MetroRiderLA

In a stunning attempt to steal MetroRiderLA’s thunder as the coolest transit blog in town, East Coast transplant and Street Heat blogger Damien Newton has brought Streetsblog to Los Angeles.  Yes, Streetsblog LA is open and accepting comments.  Streetsblog has done an amazing job covering what they call the “streets renaissance” in New York City with daily coverage that is unmatched.  Here’s what Damien has to say about Streetsblog LA:

“Streetsblog seeks to cover the news about life on L.A.’s streets in a way that emphasizes that our roads are a public good, not a means to moving as many cars through a community as quickly as possible.  L.A.’s transportation planning has revolved around its car culture for decades, but now that a streets revolution is coming, Streetsblog will be here to chronicle it all.”

Sounds excellent. I say the more transit oriented blogs in L.A., the better.

Eric over at blogdowntown has posted the various models for the Downtown Connector, as well as readable images.

Most alternatives run at grade through Downtown on 2nd Street, with 2 and a half of them largely or entirely subway operations. Metro says that a full subway route would require losing the Little Tokyo station, which seems to be somewhat deleterious. The “compromise” plan seems to be Alternative #5, which would run underground until the last moment at Alameda Street. It’s not perfect, but speaking personally and not for this site, I have to say that #5 is the best alternative, although Alternative #6 appears to create a “compromise” station near Astronaut Onizuka, which may be a suitable replacement. That, and my paycheck will suffer severely due to easy access to Kinokuniya, but thankfully Metro isn’t my accountant.Either way, it sounds like a fairly big mess.

(hat tip to Eric Richardson - thanks for posting this information for those of us who were/are unable to attend the meetings.)

Trainjotting, a blog about commuting to and from Manhattan, posted a link to a website called StationStops that, among other things, provides HTML formatted schedules for the Metro-North Railroad. What does this have to do with Los Angeles transit? If you recall, one of my biggest gripes about the Metro website is that schedules (an nearly everything else) are provided only in the PDF format. For those who aren’t aware, PDF files require an external program for viewing and are made specifically for print, not the web. Because of this they are an obtrusive, annoying, and unwieldy way to share important information on the internet. Unfortunately, most transit agencies don’t seem to know squat about basic web usability guidelines, and thus PDF schedules are something of an industry standard. Apparently, the New York MTA adheres to this silly standard, and StationStops decided to take matters into their own hands and formated schedules for the Metro-North Railroad in easy to read/print/copy/paste HTML. The results speak for themselves. I invite you to compare the StationStops HTML schedule for the New Haven Line with the NYC MTA’s PDF schedule of the same line. Which one is easier to read?

Here at home, Metrolink smartly offers HTML schedules in addition to the traditional PDF ones, but they could learn a thing or two from StationStops clean and simple tables. Instead of trying to emulate the PDF tables, which must contend with the non interactive limitations of print, they should be customized for ease of use and interactivity on the web.

Metro, and all transit agencies, need to realize that PDF is reserved for high quality print applications, not web based tables. HTML was specifically created to present tabular information on the web, so it’s insane to present schedules in any other way. Schedules are some of the most important information a transit rider needs and thus should be presented in a way that’s easy to access, read, and print.

Links about PDF:

• PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption
• PDF’s are evil, lazy, slothful and sinful
• Facts and Opinions About PDF Accessibility
• When to use PDF

I found this LOL worthy story from the Transit Sleuth blog. The headline reads: “Car drives into MAX tunnel, disrupts service”.

It seems that even grade-separated tunnels can’t keep us safe from law-breaking automobile drivers. Apparently a Portland drunk driver took an early Sunday morning drive into a Portland MAX light rail tunnel. Our drunk friend entered the tunnel from the east entrance and, according to Fox 12 Oregon, drove for over a mile until coming to a stop 75 feet from the Washington Park MAX station. It took hours to get the car out, service was supsended, and the estimated cost of actions of this one negligent driver? $20,000.

Luckily, this was all happening in the wee hours of the morning, so no one got hurt, including the driver who would have surely, as the Transit Sleuth points out, have been a top contender for a Darwin Award had he collided with a MAX train. Of course, in that hypothetical event it’s likely the train would somehow be blamed.

Click the above image to watch the commercial.

I found this commercial for the Madrid Metro via the Carfree USA blog.  This stunning ode to urban life and subterranean transit shows that in some places the kind of money and time that goes into car advertisements also goes into promoting mass transit.  According to the Wikipedia entry on the Madrid Metro, the 12 lines that serve Madrid’s 3.5 million people (6 million in the larger metropolitan area) span 175 miles and make it the 8th longest urban rail system in the world.  Los Angeles, a city of 3.8 million people and a metropolitan area of 12.9 million people comes in 18th place, with 73 miles of urban rail.

Contrast with:

• Metro TV Spots 

In a sign of the times, MetroRiderLA introduces its first appearance on the social networking powerhouse Facebook. MetroRiderLA has had a presence on MySpace for quite some time now, but since MySpace is old hat and Facebook is the new hotness, we’re joining the new school. The MySpace profile is somewhat clunky anways, and it looks like the Facebook group will enable further discussion and community involvement in addition to the blog itself. We’ll see. If you’re a Facebook member, join the group today, and spread the word to all your Facebook friends. Let’s let social networking help strengthen the Los Angeles Transit Oriented Lifestyle!

Links:

• MetroRiderLA on Facebook
• MetroRiderLA on MySpace
• MetroRiderLA on Flickr