MetroRiderLA

Photo by Yours Truly. This and other photos can be seen on the MetroRiderLA Flickr pool.

The opening of an urban rail line is truly a cause for celebration, especially in Los Angeles — the city that’s a blonde joke come to life.

November 15, 2009, marks a time when L.A. could celebrate that in more than 5 years of construction, the hard hats managed to build a rail line from downtown L.A. a whole six miles east, with almost two miles built in a tunnel intentionally. The Gold Line continues beyond Union Station to East Los Angeles. It will travel along East First Street in Boyle Heights, then zag to Fourth Street in East Los Angeles.

In 20 years of rail (and busway) openings, two things have proven as certain as the sun rising in the East and two and two adding to four:

1. These events are a lot of fun and the festive atmosphere brings out tens, if not hundreds, of thousands
2. Angelenos, generally speaking, are insufferably petulant and are less mentally sharp than a zombie on Quaaludes.

Both of these self-evident truths will be on full display November 15 as the Gold Line Eastside Extension makes for its public debut.

In the process of making maps for the DASH restructuring series, I have been inundated by curious and credulous MetroReaders or their friends and/or unindicted co-conspirators asking me on what we can look forward to on opening weekend. Which is really strange, because I try hard to hide my e-mail addresses and generally try to avoid any contact with you outside of the comments here.

Yet with great knowledge comes great responsibility. Your Metro Yoda will answer some of the questions to help MetroReaders along their way on their public transit Jedi-hood. And with great science fiction references comes a great tribute and thank you to one of the masters of the genre, the late, great Douglas Adams. Without you, the title to this blog post and your witty, easily imitable writing style would not have made this effort possible (in the case of the title) or even relevant (in the case of the writing style).

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All photos of the event are by Yours Truly and are available in the MetroRiderLA Flickr Pool.

The turnout at Wilshire United Methodist Church was quite robust for the first in a series of Metro scoping meetings for the Crenshaw Corridor rapid transit project. Only the bus rapid transit project would serve this area, yet many of the 50 to 60 people who appeared were in support of the shorter, more expensive light rail option.

Same time next Wednesday (October 7), Metro will return to the church for the Wilshire Bus Lane hearings.

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Don’t do it!

Last week, when I found that Metro’s TAP card worked in San Diego, I had wondered if Metropolitan Transit System operators and fare inspectors would count the cards if they held a fare.

An MTS representative says no. Here’s the letter:

When using MTS services you will need to pay the proper fare. Although the TAP card worked at the TVM, it is not a MTS Compass Card and therefore it is not considered as proper fare. And when a MTS Fare Inspector checks your fare you run the risk of getting a citation. Feel free to contact the Compass Card office by dialing 511 for further assistance.

• A follow up to “F— You Amtrak …”: I called 1-800-USA-RAIL, the national hotline, to apply for a refund for my trip on Pacific Surfliner train that ended up taking nearly 7 hours. Yes, Amtrak knows about the problem and will comp me for my trip. It didn’t even play the plausible deniability card by saying it’s an Amtrak California problem and I have to deal with in within the state. It doesn’t issue refunds, however. I will instead receive a credit for one free ride between Los Angeles and San Diego — a $30 value — good for one year. Great … I have to go back on the Surfliner to get my money back. On the one hand, the Surfliner is allegedly 85 percent reliable. On the other, it’s the remaining 15 percent that’s the liquid nitrogen enema.
• I’ve added some more photos to “Scenes from the Purple Line Scoping Meeting” and linked to the Flickr pages for the slide show.
• I wanted to upload some of the happier moments of my San Diego trip Wednesday on Flickr, but even a basic drop-in takes a lot of time. Are there a lot of you that are photo fans? I have galleries of the Little Italy neighborhood, the Padres vs. Braves game and some scenes of the broken down train in Santa Ana (as well as some other station photos shot on the morning trip down that went smoothly).
• I sent an e-mail response to the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System to see whether it knows that L.A.’s TAP cards work on its machines, and what would it do if it found us upstaters using a non-Compass card. I am awaiting a response.

Photo by Yours Truly. It can be seen on the MetroRiderLA Flickr pool.

The good news: Metro’s TAP cards are so versatile, they work on more than a dozen transit agencies in L.A. County …

… and San Diego County!!!

This was one of the few things I experimented with on my day trip to America’s Finest City, at least the finest city in San Diego County.

Well, it should be no surprise. Cubic is based in San Diego, and it outfitted the Metropolitan Transit System with the same fare infrastructure as TAP — only it’s called Compass down there.

I tried a little experiment. I found one of the newer ticket vending machines identical to the Metro second-generation devices and held up the TAP card to charge it as a Compass card in the same way a TAP would be loaded. And the TVM accepted it! It gave the option of buying a day, weekly or monthly pass. San Diego, like L.A., does not have stored value fully implemented. But this confirms the L.A. cards talk to the San Diego machines.

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Had I got home sometime Wednesday evening, the title of this post would have been “Transit Oriented Baseball.” It was a day trip to San Diego, combining a baseball write-up with something most of us are interested in: urban transportation and planning. In short: Petco Park did a lot of things right.

Well, it ain’t happening. First off, the Padres lost against the visiting Atlanta Braves, 6-2. It was a pretty dull game, too. Read about it in the Union-Tribune. That’s about the only link I have the inclination to put together for this post. Was it a little too much to ask for the worst team in the NL West to pull out a win at home, and perhaps field a lineup of batters somewhere above .250.

But they have enough problems as it is.

The losing game — and a nasty sunburn — can be forgotten. But Amtrak cannot be forgotten. Nor forgiven.

I don’t have the bearings to go into the details, but let’s just say train 589, leaving at San Diego at 5:55 p.m., arrived at Los Angeles at 11:40 p.m. Draw your own conclusions.

I had some lovely Flickr-tastic photos to show, but those’ll be put on hold for a while.

I’ll be busy working on the state and Congress to strip out all of Amtrak’s funding now.