MetroRiderLA

On a typical weekday after work I cross Pico ready to twist hood ornaments off twitchy black Mercedes’ that radiate waves of bluetooth or have my knees broken by blood-thirsty white delivery vans. So far I’ve been been lucky and always make it across to the bus stop unscathed. Happy to have working knees I breathe in some fresh nitrogen-laden golf course air and do some jumps on the chain link fence as I wait for the Big Blue Bus #7 eastbound to the Rimpau Terminal. This past Tuesday I had the most pleasant of surprises.
bus slows.
bus stops.
I enter.
flash EZ pass.
jaw drops as I’m suddenly overcome with a wave of relaxation. I feel like I’ve just stepped into a private intergalactic shuttle headed for the safety of my home planet. I’m bathed in perfectly tinted blue light. All of the usual hideous disinfectant-grade flourescent lights in the front 2/3 of the bus have been internally gelled the trademark Santa Monica blue. Big Blue Bus is right! Though it doesn’t take long for pessimist side to kick in and ask “why the hell aren’t all the buses like this?”.
And that’s where it stands, why not? WHY NOT!?

Our esteemed governor re-elect just donned his hard hat in celebration of another successful California currency bonfire.  Thanks to the dedicated sales-tax sacrifice of Orange County consumers coupled with prop 1B the bonfire was able to efficiently burn $550 million dollars!  But from the ashes arose something ginormous and to quote  schwarzenegger “spectacular”:  A glistening black phenix in the form of 2 new lanes on the Garden Grove 22 Freeway!  The new lanes will allow drivers to shave a whopping 15-20 minutes from their commute.

The project was implemented with a new style of public works development called “design-build” where the same contractor designs and builds the project allowing construction to begin before the design is complete.  Thankfully rail construction hasn’t been able to grasp this concept and is woefully behind, which makes me wonder, is it really even worth including in the transportation bill at all?  Why are we throwing away $4 billion dollars on this silly rail idea when we can add it to the $11.3 billion slated for highway/road improvement for a grand total of $15.3 billion!  And really, there’s no good reason to not skim another billion from those absurd earthquake safety improvements and $2.2 billion slated to retrofit and replace school buses.  After those simple number moves highway and local road improvements would have grand total of $18.5 billion, almost enough to build of the freeway of all our dreams: a double-decker interstate 101!

My favorite local NPR affiliate, KPCC, has really been on the ball lately with news regarding LA transportation. Here are links to a few current stories:

Roger Rudick
Diesel Multiple Units for LA
08/31/2006

Patt Morrison
A Streetcar Is Desired?
09/05/2006

Please take a look at Roger Rudick’s section on the KPCC site. He has a slew of interesting pieces on LA transit and the right ideas about Elhay mass trans.

I finally started taking transit to work, only a month after I promised. I’ve got a real hook-up at work. I paid only $41 for an EZ pass (normally $58) plus I get a credit of $2.75 everyday I take the bus to work. It takes about an hour riding the 30 to pico/rimpau then the santa monica 7 to Pico/Motor. I’m usually no condition to read in the morning so I take in a little Transit TV, which is where I saw something very very exciting:
Transit Date
It was a short commercial for a dating service the MTA is setting up, but is not yet active. I did a limited scour of the MTA site and found nothing, so part of this post is a call for information.
The other reason is to publically state I will sign up and test the Transit Date service for the benifit of readers and, well, myself.
I love tamales.

Please post any info

An interesting piece on NPR regarding the future of American transit.
Listen here.

Among the people involved with MetroRider.elhay I probably ride the least as I have not yet switched my daily communte over to the hands of a semi-capable MTA driver. I’m still a weekend warrior with the public trans, but I’m waiting for a new rapid out of hollywood/western which is supposed to start in July before I fully hand over the keys in the morning.

I’ll be the first to admit I have a problem with busses. (more…)