MetroRiderLA

I know that as MetroRider’s you’ve been waiting with bated breath to find out who your new Miss Traffic is going to be. Well, today Metro proudly announced the finalists in the much mocked loved Miss Traffic Contest. The finalists are featured on a page on Metro’s new Interactive website. Rather unfortunately, no men made the final cut, and it’s down to three lovely ladies who are fighting for your vote to crown them the next Miss Traffic. Let’s take a closer look at our contestants:

• Roz Brown: She’s been going Metro for over 20 years and raised a child on Metro. She’s also got a rad side ponytail.
• Sharon Butler: She likes the peace and quiet the Metro offers. The zen candidate. Sassy.
• Stefanie Perez: Looks 10 years younger thanks to Metro. Her voice makes her sound even younger than that.

I voted for my girl Miss Sharon Butler, I like her style and she’s not afraid to sass if need be. Unfortunately, it seems that the internet has pretty much chosen baby-faced Stefanie, because with 513 votes so far, she’s burying the other contestants. But the results aren’t written in stone, and there’s still six more days to vote! That is unless this contest is rigged. Diebold!!!!

Good luck girls, but remember, there can only be one winner. Budgetary constraints ($60 million going to fare gates) prevent Metro from providing each of these ladies with their own Metro t-shirt.

Rush hour commuters enjoy their subsidized ride.

Let’s talk subsidy. The American Automobile Association just released the results of a study called Crash vs. Congestion: What’s The Cost to Society [PDF]. Yes, the American Automobile Association, the group that lobbies for automobiles and was formed in order to get more auto roads built. The study reveals that in most metropolitan areas, the cost of traffic accidents far outweighs the already high costs of congestion. In the Los Angeles metropolitan statistical area (which includes almost 13 million people in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Santa Ana) the report concludes that the yearly cost of crashes amounts to $10.5 billion. Traffic congestion in the metropolitan area costs $9.3 billion annually. Together, crashes and congestion cost Los Angeles and Orange County $19.8 billion a year. That comes out to $1,561 per person per year ($817 per person for crashes, $744 for congestion).

Yikes.

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This Earth Day, April 22nd, the Wilshire Center Business Improvement Corporation(WCBIC)in collaboration with The City of Los Angeles will close off four blocks of Wilshire Boulevard, from Western to Harvard, to show off the possibilities of “green urbanism” that Wilshire Center and other parts of Los Angeles offer. Although so far only Wilshire Center will be closed off the car, the Car-Free Day is a city-wide motion [PDF].

Starting at 10 AM and going until 5 PM on Tuesday, April 22 2008, Wilshire Center’s Earth Day Celebration will include:

• Live music performance (with acoustic set by Michael Franti)
• Bike raffle
• Reusable grocery bag give-away
• Tours of Metro Rapid Bus
• Organic food vendors
• Screening of “An Inconvenient Truth”

The WCBIC really seems committed to the eco-goals that led them to this event, with a whole section of their website dedicated to addressing ecological sustainability. They have a vision of Wilshire Center as a transit oriented urban village, where people can live work and play in a densely populated area without the need for a car. I hope more neighborhoods in Los Angeles follow Wilshire Center’s example and close of their streets on Earth Day… and if the message gets out, permanently.

Photo courtesy of redpopaccidents.

The Metro Board has formally approved new Metro fare gates in order to discourage new ridership and confuse current riders.

New Metro fare gates will require prospective muggers, terrorists, and other unwashed patrons to buy a ticket before descending upon defenseless commuters. Al Qaeda, flush with oil revenue from Iraq, decides that LA’s subway fare is too expensive to warrant terrorism and decides to barbecue pork rinds instead.

(sorry, I couldn’t even try to be serious with this one, the logic is too ludicrous.)

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.)

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.