MetroRiderLA

[tags]tap card, metro, los angeles, public transit, smart card, fares, public transit[/tags]

This past month I had the opportunity to take part in a test program of the much anticipated and mysterious TAP card. The TAP card, short for Transit Access Pass, has been talked about for quite a while now (I wrote an article about it around this time last year) and starting this October it finally went public for a 2-month trial period. This public test was hardly advertised, I only found out in late October through one of our commenters that the TAP cards were available at a select few pass outlets, so I could only try it out for the month of November. Unfortunately I was out of the country for much of November riding some fully realized transit systems (more on that in another post). Nonetheless, I jumped at the opportunity and went down to the LADOT Transit Store in the Los Angeles Mall near City Hall to pick up a TAP card for myself and see if it was all I hoped for and more.

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[tags]red line, metro, los angeles, fare gates, green line, subway, light rail[/tags]

Fare gates on the Boston Green Line. Photo courtesy of iandavid via Flickr.

To the surprise of possibly no one, the Metro board voted to install fare gates at Metro Rail stations. According to a recent Metro report, 5% of Metro Rail riders do not pay their fares, resulting in $5.5 million a year in lost fare revenue. The estimated cost to install barriers on the Red and Green lines, as well as “select” light rail stations? $30 million to install and $1 million a year for operations. Only one person on the Metro Board, Richard Katz, voted against the project, calling it “a great boondoggle”.

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Which is slower? Traffic in Los Angeles when it’s raining or the Red, Blue, Green, Gold, and Orange Lines in any weather?

For Koreatown residents, the last few months have just been a Disaster. Yes, a Disaster. Capital D.

This Disaster comes about because of the bizarre amount of track work that needs to be done between MacArthur Park and Vermont/Beverly. On most weekday nights, a “diversion is in effect” on the Purple Line, one which diverts the Purple Line out of existence and turns it into a very heavy DASH shuttle. The usual Disaster involves running Red Line service like usual, while running The Subway Formerly Known as the Purple Line as a shuttle between Western and Vermont, stopping at the wrong platforms on the westbound segment.

The confusion this Disaster creates is somewhere between “unbelievable” and “insurmountable.” Sometimes, Metro announces the Disaster over the intercom. Sometimes, you can even understand the announcement. Sometimes, the Disaster is announced via the worthless LED screens. Sometimes, said announcement is even accurate - it regularly states that the Disaster will only occur on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, yet the Disaster occurs with regularity on Wednesday nights, including last night.

Inquiries as to what, precisely, brought this about have led nowhere. Metro appears disinclined to explain precisely what needs to be done in the Downtown segments of the subway which requires such a routing. Quite honestly, in the time that the Disaster has been going on, they could have built an underground five-star hotel between Westlake and Vermont.

Usually, not everybody understands what’s going on. Announcements are usually only in English, and often there are people who are, for example, not regular riders, or from out of town, and they invariably don’t understand the scale of the Disaster. Most nights I’ve been caught in the unflinching jaws of the Disaster, I’ve had to give detailed explanations to at least one person, and because it seems that Metro rank-and-file are not being told, precisely, what precipitated the Disaster, train drivers are themselves understandably becoming irritated, and their patience with questions has worn thin in recent weeks.

So, the question I therefore put to you. Does anyone have the slightest clue as to what’s going on?

My concern is that Metro is doing this because ridership east of Vermont may be low due to the relative lack of late-night attractions in Downtown. This may well be the case, and this may be a logical solution to the problem. However, they’re going to have to indicate a permanent diversion such as this on all maps, and they’re going to have to start using the correct platforms for westbound trains, because signage is only worth using if it is always accurate.

Can anyone shine some light on this issue? And for the love of God, can Metro start putting this on metro.net so that people can figure it out before they leave for the day? I’ve put in comments to Metro about this before, to have them apologize and assert that they will start putting the announcement on the website. Well, if anyone in the Taj Mahal is reading, I don’t see anything about the Disaster on the Rail Service Alerts page yet.

This won’t be a long-winded breakdown on my part about how this (the title above) is a false statement but instead I’ll quote a small bit from “How To Be Free” by Tom Hodgkinson below.

…the Austrian writer and philosopher  Ivan Illich once calculated that if you add up all the time you spend on the car, including the trips to the garage and the time spent earning the money to buy the fuel and maintain the vehicle, and divide by the number of miles you travel, then your average speed is 5 mph. You would be faster on a bicycle. 

If nothing else it’s a pretty good way to look at the myth that private automobiles are more convenient and faster than public transit or biking.

With all this talk about the Westside alignment, some heated, some humorous I feel that a great disservice is being made to the many fine residents of this city. And I’m not talking about the “obvious” crime element getting speedy and timely access to Los Angeles’ upper gay echelon to do their misdeeds, nor is it our children’s and baby’s safety (like it is elsewhere, lolz) or environmental racism (again like it actually is elsewhere, lolz 2x). But something a great deal more important. Something far more drastic of an oversight than imaginable.

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