MetroRiderLA

[tags]public transit, the overhead wire, city transit advocates[/tags]

Pantograph Trolleypole, who runs The Overhead Wire, created a sister site to aggregate feeds from transit-oriented blogs, including MetroRiderLA.

City Transit Advocates has a Newsgator-powered RSS feeder with blog items updated daily.

Trolleypole, which we assume is not the writer’s real name, still writes regularly about rail developments throughout the world on The Overhead Wire.

[tags]california, urban planning, paul shigley, downtown[/tags]

Pasadena’s City Hall.
Credit: Lush.i.ous via Flickr (Creative Commons license)

The California Policy & Development Report provides us with two items on Labor Day. The second follows up on editor Paul Shigley’s subjective rankings of the state’s best and worst big-city downtowns. Los Angeles came in fourth, with San Francisco and San Diego tying for first and Long Beach placing third. MetroRiderLA followed up Shigley’s blog with “We’re number four!” and “How we stand in California“.

Now he wants to follow it up with a ranking of the best and worst downtowns of mid-size cities. Shigley recaps the discussion the first ranking generated, but does not mention what is the minimum population for a mid-size city. The population ceiling is 300,000.

(more…)

[tags]los angeles, urban planning, bill fulton, joel kotkin[/tags]

The war of wits between Bill Fulton and Joel Kotkin continues. Their feud was meme-checked in “Pasadena, not Manhattan,” and the background links are on that post.

Fulton volleys with part two of a three-part blog, “De-Kotkinizing the planning debate.” He starts with praising Kotkin’s earlier works, including “The City: A Global History“. Then Fulton continues to jab Kotkin, this time criticizing him for becoming increasingly careless as he has taken his urban planning medicine show to the masses through op-eds and speaking engagements.

(more…)

[tags]los angeles, militant angeleno, los angeles dodgers, public transit[/tags]

Militant Angeleno’s self-portrait

The Militant Angeleno, local man about town and one of MetroRiderLA’s more militant allies, ventured up to Dodger Stadium without letting the man drag him down and/or charge him $15 for parking. He saw the Dodger game via bicycle. He also has the straight poop on Dodgers owner Frank McCourt’s $60 million offseason improvements to Dodger Stadium. Of this, as much as $0 goes towards getting any form of public transportation to the stadium.

And just below his Dodgers items, Millie pays homage to L.A.’s public transit past — this time for the Los Angeles Yellow Cars.

[tags]los angeles, san fernando valley, van nuys, here in van nuys[/tags]

One man’s trash is another man’s art.
Credit: Andrew Hurvitz, Here in Van Nuys

Here in Van Nuys uberblogger Andrew Hurvitz took a picture of a new art installation at a Van Nuys bus stop, somewhere on Sepulveda Boulevard.

Hurvitz has the straight dope on the project. Glendale artist Basura Garbageyan and assistants from a nearby high school created this untitled project, shopping carts and food packaging on concrete and grass.

Quoting from the Here in Van Nuys article:

Ms. Garbagean has taken a totemic symbol of consumerism, the shopping cart, and arranged a textural symphony of steel at this bus stop on Sepulveda.

“When people are waiting for the bus, they often bring their shopping baskets from Costco and then when the bus comes, they just leave the baskets behind and get on the bus. So that’s where the idea came from,” said Ms. Garbageyan.

In-kind suport was provided by Costco. The site can be see from Metro lines 234 and 734.

[Note: MetroRiderLA has been informed that the art display is satire. The site apologizes for this error and will not assume everything is true if it's on the internet.]

[tags]los angeles, mta, san fernando valley, orange line, bus rapid transit[/tags]

Metro began testing the NABI 65-BRT prototype in service on the Orange Line on Monday. Right now, bus 9495 is the only 65-footer in service, but Metro has pledge to buy 10 units.

The buses had L.A. abuzz.

Coverage:

• Los Angeles Times Bottleneck Blog: ‘Superbus’ stops at Valley
• KCBS-Chanel 2/KCAL-Channel 9: ‘Supersized bus’ starts operation on Orange Line (with video)
• KNBC-Channel 4: MTA tests supersized bus (with video)
• KABC-Channel 7: Metro Debuts Longest Natural Gas Bus in U.S. (with video)
• LAist: LA, Home of North America’s Largest Natural Gas Bus

Also on MetroRiderLA:

• Attack of the 65-foot artics
• The Miami Option