MetroRiderLA

A screenshot of the Headway blog, your portal to transit’s future.

A blog I’ve recently come to discover and enjoy, thanks in part to a recent interview with our very own Wad about his work on SoCalTIP, is Joe Hughes’s Headway blog. In many ways Headway has a similar mission to MetroRiderLA: improving transit through individual action. Headway smartly recognizes that attempting to navigate the massive political and monetary roadblocks in order to improve transit can often be difficult and fruitless, but that passionate individuals have the power to bypass the political machine and facilitate their own improvements without the bureaucracy. With the proliferation of the web this philosophy is more relevant than ever. Headway references sites like Seattle Bus Monster, Train Check, and events like the Toronto Transit Camp as evidence of the D.I.Y. transit movement at work. Joe himself has been involved in the third-party game, working on sites like Google Transit and buskarma, in addition to Headway.

The blog itself has been around for a year on this day (Happy Blog Birthday!) and has logged in over 40 posts in that time. Google Maps mash-ups, GPS hacks, and iPhone hints are just a few of the topics Headway looks at. Headway also offers it’s own innovation, the Headway Wiki, a user editable index of transit agencies, cities, software, and third-party sites. As of today there were 81 third-party transit sites listed.

Headway has really created an inspirational resource for all those interested in fixing transit but who don’t feel like waiting 5, 10, 15, or more years for the agencies to make a difference. Check it out and see if you’re inspired.

Mayor Villaraigosa is going to start riding one of these to encourage others to do the same.

The Los Angeles blogosphere is abuzz today with news from the City Council hearing on creating a traffic relief plan for Los Angeles (after a “discovery” by Council Member Wendy Greuel that L.A. has been without a transportation plan for the last 20 years and none for the future).

CurbedLA has been listening in on the hearing, and has had regular updates throughout the day. They note that there’s been talk of land use, density, and the fact that there are no easy solutions. They also heard from a Portland planner who talked about the Portland Aerial Tram and apparently it’s being discussed a solution to traffic around Dodger Stadium.

Metroblogging Los Angeles snarked about the fact that the Mayor, in an attempt to show his dedication to public transportation, arrived late to the hearing because he rode the bus. According to KFI-AM the mayor among other things, wants to create incentives to use public transportation and thinks that it is the key to easing traffic. KTLA also looks at the mayor’s statements, including the possibility of backing a countywide half-cent sales tax to generate cash for public transit.

Downtown blogger Angelenic looks at the possible impacts of the traffic plan for Downtown. The blogger notes that diagonal pedestrian crossings are being considered, and could be useful in Downtown due to the increasing pedestrian traffic thanks to all the new development.

Bike activist ubrayj02, aka Brayj Against The Machine, notes the importance of the transportation hearing and offers his two cents from an bicyclists point of view. He also provides a link to a heated discussion of the issue on the Midnight Ridazz forum.

The BusTard over at The Bus Bench blog deserves a MetroRider Award of Blogging Excellence for reporting on the most glaring example of Metro’s inability to hold together even the most basic elements of their rag-tag transit system. Anyone who has ever descended into or ascended out of a Red Line station knows that, more often than not, the escalators do not work. They are either not moving, blocked off, or completely ripped out as men in jump suits tweak around parts of an escalator normal citizens are never supposed to see.

The thing is, most of us, in our complacency and relative good health, just pass it off as an annoying example of bureaucratic ineptitude and continue on up the stairs. The Bus Bench isn’t having that any longer, and with its nearly daily video reports of out-of-order Metro escalators, it’s shedding a very bright light on that bureaucratic ineptitude that has long been ignored.

The results are almost humorous in the fact that in the first 15 days of the year, not a day has gone by without a broken escalator. In fact, January 15th set a record with five escalators out between Westlake/McArthur Park, 7th Street Metro Center, and Pershing Square. Those are three consecutive stations. Insane!

Siel over at the L.A. Times Emerald City blog asked me to offer my opinion on a recent anti-rail op-ed piece printed in the L.A. Times entitled “The MTA’s Train Wreck“. In classic style, I did just that… for paragraphs and paragraphs. Here’s a little sample:

…Herein lies my problem with the article by Mr. Moore and Mr. Rubin: they still see transit as little more than a welfare program for those who can’t afford cars (aka, “the poor”). I see transit as the solution to The Traffic Problem. Transit ridership increases or decreases don’t matter in regards to The Traffic Problem if the only riders are those can’t afford cars in the first place. And in Los Angeles, because of The Traffic Problem, transit can no longer be seen as a welfare program. In other cities, perhaps, but in Los Angeles traffic is The Problem, and if The Problem isn’t solved it’s likely we’ll all end up needing some sort of welfare. But this is the beauty of public transit: it doesn’t discriminate. I can’t just go pick up some food stamps, but I’m free to hop on any bus or train. So transit has the potential to be a both a way to help give mobility to those who can’t afford a car AND solve The Traffic Problem by getting those who can afford cars out of them. The big issue, of course, is how to get those people out of their cars.

I can tell you right now: buses ain’t gonna cut it…

Go check out the post on Emerald City for the whole shebang.

• Travel+ Leisure Magazine put L.A. in last place due to its poor mobility.
• What’s next for the eastside?  A Gold Line to Whittier perhaps?
• The L.A. Times takes a look at the other subway to the sea.
• Cars fight back! Siel at Emerald City notices an ad trying to get people off the bus and into cars.

[tags]planning, congestion, traffic, public transportation, bicycle[/tags]

Click to see full image.

The above image is from a poster in the City of Muenster Planning Office, August 2001.