-0-7-401 (Trust Fund Share of Expenses).
“(xii) 69-1137-0-1-401 (Transit Planning and Research).
“(xiii) 69-1136-0-1-401 (University Transportation Research).
“(xiv) 69-1128-0-1-401 (Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority).”.
The correction has been man. Thank ye.
LADOT unhappy with cutting back the #168? They could step up to the plate and run it themselves….
I haven’t used the MTA ticket machines all that much (I have a Metrolink pass), but they can’t be much worse than those in Rome, Italy….
It’s nice to see the city getting riled by the cuts, but it’s a little late in the game for them to come riding to the rescue…we’ll see if they can get organized enough to have an impact.
Ridership appears to be falling, costs are exploding and Fed/State/Muni funding is in doubt. Regardless of merit I don’t see how cuts can be avoided. Understand, I am not discussing merit, just “The Cold Equations.”
These 4 links really put things into perspective…a budget strapped transit agency seeking to cut lines while its ticket machines are broken, with rude customer service to boot. A muppet of a president transferring much needed transit funds for highways. And a [seminal] rock band refusing to play at a city due to its crappy transit system (do you think they’ll play here in LA any time soon, then?).
Lol… great job tying those together Osc. I wish I could say I chose the links on purpose to fulfill that thematic pattern you noticed.
Look, I’m not trolling or even being nasty. I think Geo II will rank in the bottom tier of Presidents thought certainly not the worst. Yes, transit is going to get a whole lot less money from the Feds and likely that with far more conditions. All that conceded. Okay? Now. There is no stealing or transferring or any of that. None of the money comes from transit. None of the money is obligated to transit. Does transit deserve some? Yes, even in my opinion. The problem is that those of us working for sustainable transit mechanisms constantly encounter what is seen here. This sense of entitlement. The transit share of the highway Trust Fund (a real thing) has to be earned. We should be grateful that the standards for transit are so much lower than for roads projects not bitter that a shrinking pie includes our slice.
Are you serious?
Because of five decades of social engineering in favor of the “car culture”, there is no greater entitlement right now than the belief of some people in Los Angeles who think they are entitled to live atypical suburban-within-urban, low-density, automobile-based lifestyles in every neighborhood in a major urban metropolis, believing they should be able to drive and park their automobile, cheaply and conveniently, in every neighborhood, including Downtown, Hollywood, Century City, Westwood and North Hollywood, and that everyone else they meet or work with will, of course, have a car too — unless they are poor and will get a car as soon as possible, and unless they are marginal and aren’t worth consideration anyway — so that accessibility to public transit doesn’t need to be given any consideration in professional or personal decision-making or urban development.
These automobile-entitlement folks see public transit as merely “transportation welfare” or as something that should be built solely to reduce the time they sit in traffic so that their car culture lifestyles are sustainable — because public transit is beneath them.
THAT’s entitlement, baby.
Care to elucidate on how exactly transit standards are lower? Perhaps in today’s Los Angeles county they are, but there are already some 400 miles of freeway in place. In Orange county, there are proposals for an 11 mile freeway to Lake Elsinore, a southward extension of the recently completed 241 freeway, as well as a new freeway planned for the Santa Ana River between Fountain Valley and Downtown Santa Ana. Meanwhile, the proposed light rail between Santa Ana and Huntington Beach has been scrapped.
Over the last five decades we’ve taxed autos and subsidized transit. Now that we are seriously discussing less subsidy you are questioning the shift as if it were some inequitable machination. Again, don’t read what is not written. If transit users were paying so much as a small fraction of their costs they (we) would be in much better shape to advance the pro transit agenda.
But auto people aren’t paying their fair share either. Gas taxes are dangerously low for our road infrastructure.
LADOT, sadly, is running behind the curve on this.
Even though they had a representative at the governance council meeting at which, through creative use of resources, no lines were canceled (at least not for the rest of this year), they are still running around like Chicken Little as if the cuts had been approved.
TVMs, by the way, are not related to bus operations. They are part of rail operations and one budget does not impact the other (because the FAP for the sales tax revenue separates bus and rail funding). For reasons that make sense only in that convoluted funding situation, even the TVMs on the Orange Line are in the rail operations budget.
Agreed. Fine. Transit users are subsidized, auto users are subsidized. Now what? Seriously. Do you want transit and auto users to each pay their fair share? Got any rough estimates?
Kym, you’ve been playing the game long enough to recognize a “Statue of Liberty” play when you see it.
The same is true of the non suggestions in the non-scoping non-meeting non-formal non-event that you can non-talk about because it didn’t really non-happen.