MetroRiderLA

Inspired by a comment by Dan W. on the One Year Without A Car post, I present MetroRider readers with this question:

Poll closes March 5, 2008 at 12:00PM.

What is the main reason you have chosen what is clearly an alternative lifestyle in Los Angeles? Sure, there are many reasons that go into the equation, but for me, the main reason I decided to go car-free was the fact that driving (and car ownership) in Los Angeles just sucks! Everything about it was dehumanizing to me: it was stressful, boring, scary, and annoying. Environment and economics are pluses, but they weren’t really a consideration to me when I decided to get rid of my car. What’s your story?

Metro has officially launched the first phase of what it calls its “interactive video wall”, or Metro Interactive. Currently the site features various videos intended to “help customers and visitors more easily navigate Los Angeles”. It is also the new home of Metro Board Chair Pam O’Connor’s infamous online chats. Future plans for the site include: blogs, polls, user uploads, and live streaming video. Metro views Metro Interactive as “a tool to help us reach out to our customers”. Let’s see how phase one fares with this discerning customer.

First Impressions

Thankfully, Metro decided to go with a unique domain (or at least a subdomain) with Metro Interactive. Unlike Miss Traffic, which was hidden three directories deep in the Metro site, Metro Interactive can be reach by simply typing multimedia.metro.net into your web browser. Doing so will lead you to a site with the clean visual design that has been successfully standardized throughout Metro. Bold colors and imagery on a clean grid are complimented with the serious but friendly Scala Sans font. The header pays homage to the silhouettes of th now iconic iPod advertisements, portraying an image of a person holding a video camera. The site seems a little barren, with a sizable chunk of empty space in the top right corner, but keep in mind that this is the first-phase. Plus, less-is-more is always a good philosophy when it comes to design. One strange visual flaw is an unnecessarily low resolution Metro logo at the top of the page.

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It’s the last day of the month, you need a new Metro Pass, you happen to be at Union Station. Just outside you can see the silhouette of the MTA Headquarters or “the Taj Mahal” at it is snidely referred to because of it’s imposing grandeur. The Gateway Transit Center at the east side of Union Station is filled with spectacular light from the stained glass windows above. A mural representing the diversity of our city welcomes travelers of many races, genders, religions, and all of other possible human categories. The painting seems to come to life below as you see a line of the very people represented in the image, all of them waiting patiently to purchase their Metro Pass for the coming month.

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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.)

Who will win, Metro’s Miss Traffic or Capital Metro’s i-Ride?

Cue the Rocky theme song, because today ladies and gentlemen, we here at MetroRiderLA are bringing you ringside to the transit fight of the season….

In one corner we have the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority, better known as Metro. Metro is a heavyweight in the transit world, holding the record for third largest transit agency in the country. Metro has a daily ridership of 1.6 million people, 191 bus routes covering 1,433 square miles, 5 rail lines (3 light rail and 2 subway) with 73 miles of track, and was voted “America’s Best” in 2006 by the American Public Transit Association. In addition, Metro has made numerous television and film appearances. Metro is the very definition of a contender.

In the other corner we have the Capital Metropolitan Transit Authority, also known as Capital Metro. This bantamweight from Austin, TX is scrappy in every sense of the word. With only 68 bus routes, no rail (a commuter line is scheduled to open this year), and a ridership of 130,000, Capital Metro is a David to Metro’s Goliath. Sure Capital Metro offers dirt cheap fares (50 cents is the most you’ll pay), interactive Google based bus maps, HTML formated schedules, and Wi-Fi access for passengers, but does that stuff even matter?

What’s brought these two clearly unbalanced fighters here today is the marketing contests both agencies are currently promoting. Metro will henceforth be represented by Miss Traffic and Capital Metro will be reprsented by i-Ride. Miss Traffic and i-Ride are both contests that attempt to get people excited about transit by telling stories about why they ride. This fight is over which contest is better.

Let’s get ready to rumble!!!

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