MetroRider welcomes the Transit Sleuth

In an example of shuttle (bus) diplomacy, Adron B. Hall, right, and girlfriend Jo visited Fred Camino, left, and Yours Truly.
Not pictured due to taking of photo: Yours Truly. This and other photos can be seen on the MetroRiderLA Flickr pool.

If you’ve ever been interested in transit news and goings-on in the Portland area — obviously Oregon, as the identically named city in Maine doesn’t generate nearly as much attention — you’ve probably read Transit Sleuth, run by Adron B. Hall. If not, you should read it. Click on the link. You know you want to.

Adron is a computer programmer by trade and a photographer, transit supporter and urbanophile by avocation. For the past two weeks, he and his girlfriend, Jo, hit the rails (!) and went on a whirlwind tour of two areas known for being the TMZ strung-out celebrity videos of urban planning, Southern California and Valley of the Excruciating Dry Heat Sun.

On Thursday, one day before he heads out back to Portland, he spent the day with Fred Camino and Yours Truly. It wasn’t a whirlwind transit trip worthy of a Ride Report, but it was an afternoon filled with great conversation and great food. On a mild afternoon, it started with a lunch at George’s Greek Cafe at 7+Fig in downtown L.A., then for ice cream and coffee at the bicycleopolis intersection of Heliotrope Drive and Melrose Avenue at Scoops and City College Cafe. Much of the discussion focused on transit, but carried on into history, current events, the banking system and about a million other tangents that we could all fit into a Thursday afternoon.

One of the fascinating anecdotes Hall told us about was a job offer he looked into here in the L.A. area. He was in talks with a software developer to write a bus-tracking program. He was more than qualified for the job, but turned it down because he would have to move to L.A. full-time for its completion. He wanted to stay in Portland, but had even offered to come to L.A. frequently — via the Coast Starlight, no less — to complete it. The job ultimately went to someone else, but the final product might have been the new system LADOT‘s DASH is using in downtown to cut down on bunching.

He’s one of many who contributed to Tri-Met‘s extensive crowdsourcing opportunities for transit riders and code geeks to take the API and come up with something brand new.

It was a fun and educational experience hosting a fellow transit blogger.

As Hall is preparing his L.A. write-up, here are some of the travelogue up now on Transit Sleuth:

• Day 1 & 2 – Coast Starlight Departing Portland and Rolling South
• Day 3 The Beach Life & Day 4 Into the Breach
• Day 5 – Flanged Wheel Jumping & Phoenix
• Phoenix Transit Exploration #fail and #success
• More Phoenix…
• Day #7, #8, and #9 Phoenix Burb’s, Wedding, and Brazilian Food
• People Talking in Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa, and Gilbert

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MetroRiderLA • portland • Transit Sleuth