MetroRiderLA

The Year in Transit is not the most important thing to look forward to this year, but it is the brightest spot in a year filled with the tedium that is the unfortunate byproduct of leap years. The first comes in the form of the Summer Olympic Games, this year in Beijing. American athletes usually dominate the games so much that they made winning go out of style. The must-see event is the opening ceremonies, where the United States formally passes the torch of world’s only superpower to the host country, China. How often is there a chance to make the symbolic literal? Then comes another pointless quadrennial ritual that occurs every November but fortunately is only participated in by half of all adults and by all indications, like oil production and newspaper readership, trends downward to the point of losing all relevancy and simply be forgotten. There is, after all, segments of the population that view these trends with a smidgen of hope. It’s not large, and not welcome in most communities and places of business. But The Year in Transit salutes you.

The last thought ran on too long, and the transition to this thought about politics is therefore not that fluid. A young almanac is precocious enough to discuss politics, and has a surprisingly vivid memory of events dating back to the terrible toddler years. The year 2008 offers unique reflection not of the more timely prior year, but an eight-year epoch of monumental importance. The Year in Transit uses this opportunity to write history’s first draft.

Don’t worry. The predictions are here, as usual. The introduction is longer than in year’s past, because 2008 offers a time of unmitigated spleen-venting that comes along, well every four years. That’s just too long to wait.
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[tags]los angeles, mta, bus rapid transit, beverly hills[/tags]

Edited to fix musical reference.

Oh, the weather outside was frightful
but riding Olympic was mildly delightful
It was a bus and not a train
let it rain, let it rain, let it rain

Hey, it’s Christmas in a week. Let the rest of the year be reserved for prose. And juding by the groan-inducing coupling of words for this rendition of “Let it Snow”^3, it’ll be prose from now on.

This being the holiday season, Metro is no different from most of us. When it does not have the time or money to give everyone what they want, it re-gifts. In this case, it comes in a shiny red wrapper and a very big package.

Last week’s Line 328 is now Rapid Line 728. But hey, it’s the thought that counts.

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[tags]los angeles, mta, bus rapid transit, san gabriel valley, el monte, rosemead, monterey park, east los angeles[/tags]

Do not attempt to adjust your monitors. This is a real photo of Metro NABI #7637, in the mid-1990s livery, on one of its two new Rapid lines, 770. Remember how Metro promised Rapids to have every amenity of rail except the steel wheels and tracks? Seven years later, it can’t even produce the red buses.

And it’s not just on this trip. No 770 trip Monday afternoon had a red bus!

Besides Metro mailing its effort in, the trip leaving El Monte Station at 2:45 p.m. had a surly driver and very poor first-day ridership — only 28 passengers. This is a sad start to a fascinating line.

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[tags]los angeles, mta, downtown los angeles, light rail, downtown connector, transit coalition[/tags]

About 70 people turned out to Metro’s lunchtime meeting for the Regional Connector alternatives analysis at the Central Library on Tuesday. The meeting room was a tad too small for the crowd, which spilled over into the hallway.

This was the first of two meetings. The next one is 6-8 tonight at the Japanese American National Museum. Map and transit access are available here. Public comments on the projects are accepted through November 21. The addresses are also listed at the aforementioned link.
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[tags]los angeles, gold line, light rail, east los angeles, curbed la, militant angeleno[/tags]

And they mean it!
Credit: Militant Angeleno

Curbed L.A. has more pictures of the Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension — this time, with some shots of the underground stations. Come for the pictures, stay for Curbed’s trademark high-quality commentary. Two days before this article appeared, Curbed had a query about construction progress.

Meanwhile, everyone’s favorite militant Angeleno, umm … Militant Angeleno, tells about a recent trip to The Real Eastside. He also has an eyewitness account of Gold Line construction, encounters an apparent epidemic of duck molestation in an East L.A. park, and tries a Mexican addition to his list of Southern California’s ethnic iced desserts.

See also:

• MetroRiderLA: Eastside Gold Line nude pix (safe for work)

[tags]california, urban planning, paul shigley, california planning & development report[/tags]

Paul Shigley, editor of California Planning & Development Report, is going for the trifecta. He brought you California’s best big-city downtowns, and followed it up wth California’s best downtowns for mid-sized cities. In what is sure to be urban planners’ equivalent of the Star Wars Trilogy, Shigley closes the series with California’s best small-town downtowns.

Small towns, over 377 in the Golden State per Shigley, are populations of 75,000 or less.  Shigley welcomes comments on his blog, and reader comments are weighted to the list that will be released next month. Go over there and give him your what-for. Posting here would be nice, too.

See also MetroRiderLA’s award-nominated coverage of the Best Downtowns trilogy:

• A big steaming piece of Shig
• Shig happens
• How we stand in California
• We’re number four!