MetroRiderLA

Confession. I bought a Nintendo Wii. There are already too few hours in the day to do what I need and want to do (as evidenced by the sporadic posting around here lately), and yet, I bought a Nintendo Wii. As if writing a Metro blog wasn’t enough of a distraction from trying to make my freelance graphic design business the kind of venture that pays my bills, I had to go and buy a Nintendo Wii.

So here’s how my Wednesday was shaping up. I had a plate full of work, a lack of sleep from the previous night, a Nintendo Wii cooing my name in the other room, and on top of all that, some dude was supposed to talk about urban rail over at Metro Headquarters. Talk about a dilemma. Do I do the responsible thing and work through lunch, ensuring (at least temporarily) my financial future? Do I abuse my home office and take a nap? Do I falter to the Wii’s incessant pleading and waste the rest of my day playing fake doubles tennis against a bunch of virtual Weebles? Or do I put blog before work and go check out Jeff Kentworthy, co-author of Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence, over at Metro HQ.

Yes loyal readers, I sacrificed work (easy), napping (harder), and the Wii (damn near impossible), to learn about the advantages of urban rail. The following is a record of what I learned as to ensure my choice was not in vain.

(more…)

Jeff Kenworthy, co-author of Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence and professor of Sustainable Cities at Curtin University (Australia), will be speaking tomorrow (Wed. April 30th) at noon in the Metro Board Room at One Gateway Plaza (the Taj Mahal).

This special talk is sponsored by the L.A. Eco-Village, CRSP Institute for Urban Ecovillages, Sierra Club, Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust, and So.CA.TA.

He’ll bring us up to date on all the latest research on rail in the major cities of North America, Australia, Europe and Asia comparing high, median and low rail cities with respect to a variety of quality of life issues, competitiveness with cars, comparative urban form, and economics. Lots of inspiring pictures on how to do things differently in Los Angeles. The presentation will help us see that urban rail systems are a critical element in building effective multi-modal public transport systems that create a ‘virtuous circle’ in public transport and compete more successfully with the car.

The talk also shows that cities that are more rail-oriented tend to develop better qualitative features of the urban environment such as more livable, attractive and congenial people-oriented public spaces.

This sounds like a very interesting event for those interested in urban planning, automobile dependency, and the future of rail in Los Angeles.

Elsewhere:

• The Ten Myths About Automobile Dependency by Peter Newman & Jeff Kenworthy [PDF]

Today I decided to be all green and jump on the Purple Line to go the Wilshire Center Earth Day Celebration down at Wilshire/Western.

I’m not a particularly “green” dude in that I don’t really care about Mother Earth and Gaia and Saving The World and all that crap. I do, from an economic standpoint, appreciate the logic of conservation and dislike the idea of unnecessary waste. I don’t own a car because I don’t think it’s a very effective or economical mode of transportation in Los Angeles, nor do I like the burden of having to store and maintain a 2-ton multi-thousand dollar piece of machinery on my own. I work enough, thank you very much, and I like to get paid for my work, not pay out the ass for it.

This being said, my transit oriented lifestyle has invariably led me to terms like “green” and “sustainability” as well as events like “Earth Day”. I’ll admit, this is the first Earth Day anything I’ve been to since probably 3rd grade when my class made various ecological shapes out of construction paper to paste on the halls of the school. So I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I walked out of Wilshire/Western and onto a car-free Wilshire Boulevard.

What I got was a bunch of hippies selling crap.

(more…)

Yesterday was the Thai New Years’ Songkran Festival, an event in East Hollywood (Thai Town) that has become increasingly popular in the four years it has existed. The celebration spans many blocks of Hollywood Boulevard, from Western Avenue to Vermont Avenue, and the combination of free admission, delicious food, cultural events, and Thai boxing means that those blocks are filled to the brim with over 30,000 people. I’ve personally seen the event grow in scope and popularity, as Thai Town was my first neighborhood in Los Angeles, and I moved in just in time for the first of what would become a yearly event. It’s really one of the funnest cultural events in the city.

The Hollywood/Western Red Line Station is ground zero for the Thai New Years’ Festival as the intersection of Hollywood and Western is where the road closures and festival begin. Parking in East Hollywood, and Thai Town in particular, is limited and tight, thus the Red Line is a popular way to get to the festivities. I rode up from Downtown around lunchtime and the majority of the people on the train exited at Hollywood/Western and headed towards the festival. It was inspiring to see so many people using our transit system. It was a cacophony of races, classes, and ages… a testament to the unifying power of transit and of a good food-based cultural festival.

Metro was a sponsor of the event, but I can’t say that they heavily publicized it or that they had a major presence at the event. No matter though, people went Metro on their own accord in droves. And why not? A quick train ride with family on friends on a warm spring day sure beats sitting in traffic and searching for parking.

Or does it?

(more…)

This Thursday, April 10th, Metro will be hosting poetry readings at Union Station during rush hour. Starting at 4pm, three poets from the Poetry Society of America (Elena Karina Byrne, Suzanne Lummis, and Marisela Norte) will read selections of their work to commuters. This special event is being held to commemorate 10 years of Poetry in Motion, a program created by the Poetry Society of America that places poetry on our buses and trains where ads might typically be found. Poetry in Motion was first introduced in New York City in 1992, and came to Los Angeles in 1998. There are over 60,000 poetry placards on the interiors of Metro buses.

Of particular interest is poet Marisela Norte, whose work is not only featured on Metro buses, but is written on them! According to her artist statement, Marisela writes most of her East Los Angeles inspired poetry while riding Metro Line 18[PDF] from East LA to Downtown. She doesn’t drive and considers her poetry her vehicle, which is cool enough for me to actually give poetry another chance and check out Marisela and the others Thursday at Union Station.

Image courtesy of iZENstein.

Image courtesy of xero79.

The dust has settled from the Dodgers historic reunion with the Los Angeles Coliseum this past weekend. Over 115,000 people showed up for this game, and many of them were hoping that the mass transit alternatives offered by both Metro and the Dodgers would spare them the parking and traffic nightmare they’ve grown accustomed to at Dodgers games. According to the L.A. Times, 35,000 people showed up at Dodger Stadium hoping to take advantage of the shuttles to the Coliseum provided by the Dodgers. Unfortunately, the shuttles turned out to be a colossal failure. Apparently most of the shuttles were just that, smaller van-like buses that could hold a very limited amount of passengers, and according to people who were there, the whole process was very chaotic and unorganized. Some fans were still stranded at Dodger Stadium while the game had been going on for an hour some six miles away. These people will likely never attempt to go to a baseball game without a car ever again.

(more…)