MetroRiderLA

Or is it? It might also be your bus number written in thin blue ink on a 5 x 7 lined index card. And how does one find this pertinent information out you wonder? Well the easiest way is to stand around when an orange local bus with a local number overhead comes to your stop as you wait for a big red articulated rapid bus with a rapid number over it. Then after the “local” drives off sit with the rest of the confused would be passengers asking, “Wait, did it say 728 on that index card?”

Moral of the story being, Metro can, at times, screw you with buses that never show up or run up to an hour late, so don’t let them screw you with Papermate headways too.

Every so often while riding around this fair city one is confronted by the absolute madness of a bad bus driver. Now in all bus drivers’ defense, most are quite capable and drive splendidly to get you where you need to go. And considering that I see driving in this city a torture worse than water boarding, capable, let alone splendid, is an amazing feat. However, there is a select group of drivers that have taken a secret oath as profound and clandestine as the Illuminati.

This society of bad and terribly annoying bus drivers have the power to completely ruin your commute and, if commuting is that much a part of your life, your day. Headaches, back aches, and stomach aches be damned in the opinion of the following three groups of bus drivers. And death to those that wish to read or sleep or just ignore that they’re traveling at all, for why should those on the bus be free of the toil that is the red brake lights of Hondas, Fords, Caddys or Benz’, which the bus driver must face dead on.

The three groups can be broken down as follows: the Excessive Breaker, the Overly Eager, and the Slow Boi.

(more…)

There’s been talk as of late about the much maligned and for most politicians, wish they could scrap, Prop 91. I will be voting YES on this measure but I’ll be doing so somewhat uncharismatically for I don’t believe this will insure much of anything for public transit’s future here in Los Angeles. For you see, the key to Metro’s financial woes lies not in the state’s hands and their twisting of laws to suit their faulty policies, but in Metro’s own sly, greasy, shifty little hands.

What I’m saying is, why just get paid for a service offered when stealing is so much easier?

(more…)

[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.

(more…)

[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.

(more…)

[tags]tap card, metro, los angeles, public transit, smart card, fares, public transit[/tags]

This past month I had the opportunity to take part in a test program of the much anticipated and mysterious TAP card. The TAP card, short for Transit Access Pass, has been talked about for quite a while now (I wrote an article about it around this time last year) and starting this October it finally went public for a 2-month trial period. This public test was hardly advertised, I only found out in late October through one of our commenters that the TAP cards were available at a select few pass outlets, so I could only try it out for the month of November. Unfortunately I was out of the country for much of November riding some fully realized transit systems (more on that in another post). Nonetheless, I jumped at the opportunity and went down to the LADOT Transit Store in the Los Angeles Mall near City Hall to pick up a TAP card for myself and see if it was all I hoped for and more.

(more…)