MetroRiderLA

[tags]transit, michael setty, toronto, edmonton[/tags]

Los Angeles and Toronto have many surprising similarities
Credit: Kevin Steele via Flickr (Creative Commons license)

It’s not the size of the train, it’s the motion of the motion.

Michael Setty of Publictransit.us unearthed a document that’s 30 years old but still remains surprisingly relevant to this today. A 1976 lecture by Greg Thompson, Jas Kooner, and Rudy Massman said that the key to making transit usable is not capital-intensive megaprojects or high-technology snake oil. Instead, it is “management operating and planning technique is the more important variable for high ridership transit … .”

Case studies used in Thompson et al are the Canadian metropoles Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver, with some references to practices in European cities. Keep in mind that Toronto has a legacy system with most of the rail lines that run today operational at the time of the study, while Edmonton and Vancouver were bus-only cities that later on built rail lines.

The cities focused on making sure travel movement is efficient throughout the service area. In contrast, many North American cities that rely on radial route structures are consigned to a fate of chronically low transit usage.

As any coach will say, “you’ve gotta have the fundamentals in place.”

And reading Thompson et al, Toronto’s transit environment has many similarities with Los Angeles. Don’t laugh. Here’s why.

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[tags]los angeles, gold line, metro, mta, franklin avenue[/tags]

The blog-team of Franklin Avenue — one of its writers received a Grammy nomination this year — did a recent family-friendly tour of the Metro Gold Line from South Pasadena to downtown Los Angeles.

The write-up includes a review of Olvera Street restaurant La Luz del Dia.

[tags]peter mcferrin, bus riders union, bru, fare[/tags]

Peter McFerrin, blogger of Clueless and Slightly Slack, comes through once again with an interesting analysis of the fare increase. He does a back-of-the-envelope calculation and shows how much ridership would increase or decrease and what revenue would be raised.

He uses an American Public Transportation Association figure of -0.4 elasticity. Basically, it means Metro’s $2 proposed fare, a 60% percent increase, would result in a 24% decrease in ridership and a 21% percent increase in revenue.

Now for the yellow-shirts’ plan. Reducing fares to 50 cents would yield a 24 percent increase in ridership. But, it would result in a revenue loss of over 50 percent. Perhaps the BRU believes mathematics is a bourgeoisie conspiracy devised to preserve and enhance its own class privilege. Eric Mann must now explain how to handle a surge in ridership (even a single-digit increase, as L.A. had been seeing for the past few years, is difficult to manage) while revenues fall in half.

As bad as most people think Metro is, remember than Mann ran it for 10 years, and he’s in a big part responsible for the looming fare hike. Like he should be lent credibility again.

[tags]los angeles, metro, mta, fare[/tags]

Sit down before you read any further. Here are proposed bus fares through 2009:

Regular adult fares are going to become $2 in 2009.

Day passes are increasing to $5 in July and $8 in 2009.

Semi-monthly passes will be eliminated and monthly passes will be $75 in July and $120 in 2009. The EZ Pass almost doubles in price to $95 in July, and $140 by 2009.

Los Angeles Times Bottleneck Blog supplies this information.

[tags]los angeles, red line, blue line, purple line, advertising[/tags]

You know Metro is really hard-up for money when it rescinded a long-standing policy to ban advertising on trains.

Curbed LA reveals one of the first major advertisers to buy station space is McDonalds for its new 1/3-pound angus burger. Curbed has photos of the ads placed on the Figueroa Boulevard entrance of the 7th Street/Metro Center station for the Red/Purple and Blue lines. These ads are also on the sides of some rail cars.

McDonalds has probably not counted on the ingenuity of Los Angeles’ Tagger-American community. Look for all the “g”s to disappear.

[tags]los angeles, los angeles times, reason foundation, transit coalition, transit[/tags]

Live from the Bottleneck Blog, located in the beautiful Los Angeles Times web site, we have for you a battle of epic proportions. It’s the scholar versus the brawler. It’s rubber wheels versus the real deal of steel. It’s the battle for the heart and soul of Los Angeles.

In this corner, from the Ivory Tower of the Reason Foundation in the 405-adjacent low-rise in West Los Angeles … Ted “Mad Lib” Balaker.

In the opposing corner, from the Northeast San Fernando Valley transit hub of Sylmar, the pride of The Transit Coalition … Bart “Reed It and Weep” Reed.

For the dozens in attendance, for the hundreds around the blogosphere … ladies and gentlemen, llllllllllet’s get ready to rrrrrrrrrrumbllllllllle!

Tune to MetroRiderLA for blow-by-blow coverage:

• Round 1 (March 19): Debating L.A.’s congestion problem
• Round 2 (March 20): Rail or rubber?/Debating rail in L.A.
• Round 3 (March 21): Discouraging congestion/Does rail cost too much?
• Round 4 (March 22): Which way out?/L.A.’s freeway shortage?
• Round 5 (March 23): If money weren’t an object

It’s not TV. It’s MetroRiderLA.