MetroRiderLA

[tags]los angeles, mta, beverly hills, santa monica[/tags]

Pick any one of these three lines to be built as a subway. Hell, go for all three why not.

Metro invites the public to validate the obvious — extending the Purple Line to the sea — and give token consideration to other multibillion-dollar investments for Westside projects at a series of meetings in October.

By law Metro has to consider from several alternative modes in order to receive funding. These can include, subway, bus-only lanes, subway, surface light rail, subway, aerial light rail, subway, elevated Purple Line extension, subway, the do-nothing alternative or subway. Metro set up a web site for this study. The study area boundaries are the subway stations at Hollywood/Highland and Wilshire/Western to the east, Pico Boulevard to the south, the sea to the west, and more or less the Santa Monica Mountains to the north.

For those too busy or lazy to attend one of the meetings in person, Metro accepts e-mail and letters and as public comment. Send e-mail to WestsideExtension@metro.net. To leave a message, call (213) 922-6932. For snail mail, send to:

Mr. David Mieger, AICP
Project Manager and Deputy Executive Officer
Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro)
Mail Stop: 99-22-5
One Gateway Plaza
Los Angeles, CA 90012

The deadline for receiving comments is November 1. Remember that.

The list of meetings follows the jump.

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[tags]los angeles, mta, la city beat, public transit, transportation[/tags]

L.A. City Beat put together a series on what was once a dead-end beat in the media but now the lowest hanging fruit on the story tree: transportation.

On the menu:

• “Dozing in the Slow Lane”: The article looks for leadership to get things done. And it’s written by L.A. Sniper Alan Mittelstaedt, mentioned before here recently.

  Mittelstaedt’s writing in the City Beat regarding public transit seems like he’s been hanging around Dana Gabbard and/or Bart Reed a little too much. And that’s a good thing. He recognizes there are more players in the transportation scene besides the shrillest left- and right-wing extremes of the Bus Riders Union and the Reasoners. And he can be quite militant about transit — he’d better be with the nickname L.A. Sniper — but maybe not as militant as this guy.

• “Back to 1984″: This is a piece that infuriates righties at every possible level. It’s pro social-engineering!!!1!!11! It was about the greatness of the L.A. Olympics … in 1984!!!1!!11! The Orwellian symbology is so flagrant!!!1!!11! It forces people out of their cars!!!1!!11! THEY want to take away OUR CARS!!!1!!11!

  Larry Zarian, a former Metro board member during the Dark Ages — last decade — makes a great Monday-mornin-quarterback point: politicians are the problem. They don’t know squat about planning or operations, and should stop acting like they do and leave that up to the professionals.

• “Road Rage”: One of two companion lists. Here are the seven people most responsible for screwing up transit in Los Angeles. Right on the mark and unimpeachable.

  The link is provided, but the names and the reasons shock no one who reads MRLA. And for the record, I or anyone else on this blog did not write this list.

• “All Aboard, City Council”: The other of the companion lists. It fits in with the City Beat’s righteous and justified indignation angle about public transit. It asked why the 15 members of the Los Angeles City Council do not ride public transit, and how the situation can be remedied.

  Eh. It’s serviceable for stoking cynicism, but the basic flaw is … well, it’ll come in a separate analysis. The A material can’t just be given away now.

[tags]los angeles, mta, national public radio, arthur winston, storycorps[/tags]

Arthur Winston at age 99.
Credit: Rick Jager/Metro (downloaded from Wikipedia)

National Public Radio airs one of the last interviews given by Metro’s most dedicated employee, Arthur Winston. He spoke with his great nephew, Eric Anthony Givens, just before he passed away less than a month after retiring on his 100th birthday.

He made news and set world records for working for most of his adult life for Metro and its precedessor agencies, beginning with the Los Angeles Railway in 1924. When Winston started his career, African Americans were not allowed in front-line jobs, so he tok a job cleaning vehicles. And he stuck with it.

Former president Bill Clinton gave Winston an “Employee of the Century” award in 1996. In 1997, Metro named Division 5, the garage near Leimert Park where Winston worked, after him.

NPR airs the interview in a partnership with StoryCorps, an organization recording life stories of Americans. The StoryCorps Griot Initiative is a one-year project seeking to collect oral histories from 1,750 African Americans, with World War II and civil rights movement stories of particular interest.

[tags]los angeles, mta, red line, purple[/tags]

Metro has announced service delays for the Red and Purple lines on Sunday mornings, September 9, 16, 23 and 30. Crews will perform maintenance, and one track will be out of service. Purple Line trains will shuttle passengers between the Wilshire/Vermont and Wilshire/Western stations only.

Purple Line trains in both directions serve the upper platform. Westbound trains depart Vermont at 5:08 a.m. and operate every 20 minutes until 8:48 a.m. Two full-route Purple Line trains depart Union Station at 9 a.m. and 9:20 a.m., then normal schedules resume.

Red Line trains will operate on their usual platforms (downtown, upper and North Hollywood, lower), but service will operate every 20 minutes from the start of service until after 9 a.m., when regular schedules resume. The first eastbound trip departs at 4:38 a.m., and then every 20 minutes until 8:55 a.m. Schedules resume to normal service after then.

The first westbound Red Line trip leaves at 4:33 a.m., and then operates every 20 minutes until 8:53 a.m. Schedules resume normal service after the 9:05 a.m. trip.

This message is reposted weekly through the duration of this delay.

[tags]santa monica, big blue bus, green la girl, leed[/tags]

Credit: Green L.A. Girl. Clicking on the image goes to “Big Blue Bus breaks ground on green maintenance facility.”

Siel, the Green L.A. Girl went to Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus’s celebration for expanding its bus yard, and making it more environmentally friendly.

The downtown Santa Monica yard is expanding to 66,000 square feet, as the agency is planning to buy more — and possibly larger articulated — buses. Santa Monica city council members and employees of the muni grabbed big blue shovels — no, really — and dug into the big brown dirt to kick off construction for a big green bus yard.

Siel says:

Green components range from using recycling construction materials to water-efficient landscaping with a gray water and storm water management system to using light-colored concrete and roofing to keep things cooler. Plus, recycled carpets and other items’ll be used in the offices, which’ll have dual glazed, low-e glazing and no [volatile organic compounds] off-gassing materials.

The city hopes to get the yard LEED certified — a set of standards established by the U.S. Green Building Council for a construction project to use energy-efficient and environmentally friendly materials and methods — by the completion of construction in 2010.

Interestingly, Santa Monica is not in the lead with LEED. Santa Clarita Transit has the first LEED-certified bus yard in Southern California, completed in 2005.

[tags]inland empire, omnitrans, union, organized labor, strike[/tags]

Bus drivers for Omnitrans have set Friday, October 12 as the day they will strike.

The drivers, represented by Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1704, have negotiated for nine months with the agency. The union is holding out for higher wages and retroactive pay, reports the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.

The agency sees about 50,000 weekday boardings. Once the service is unavailable, riders would have to travel via Metrolink’s San Bernardino Line, Greyhound, and connecting local transportation on the edges of Omnitrans’s service area provided by Foothill Transit and Riverside Transit Agency.

Omnitrans management holds out hope that a new contract can be ratified by October 12. If not, it will try to run limited service on some routes. MetroRiderLA will post a link to an Omnitrans ride angels board — a place where riders and drivers can request or offer shared transportation — when one becomes active.

See also:

• MetroRiderLA: Possible Omnitrans strike
• Southern California Transit Advocates