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ChineseDaily Transit Links Roundup For 6/18/08
Contributed by Fred Camino on June 18th, 2008 at 10:53 am
- Millennials and Baby Boomers join forces in forgoing the suburbs for the many ammenities of urban life. Hey Gen X, you suck!
- Hey ladies, despite conventional wisdom, cars aren’t the safest way to travel.
- A journey on America’s “oddball novelty”, Amtrak, presents a compelling look at the failure of American passenger rail.
- The Gold Line Foothill extension is exactly the kind of transit Los Angeles doesn’t need.
- Lusting for cars from the seat on a bus. Car advertisements get heavy rotation on TransitTV.
- Pam is back! Join the Metro Interactive chat today at noon to discuss “beautiful rides, such as the Metro Line 2 bus down Sunset Boulevard”.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
From Wall Street Journal article:
Wow, they actually mentioned Los Angeles. There is discussion about people moving to transit, but one part of the story that is not being discussed in the media much is increasing densification among transit corridors. “Recentralization” is part of the story too.
It’s 12:11 p.m. on Wednesday, 18 June: Do you know where your Metro Chat’s at? Pam seems to have lost hers, as the screen has been static. Whoops, 12:12, maybe something is soon to happen. . .
Randall BusTard:
Despite the press release, it seems you can’t get to the chat from http://metro.net/chat. No siree. Your best best is to go the Metro home page and click the “Live Chat - Join Now” link in the “Spotlight” section, or simply type this easy to remember URL in your browser: http://liveevent.multicity.com/chat/metro.html
There it is! Thanks. I suppose I should have been looking for that line coming the worng way up the one-way street, like much of Metro’s policy!
If I could be less impressed, I am impressed that I can be. Such a soft topic, where all the work is done by the few she choses, about things that are readily available on-line and via the tens (if not hundreds) of annual pamphlets with which Metro litters the landscape. That such an effort (past Chats have been canceled owing to insurmountable technical obstacles) would be relegated to let straphangers chime in with what should go on a general message board is indicative of how Metro wastes resources rather than resolves problems. What the hell is happening in the over-priced italian marble tower: a crack cocaine-smoking orgy? Why cannot some serious problems be addressed with this once-a-month (or less frequent) get-together? It is as if calling for a meeting just to exchange tips on trying new combinations of sugar, sugar substitute and creamers for one’s burnt, stale and weak coffee.
It’s truly shameful BusTard. This month’s chat is a new low. I swear it’s all canned PR “questions”. I’ve started a topic over the MetroRiderLA forum so we can make fun of it.
I’m blown over with a feather. I asked a substantive question and got a substantive answer — and one I liked!
I’ll give this question a try.
The answer is done with an approach of “Why does Metro do what it does?” rather than “Why doesn’t Metro do what we do?” I posit: Metro’s actions reflect erring on the side of certainty, rather than speculation.
Bureaucracies — and for that matter, all large organizations public or private — are inherently risk averse.
The Metro board members and employees can safely assume that their constituencies will remain hostile regardless of what is or isn’t done. I mean, Randall, let’s face it: Isn’t it much more fun to bash Metro? Even when Metro gets to the two times a day when the broken clock is right, we maintain our habits and find something else to complain about.
We falsely dismiss that people in the Metro organization just write off the public’s complaints. On the contrary, it formulates their frame of mind. They frame their jobs around risk-aversion. Rather than saying, “I’m going to take these risks to win over our constituency,” they’ll say, “I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t.” They are certain that the people are going to be unhappy no matter what is done, so they will focus their jobs on the certainties of mandates imposed by the state (which outlines their organizational mission) or their funders (which require conditions to be met in order to receive money). They will also perform their jobs to the expectations of their professional peers, who do offer more logical criticism and positive feedback.
So the professional bias is to respond and react to information that offers: 1) the most certainty and 2) results that can be replicated consistently. Metro gets little of this by listening to the public.
However, Metro can respond to fellow organizations (the FTA and state legislature) that have the same mentality and have a degree of control over their funding or structure. If Metro pisses off another bureaucracy, the consequences are far more dire.
Now that you know this, I can offer you this hint: You should have an understanding of Metro’s organizational logic, and you’d get better results by adapting to it or working around it rather than advancing your agenda (irrestible force) against the agency’s (immovable object).
Randall, you now have the upper hand, because you now know how Metro thinks. Metro still won’t know how you think.
Hahaha the Metro line 2 and the beautiful scenery between west la and downtown. Might be a little easier to enjoy if I didn’t have to wait an hour for the bus come. And seriously it’d be nice if it ran the entire route at night instead of having to convince the driver to drop us off on Santa Monica so we can catch the 20 back to Westwood. Sorry everybody I’m kinda drunk right now and have been in Spain for the year and going back to UCLA without a car is a depressing prospect compared to Granada where literally everything worth going to is within 20 minutes walking and if its not I don’t think I’ve ever waited for a bus more than 15 minutes usually less than 10. Granted its a small city but I can imagine a big city where every neighborhood would be like Granada, grocery store and everything else necessary on a regular basis within three blocks walking, but with the addition of a subway to the downtown of the city. I think the biggest shame of LA is that walking there is just depressing….when the only other people on the sidewalk are bums and you’re next to a 6 lane street and choking on smog its hard to not feel lame. LA (and even the metro 2) has its charms but right now I’m realizing a better way to live.
Well, Wad, I would appreciate your concerns, except that 1) I am an ex-MP from a three-generation military/cop family; 2) I am intimately familiar with a handful of U.S.-based public transit systems (bot as a straphanger as well as having colleagues who are motormen and conductors; one—in NYC—is even a colleague with whom I have traded periodicals for well over a decade); and 3) I have dealt with RTD/OCTD/MTA/Metro since the early 1990s and have quite a stack of correspondence that proves that that do not at all care. Most damning was when one of their Sunset Blvd drivers drove her #4 line across three lanes of traffic (this was in Silver Lake in 2000) to try and hit me with a bus load of riders. The then LAPD Metro division chased her all the way to Santa Monica, but the MTA had the case thrown out. I learned quite a bit, such as how the LAPD were given a memo to not stop MTA drivers who run red lights. To be sure, I have evidence to the contrary of what you state, but I nevertheless appreciate you trying to make me feel better for the moment.
I wish I could do more than merely document Metro’s daily dose of outrageous behaviour, but between working, school and a few hours of sleep, well, I have no time to physically step in and straighten out that boneheaded bureaucracy.
Randall, you say that Metro doesn’t care, and at the same time you say that you’ve witnessed evidence to the contrary of my theory that Metro only acts on the basis of certainty rather than customer service.
Contrary means Metro is doing very well at customer service. That’s not what I’ve gotten from your reply.
Everything that I’ve said is not an excuse for its behavior, especially not the felonious behavior you’ve witnessed. From what you’ve described, you should have pressed charges and testified against the driver in court. At the very least, the license could have been revoked. There is a line between tolerating incompetence for content and relevancy of a blog, and outright criminal behavior committed under government authority. There are things that should be made a federal case.
But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.
love the shirt on this guy. can only see the nozzle, i’m curious what’s on the rest of it.
even in new york, where fewer than half of the people own cars there are all sorts of car-centric ads on the subways. i’ve seen tons of car insurance ads, lawyers for duis and such. most recently, there is an ad for a car gps unit from target - obviously missing their target market by several miles.