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ChineseIntroducing the Rail Riders Union
Watch out BRU!
I just discovered the Rail Riders Union and added their site to the Links Index. According to the site, the Rail Riders Union (RRU) is a non-profit mutual benefit corporation that was formed this year to promote rail transportation solutions for Los Angeles. Their tagline, “Dream with us, Los Angeles”, implies a visionary organization with sights set on the future.
The RRU’s mission is concise, “let’s build a safe, reliable network of mass transit which connects people with the places they want to go“.
Issues like the Long Range Transportation Plan, the Westside Corridor, and transit safety are top on the RRU’s priority list. Under the category of transit safety they promote barrier gates as a necessity in order to fight terrorism and to ensure that rail riders pay, a concept that many Los Angeles rail advocates might disagree with. I certainly do.
The website appears to be in its infancy, with links to how to join and contribute still under construction. It will be interesting to see if the RRU can pull together and become a real force for change in Los Angeles transportation. I’m also interested in what color shirt they choose for their membership. Yellow is obviously taken by that other union representing that other mode.
Discussion
Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
Well Fred thank God there is such a thing as the RRU, because the BRU are a bunch of idiots, but really, you’re against barrier gates? Why? You *have* been to New York haven’t you? It makes total sense, and should have been done that way from the beginning! Please, tell me, what are you thinking?
A Rail Riders Union? Sign me up!
The reason to oppose faregates is that every reason for putting them in is a lie:
- They won’t prevent fare evasion.
- They won’t keep miscreants or terrorists out of the subway.
- They don’t save money; they will cost more to run than POP.
- They are not necessary for zone-based-fares.
We totally need a RRU (or just a TRU) in NorCal too.
Can there be a Transit Riders Union, because I don’t discriminate.
What color t-shirts do they wear?
Basically, what Nick/295bus said.
Before investing $60 million it would probably be a good idea to ask if it is worth the cost, right?
Metro first framed the argument for fare gates around the issue of fare evaders, claiming they “lose” $5.5 million a year because 5% of riders have not paid. Of course, Metro actually loses a lot less since they provide a subsidized service, and even paying riders are not paying near the full cost of the ride. But let’s just say $5.5 million, that means it will take 11 years to recoup the cost of the barrier gates with the “savings” from stopping fare evaders. Of course, this is assuming that everyone who was cheating before is now paying, and not just bypassing the subway all together. It’s also assuming that these people don’t find a way to cheat the barrier system, which is certainly not infallible. The fact is, the vast majority of riders pay the fares under the honor system, and those who do not and get caught must face up to a $250 fine, an amount which covers 200 fare evasion incidents. If you read this article in the Daily News you see that 98% of the homeless riding the trains have valid fare media, so those who think barrier gates will keep the homeless off the trains are mistaken as well.
Of course then Metro framed their argument around the even more ludicrous terrorism issue, as if some turnstiles requiring $1.25 to get past are going to halt suicide bombers in their tracks. On second thought, sometimes those ticket vending machines can be a real bitch, and I’m sure Metro will buy the cheapest possible turnstiles which will break and stop everyone in their tracks.
And of course there is the issue that at many, if not most, of the light rail stations barrier gates are just technically impossible to implement. What’s the point of installing fare gates to stop fare evaders/terrorists if they are not implemented system wide. Well the point is to give Cubic Systems a great big contract, but I digress.
For more reading, check out this letter to the Metro board, written by former Metrolink director Richard Stanger. He basically says all that needs to be said on the issue.
Of course, this is all moot since barrier gates have been approved and the $60 million is being flushed down the toilet as we speak. But hey, at least we can pretend we’re like New York… sort of.
Fare gates make total sense for the underground Red and Purple lines, and should have been built-in from day one. On the light rail lines, not so much, unless all stations were either above or below ground. There’s a good reason the NYC Subway, BART, the DC Metro, the London Underground, etc, have fare gates. Sure, anyone can fare jump with a gate, it’s still possible, but the gates will still cut down fare evasion. As the system is now, anyone can just walk on and walk off without paying, so long as they don’t get asked for a ticket by a fare inspector. Without gates, it’s like the MTA is just saying “Please, ride our lines for free, be our guest if you don’t feel like making a donation.” Just what the hell was the rationale for building the subway *without* fare gates in the first place? And Metrolink? That’s a totally separate and different kind of system that shouldn’t even be part of the discussion. You don’t don’t put fare gates around commuter trains, conductors collect tickets.
LOL what a joke of a statement? I guess this man has never been stopped by a NYC Transit cop or just a plain ‘ole NYPD officer and never had to go to transit court in beautiful downtown Brooklyn on Jay street. What a joker that Richard Stanger is, really, he’s quite a card!
Unbelieveable. And how good sir, do you propose zone based fares be charged and enforced? By this “honor” system? I guess Angelenos are the most honest people in the world eh? And visitors too? At any rate, zone based fares would be ridiculous on the Red/Purple lines.
Right. And $860 million?
Zone based fares: buy a ticket for where you want to go. Ticket inspectors check to see if you’re in a zone you’ve paid for. Duh!
This is how basically all commuter rail systems work (and I think San Diego light rail too).
I can vouch that it works, having gotten busted on CalTrain for riding one stop extra.
Huh? We should be trying to build one seamless system. Faregates on the red/purple line are going to be a total pain for the thousands of people who transfer to/from Metrolink every day. Come visit Millbrae, and watch people get off CalTrain and miss their BART connection while trying to buy a new ticket, and then think about whether that’s something you want to emulate!
You make an excellent point here against faregates: you’re still going to need law enforcement inside the system. So you’re not going to save any manpower. So why not just combine the roles of ticket inspector/security and dispense with the gates?
Is there? I always though LA’s POP was something that “legacy” systems could learn from. If you just want faregates for the “urban vibe”, just give graffiti taggers free reign, and defer track maintenance a little–that’ll actually *save* money.
I think there’s a good reason why all the *new* transit systems built in the last 20 years have used POP–it’s cheap and it works!
IF you get stopped. Totally ineffective, and stupid. Plus commuter systems have conductors, subways do not (NYC has “conductors” but not in the same sense as conventional trains like Metrolink, CalTrain, NJ Transit, LIRR etc, subway conductors just make announcements and open and close the doors).
Communter Rail like Metrolink and the Red/Blue/Green/Purple lines should be kept separate. They are two separate types of systems and should stay that way.
Because the Transit Police and NYPD are in stations for more than just fare collection. “Duh”.
L.A needs to learn from New York, not the other way around. Saying New York can learn from L.A. is such a joke.
That’s the problem with “POP” it doesn’t work, and it’s “cheap”. You get what you pay for.
Fares exist to discourage use. The carbon-auto industry destroyed the streetcar system, that is commonly accepted as true. Now accept that they will do anything to save the private auto system even though it is a drag on all other business.
OH yeaaaaaah, that’s it. That’s *exactly* it.
I’m $200 poorer because it worked.
Well serves you right BUT, it worked because you were on a commuter train that had a conductor on board. A subway isn’t like that. That’s why BART requires you to check in and check out. The London underground does the same. POP works on commuter railroads like CalTrain, Metrolink, LIRR, NJTransit, Metro North etc, It does NOT work on subways or rapid transit systems like BART, the Red/Purple Lines, the London Underground, or the NYC Subway.
Well, I’m happy there is a RRU. I believe in a strong rail and a strong bus system, but even if all the RRU ends up doing is neutralizing what remaining influence the anti-rail BRU has, it will have served a valuable function.
I don’t see what the type of train has to do with it. If POP can work on commuter trains, it can work on light rail and subway trains. And in fact, it’s working pretty well in a lot of cities–like LA, for example!
When I was a kid, sometimes I jumped faregates on BART. It’s easy and I’m sure the kids are still doing it!
Nothing’s perfect.
Commuter trains have CONDUCTORS that go around and check every passenger for a ticket, subways DO NOT. Have you ever ridden on Amtrak? Subways need to be and should be fare gated. Or course you can still jump a fare gate, but it’s better than leaving your front door wide open. The “honor” system is just senseless.
Hey ocean, you have yet to give one good reason WHY SUBWAYS NEED FARE GATES. The only reason you have is that “NYC DOES IT”. Please list better reasons why investing $60 million on gates is worth it.
Now give the reason WHY it works on Metrolink but not on the Red Line? You have been on Metrolink, yes? You do know that there are no conductors, yes? The majority of the time I ride Metrolink my ticket is NOT checked. Metrolink has more to lose as a typical one way ticket costs $5 or more, right? So why is POP cool for commuter rail but not for a subway?
Alright, I didn’t know that Metrolink does not have conductors, and I am surprised, and that is just asinine. But why should I be surprised? Everything is L.A. when it comes to transportation is screwed, even Metrolink I guess.
Los Angeles needs to learn from New York. New York has the greatest system in the world. It’s the only system with four track express service and it runs 24/7, 365. It also has fare gates. Los Angeles is a shitshow, both as a city and in terms of it’s “transit”. Even if in the year 2030 the system looks like this:
http://sfcityscape.com/maps/LA_2030.gif
…it will STILL be inferior and inadequate, and it will be like that when you die, and when I die, and long after we die. It’s why I turned my back on this city and left and moved to a real city and one that has it’s shit together: New York. I’ve been in NYC for close to ten years now and I’ll never return to L.A. but I will return to California, and when I do, I’ll avoid L.A. like the plague.
I’ve been reading this site just for entertainment value mostly, to watch L.A. flounder and flail like it always has and always will. Look at the system now? The Gold Line (when the blue line should have gone all the way to Long Beach and the Red/Purple Line should have gone all the way to east L.A.) Look at the ridiculous transfers you have to make to get from Long Beach to Pasadena when it all could have been one trip no transfers. I guess you could say I’ve been here out of morbid interest. And while I agree with transit and rail and I hate cars and freeways and busses, I obviously don’t agree with you or adron or most of the other people around here. You’re a bunch of like minded people who share the same opinions about a lot of things and I don’t agree with those opinions. I am in favor of transit and rail strongly, but the way you see it and I see it are often times very different and incompatible. You’re right when you said yesterday that this site is not for me, and I am not going to comment any further, it’s not worth it. Feel free to delete all my posts if you want to, or leave them up, I really don’t care, just like I really don’t care about L.A. since the fact is that I really hate Los Angeles, and I’ve sort of literally just realized that just now, before I wrote this. I hated it when I lived there and I always have hated it, and don’t care about it. So why am I here when I really don’t care? I can get better mileage and satisfaction reading about places I do care about, like New York, or San Francisco. So don’t worry, you won’t be hearing from me again.
I challenge anyone who thinks POP doesn’t work to try riding a POP system for a month without paying.
It’s like registering your car–you might get away with driving with expired stickers for a while, but eventually you’ll get pulled over.
Hey, we could require bar codes or RFID on cars, and put gates on the freeway to make sure everyone’s paid up!
That’s fine. At least you realize you were just trolling. Obviously a Los Angeles transit blog is not the place for someone who hates Los Angeles. If you have reasonable input, you’re more than welcome to stay and participate, but just saying “NYC RULEZ LA SUX” is pointless.
The very fact that you can’t give a single good reason FOR barrier gates proves that you are little more than an NYC fanboy (albeit a self-confessed one) and that you can offer very little constructive input to this forum.
I’d say me and Adron are in the minority here with our libertarian perspectives on transit and transportation. I think you’ll find most people in Los Angeles and readers of this blog share a far more socialistic view of the issue, something you might relate to.
This is the internet debate equivalent to a concession speech.
Actually Fred, (and I realize I am breaking my promise to never hear from me again here), I was not just “trolling”, I was really posting my personal beliefs. L.A. truly is a poor excuse for a city and that is my true belief too. Also, now that I know you are a libertarian, it’s even more reason for me to stay away. I hate libertarianism (anarchists) even more than I hate the Repugnant, er, I mean *Republican* party.
As for fare gates we’ll never agree, fare gates are the way it should be done. L.A. fucked up it’s subway “system” but not putting them in in the first place. If you had had fare gates from the beginning, would you be advocating ripping them out? I doubt it, you’re just used to it now and don’t want to change (and the fact that you can take your bike down more easily. (Frankly, I would like to see bikes banned on the subway here in New York between the hours of 7-10 am and 5-8 pm).
With the type of advocacy preached around here, transit in L.A., (and around the world ) doesn’t need enemies, you spend half your time shooting transit in the foot.
NYC fanboy? You know, I love that whole “fanboy” put down. Now who is regressing to grade school? You know New York is a superior city and so does the rest of the world, no “fanboys” required. Besides, if I’m a “fanboy” for New York, you’re a “fanboy” for L.A., and that’s just plain stupid.
Thank goodness, a group to go up against the lame BRU. Finally, a group that doesn’t believe that blanketing every street in LA with wall to wall buses is superior to rail. The bus system is built out, and the only way to keep moving more people faster is by rail. Metro’s Line 60, parallel to the Blue Line, never ever carried what the Blue Line carries today. Rail is the only way to go long distances fast. The Metro Rapids on Wilshire do a good job, considering the traffic. But the only solution for that street is to extend the Purple line further west, and fast. We are chocking in gridlock, and buses are trapped in the same mess.
P.S. you can’t convince me that fare gates are unwarranted. It’s the right way to go. But like you said earlier, it’s moot, because the fare gates, “they are a comin’.” Fare gates won, and you lost, and there is nothing you can do about it.
You all are not thinking corporate. What is the biggest operating cost? What cost is spiraling out of control? Personnel. Now, you are LACMTA with nearly free capital spending and increasingly less relative operating revenue. How do you go forward? You spend as much as it takes to eliminate warm bodies.
You do realize that is not a valid reason. You still have yet to give a valid reason. I’m just asking for one single valid reason why spending $60 million to recoup a yearly loss of $450,000 is a good investment. Is that how you’d spend YOUR money?
Right, but a fare gate system that works effectively actually requires MORE warm bodies.
Excellent point. I don’t know how I let that one slip by me.
I have the smoking gun about gating — Foothill Transit in a report stated TAP implementation issues are stalled 18-24 months as Cubic is preoccupied with the gating. So TAP is going to be screwed up or slow to be implemented by the munis because the gates are consuming Cubic’s time. That is something Metro staff never mentioned during the debate.
Just when I start to feel good about winning an argument, I realize my opponent must be about 12, and I feel silly.
I live in the Bay Area (and I actually like LA) and think BART should rip out faregates. They’re one of the reasons why it costs so much to extend BART (the hardware itself is expensive, not to mention that building stations like fortresses is pricey!), they make inter-agency transfers a pain, and they don’t save any money over POP (BART still has it’s own police, and agents in most stations, plus I’m sure a whole crew that goes around maintaining their custom TVM’s and the faregates).
The “facts” showing that POP works will always be trumped by the “truthiness” of the belief that faregates are better.
Btw, forget NYC–for real transit, visit Switzerland (100% POP!).
There’s no truth in POP except that it is a joke. Fare gates on BART work fine, you check in you check out, it calculates your fare, Perfect. Ripping out fare gates is idiotic. But like said about the type of “advocacy” practiced around here…..
You didn’t win any argument.
You won dude. There’s no way to combat your bullet-proof arguments. Why fare gates? Just because. Nothing more can be said. We have been pwned.
You’re all a bunch of idiots who want to leave the doors wide open for fare evaders. I bet 295bus is also one of the a-holes who think MUNI in SFO should be free?
Good luck to “Ocean” in NYC. I hope his/her meds kick in soon.
You do run into angry nuts like this sometimes when you ride public transit. I feel a lot safer when there fare inspectors around to keep an eye on things
So I’m an angry nut and the rest of you are idiot assholes, who, thankfully, are not running any transit systems. And as to Donald Stanwood, can you come up with more orginal derogatory comments? I mean that one is just so old and tired.
Well, let’s elevate the tone a little. To “Ocean”: I’m curious about your opinion of the New York Subway. The buzz I’ve heard is, after so many years of making progress, the system is once again slipping in terms of graffitti and overall disrepair.
LOL. This is truly entertaining.
The NYC subway system is fantastic, it’s the best in the nation and the best in the world. As I said earlier, it runs 24/7, 365 and is the only system in the world with four track express service. Brand new trains have been coming in steadily over the last several years (the new R-160 train sets) and it enjoys high ridership. I really have not noticed any slip in the repair of the cars or graffiti and I ride the subway nearly ever day - I have no car, naturally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:NYC_Subway_R142_on_the_5_and_R160B_on_the_N.jpg
Sure I am for a Rail Riders Union and what it stands for.
I ride the Metro Rail Lines regularly and I seldom see any kind of fare inspectors of security. I am much more likely to see panhandlers, venders, noise kids or drunks than a fair inspector. Sometimes I wonder why I bother to buy a day pass when I am never asked to show it. Before we submit to this solution looking for a problem maybe by adding some fare inspectors and security people to enforce riding the system to confirm that fares have been paid would be a much better fix. Maybe this is more about a multimillion dollar contract with the “benefits” for all except the Metro riders.
Who is going to service broken gates, who is going to let handicapped people or people with wheel carts through the gates, who is going to provide security and check for fare evaders? So this will be done with less personal than the current fare inspectors.
With more inspectors and security personal there would be less fare evaders and revenue from catching the evaders and increased revenue from people now paying who didn’t pay before would pay for the additional inspectors and reduce the numbers of evaders more than the gates would do. The MTA is unwilling to even give this a try before commenting to buying the gates with all the problems that they will bring. There would also be additional riders who now avoid the metro to avoid having do deal with the venders, drunks, and other obnoxious riders that inspectors would reduce. This is a boondoggle in every sense of the word.
Seriously deluded. If New York can do it, if London can do it, L.A. is incapable? I guess so, it IS Los Angeles after all. Loser city that it is.
Expect things to get worse with faregates since the MTA plans to eliminate the now “unnecessary” inspectors.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Nobody ever gets hassled but drunks or homeless people or mugged on the NYC subway, right?
I find it fascinating that “ocean” has, as of this moment, posted seven times since saying:
I also find it fascinating that everyone else here apparently agrees the gates are a bad idea.
Can we make the “don’t feed the troll” sign bigger and auto-apply it (without voting first) to all of his posts?
Ocean makes a nice proxy for our frustrations with the MTA board who really have no better reason to put in faregates than he does
This isn’t the 1970’s anymore.
I went back on my word. Also, you can’t expect people in Los Angeles to know how a transit system should be run properly. If fare gates were such a bad idea, other systems would not have them but they do, in fact MOST systems do. Especially underground systems.
L.A. really has no chance, between some stupid MTA descisions (although fare gates is not one of them), politicians that should be put before a firing squad (Zev Yaroslavsky, Henry Waxman and Tom Hayden) and “advocacy” from the clueless air-headed residents of Los Angeles, “transit” in L.A. is a total lost cause. The smart ones will get out. The rest of you probably work in Hollywood, and that’s why you’re all there.
There is a lot of misinformation here. The Los Angeles subway was designed to include fare gates. They were not installed at first because the ridership numbers were not expected to rise high enough to justify them until at some later date, which seems to be approaching.
The NYC subway system was originally built without fare gates. They were added much later. The system(s) used paper tickets for decades, and when the 3 private transit operations were unified by the city the token system was installed. This is why so many of the station entry portals are so cramped. They were not meant to be used that way. But the system works, and works well.
The discussion about distance-based fares in LA is premature and misguided. The MTA cannot institute fare revisions without extensive public input and regulatory approval. It’s not like they can install gates one day and change the fare structure the next day. If anything, the creation of fare gates could provide a one fare entry into the system, allowing a single fare access to multiple train lines.
For a system with high ridership, and which is inherently physically isolated from the environment, and from other transit, faregates may make sense economically.
Certainly the NYC subway fits this.
For the Red/Purple line system looked at in isolation, this logic might make sense as ridership increases. But does it make sense to look at the subway like that in LA? I think it really only works as a part of the whole Light Rail/Commuter Rail/BRT/regular bus network.
Faregates make far less sense for the LRT and Metrolink systems, because ridership is sparser, and stations are built for accessibility (which is good). Adding faregates would be really onerous and ridiculously expensive, and probably allow more evasion than POP (not to mention attempted fare cheats getting run over by trains).
And IMHO making a system partially gated (the subway, or subway + some light rail?) and partially POP is just dumb.
Hey, I didn’t get my chance to call Ocean a freaking idiot! No fair!
As fun as ad hominem attacks can be, the rest of us commenting here have been riding the Los Angeles Red Line since it opened, not you, Ocean. I assume you are in New York, no? If I am wrong, I’m sure you will let me know in your eighth post made since you cried that you were taking your ball and going home, never to return.
Fair gates are just moronic and you are not going to convince me that they are anything but, no matter how much you try. Spending $80 million to recover $5 million just doesn’t make any sense.
The New York subway system is NOT a role model, when they spent the entire 70’s and 80’s letting their “most awesomest” system fall to crap, leaving the cars bombed with graffiti and allowing fires to break out on the tracks from burning garbage that was never cleaned up. “Deferred maintenance” they called it euphemistically, and I know about it because I saw it first hand when I grew up in New York.
Low fare barriers did not work in New York, so they installed these hideous “iron maiden” gates that went from floor to ceiling. I do NOT want the Red Line to look like a medieval prison, Ocean. That’s for New York. I won’t even mention the Token Suckers.
What we really need is not fare gates but to put that money toward more fare inspectors on the trains. This would get back some of that money, and would add to the feeling of security among customers.
But no, the MTA felt better about giving $80 million to some San Diego defense contractor that was probably bribing Randy “Duke” Cunningham, the Republican congressman that is now a convicted felon in jail. (I have no evidence of that, I just am assuming that all defense contractors are evil and corrupt. I’m just wacky that way.)
To sum up: eat it, Ocean. You’re an ass.
You know what makes fare gating all the more sad?
Cubic has a system identical to TAP installed in San Diego County. It’s called Compass. San Diego uses the same cards and has the same readers on the buses and Trolley.
First, the Trolley does not have any fare gates. It would be impossible to even make them work without completely enclosing stations. Second, the Trolley uses distance-based fares.
So Cubic’s sales pitch is totally false. There is no need whatsoever for the TAP system to require fare gates so the whole arrangement works. San Diego’s Compass works the same way as TAP: It tracks different fare calculations and levels. The Trolley has distance fares, the buses have a flat fare but vary in price from expresses to urban to “local” (the cheaper fares on locals correlate strongly to having a military installation on the line), and San Diego has free transfers but requires riders to pay up the difference if they ride lines with different fares.
Cubic set up San Diego’s complex system, and it did not require installation of fare gates.
What happened in L.A.? Nothing out of the ordinary. Our Metro board is just stupid, and they don’t step up intellectually to the complexities of transit policy. They make policy to the extend they can wrap their minds around it. In this case, they went on a rear-guard face-saving crusade after some bad press about fare evasion. They think, “Hmm, no one can possibly get past gates.”
Well, an industrywide survey asked the question of which system was better: fare barriers or proof of payment? The answer: both are just fine. Fare compliance under either system is remarkably high. Evasion rates were on average one percentage point higher on POP than barrier systems. The study implicitly recommends transit systems stick with the fare systems they have now; the switching costs from one collection method to another are more expensive than their benefits.
Only one board member understood this. The other twelve hosed us.
There’s both the Southern California Transit Advocates and The Transit Coalition. Both groups are well-established and work for riders of bus and rail.
It seems Rob Dawg’s position as master troll has been seized by Ocean. Congratulations sir or madam.
Best in the nation maybe. Best in the world, hardly. London, Paris, Madrid, even Vienna have more usable systems than New York. Compared with these cities, New York’s subways are confusing and disorganized. Express service, while faster, adds to the confusion. For instance, when I last visited New York I decided to take the subway from JFK to my hotel in the upper west side. An easy ride on the air train to Howard Beach A train station, and then take the A train to 101 st, right? Wrong. Turns out the stop marked as local actually only served express trains, so I would have to get off at 42 st and transfer to the local A or C. I boarded a train marked C at 42 st, but after passing 50 st the conductor announced that this was in fact a Queens-bound E train. I exited at the next stop but found that there was no way to get to the southbound platform without leaving the gated area and thus paying again. I rode to the next stop which luckily allowed me to turn around. By comparison, during a recent trip to Paris I took the Metro from De Gaulle to my hotel in southwestern Paris. I simply boarded at the in-airport station and rode the B RER line to Denfert Rochereau, then connected to the 4 south to Porte d’Orleans.
Yes, New York has 24 hr service, but thats not nearly as important as having a coherent system as in Paris or Madrid. Hell, I almost prefer the DC subway over New York due to clarity.
I guess what i’m saying is, New York’s subway is nice but not a role model, and certainly not the “the best in the world”. In it’s current state, the LA metro fails simply because it doesn’t cover the city well enough. However, I’ve never gotten on a Blue Line to Long Beach only to discover it was actually an El Segundo bound train or a Queens-bound E train. Dan W. has frequently cited London rather than New York as role model, which I wholeheartedly agree with.
I find it unusual that you “really don’t care” about something you “really hate”.
While I am reluctant to digress from transit-related material, I will say this. Beyond not being bound to any logical conception of rhetorical practice, Ocean is an insecure bully. Ocean would love to be able to say “Ocean is better than you”, but that will probably not happen anytime soon. However, Ocean can move to New York. This gives him the ability to say “Ocean’s city is better than your city”, something he apparently enjoys. As for me, I am perfectly fine not living in The Greatest City In The Universe, in fact I don’t think I could stand to live anywhere that labeled itself as such. LA may not have massive landmarks or cool bridges to give me the warm and fuzzies. LA is not beautiful or striking. But LA holds my interest. Ocean, you or anyone can hurl thousands of insults at my city, but “boring” will never be one of them. I have no idea what you hoped to accomplish by flaming LA transit and repeating tired lines (”I moved to a real city!”), but it certainly has not been any diminution in my esteem for my city or its transit, or any greater admiration for you personally or the city in which you live. You could do us a huge favor and make good on your promise to shut up, or you can continue to win arguments in your head and let us all know. Neither will make much difference.
That’s your fault for being a moron. First mistake was taking the A at Howard Beach when you should have taken the E into Midtown and then transferred.
The NYC subway is not confusing at all. Millions of New Yorkers use it everyday without confusion. But you’re from L.A. so you do have a mental handicap.
You live in a moronic city with a moronic system ridden by no one. How would you know what works? L.A. is a universally reviled city and will never, never, never be respected, have good transit or be a great city. Just deal with it.
You don’t know jack shit about the system in New York. The “iron maiden” gates are not at every station. In fact, some stations have both and some have none at all. MOST don’t have those types of gates. The overwhelming types of gates are turnstiles.
To sum it up Scott Mercer, you’re the loser ass because you live in L.A. and defend the indefensible. Don’t be bitter at the rest of the world because you make the choice to live there. That’s YOUR masochism, not mine.
Umm and what did L.A. have during the 1970’s? Freeways? Selfish self absorbed “Angelenos” who fuck their cars on a daily basis?
Up here we have a similarly disorganized set of groups. There’s something called the Transportation and Land Use Coalition as kind of an umbrella group.
Statewide, there’s the Train Rider’s Association of California:
http://www.calrailnews.com
I’m bringing this up not to just say “us too”, but to make a point–it’d be great to get one big group going with enough members to actually get some media attention for the wants of transit riders (which are often actually pretty different from what all those “I support transit in principle but I’ll show I love the Earth by driving a Prius thank you” folks *think* we need). And I think it’d take a statewide (or national) group to do that.
I’d happily pay dues and volunteer to stuff “take one” boxes on trains for a group like that.
I know ocean is just a troll, and I should just ignore him/her, but this is just too much fun, so here goes…
Hey ocean, you call us lame transit advocates and talk about how L.A. is the worst city in the world. Yet here’s the thing hotshot: we know you didn’t do a damn thing to make New York City the mecca that it is today. And what did you do for LA? You ran away. Like a little bitch!
Where’s your blog advocating transit in cities like L.A. that “need to become like New York”? Obviously New York is already perfect, so advocacy there is just masturbation. No, instead what you do is come and make fun of and degrade advocacy efforts in a city where you did nothing.
With your infinite wisdom and knowledge of what works, one would think you would have had the balls to stay and help improve things. Instead you left and did the most cliche thing in the world, moved to New York City! Wow! You moved to NYC!!! Here’s a cookie for you and every 22 year old girl who watched too much Sex And The City.
Have you had the pizza in New York? OMG sooo good. Did you know you can get a pastrami sandwich at 3am? Totally can.
We’ve heard it all before dude, you are a living cliche. You didn’t build the skyscrapers, you didn’t build the subway, you didn’t do jack. You probably reminisce about the pre-Guliani days like every other fake New Yorker who didn’t actually live there pre-Guliani.
I have no problem with NYC, I love NYC as much as anyone… but I know that whatever NYC has to offer has absolutely nothing to do with you. And if LA has problems, it has everything to do with people like you, cowards who run away but then talk shit like they didn’t.
You’re not a winner because you live in NYC and we’re not losers because we live in LA. You’re a loser because you live in NYC and troll LA blogs. We’re winners because we live in LA and are trying to make a difference.