MetroRiderLA

I don’t remember paying for that… Image courtesy of kalavinka.

In spite of their name, freeways aren’t really free. No, in fact they are actually quite pricey to build, maintain, monitor, clean up, and expand. But when is the last time you reached into your wallet and handed out some cold hard cash to pay that price? I bet you can’t remember, because you never did such a thing. A hand reached into your wallet and took some money, but that hand wasn’t yours, no it was the frosty hand of the government.

That’s all fine and dandy, the government is always reaching into our wallets. In a few weeks the government will finish its job of taking a large percentage of my earnings from 2007. Federal, state, city, they’ve all got their grubby little hands in my pocketbook and there is very little I can do about it. Some people think this is the way it should be. They think the government knows best and that the government should have the power to take your money and distribute it for the betterment of the entire community. These people are called socialists. On the other end of the spectrum are people who think that the government is a bunch of morons, and that each individual should be free to do what they wish with their own money and lives.  These people are called libertarians.

It would seem logical that someone who doesn’t like the government intervening in the lives of individuals would have a big problem with freeways.  But as Alex Marshall notes in his article for Governing.com, that’s just not the case.  Most libertarians, by and large, love highways and auto roads, even though they are funded by the cold hand of the government picking our pockets.  At the same time, they despise mass transportation because, these days, it’s funded by the cold hand of the government picking our pockets.  How is it that publicly funded mass transit is socialism but publicly funded auto roads are the pinnacle of American freedom and free market capitalism?  It’s simple, these libertarians are actually not libertarians, they fall into another group: hypocrites.

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Metro San Fernando Valley Sector Council member Kymberleigh Richards is known for her outspoken defense of Metro when it comes to criticism about bus stops and the lack of comfortable benches/shelters. Kymberleigh makes it clear that since Metro doesn’t own the shelters, benches, or anything else at a bus stop other than the signs, they have no control over the comfort level of the stop. In a recent rant, inspired by a Daily News article about revenue loss due to residents fighting against new bus shelters (provided by an advertising company) that they claim would bring blight to their neighborhoods, Kymberleigh draws the line between improved bus stop conditions and advertising. In the current reality, the two are correlated and you can’t have one without the other. So which is it going to be, comfier bus stops and more money for the city’s dwindling coffers, or neighborhoods free of corporate noise? Kymberleigh sides towards the former, and offers this bit of advice for those on her side:

I am offering a bit of advice to everyone who has ever wanted a shelter placed at their favorite bus stop: Write your elected member of the City Council. Tell him or her that you disagree with the perception that these shelters are advertising blight and should be restricted. And then make an official request for your favorite corner to receive a shelter.

Read Kymberleigh’s entire rant here.

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.)

Photo courtesy of redpopaccidents.

Recently on MetroRiderLA we discussed the fare gates to come on most Metro Rail stations in the near future, as well as the TAP Card’s role in enabling fare gates.

The Metro Board, despite plenty of criticism from fellow Board member Richard Katz and testimony from transportation expert Richard Stanger, have continued to pursue their gating strategy, and have responded to some of the criticism regarding fare gates. They came up with a presentation to be shown to the Metro Board today responding to some of the criticisms. Here we deconstruct some of the myths that Metro staff uses to justify fare gates.

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From the LA Times:

The Federal Transit Administration announced today that it would award $23.3 million over the next two years to help fund bus lanes on a portion of Wilshire Boulevard through the heavily congested Westside.

The lanes will be used during the morning and evening rush hours and would stretch from the Santa Monica-Los Angeles boundary to Valencia Street, which is just west of downtown Los Angeles.

At which point our resident anti-rail ideologue promptly starts cheering. But wait, my dear ideologue friend…

The project does not include the part of Wilshire that traverses the city of Beverly Hills.

That funny noise you may hear is me banging my head on my desk. As basically anyone who has taken the 720 or 920 down Wilshire can tell you (and probably at a fairly high decibel level), at least as between the Pacific and Vermont, the part through Beverly Hills is by far the worst, by far the slowest, and, along with the 405, the source of the delays along Wilshire. Whether or not it’s the fault of BH or Century City is open for debate but irrelevant. The worst traffic along Wilshire is in BH, and if you don’t have them along for this project, then you’re wasting money. Bus-only lanes won’t solve the 405 on-ramp problem, and the lanes don’t go through BH, which is the 20-series’s choke point.

Metro, take your $3.7m, put it in the piggy bank, politely return Washington’s funds and either (a) shelve the project and build the subway, or (b) wait until you have Mayor Delshad along for the bus ride.

Image courtesy of whalt via Flickr.

Although the presidential candidates don’t really have much to say when it comes to transit (you can check out Street Heat LA’s presidential round-up here), that doesn’t mean you can’t take transit to get the LAist’s Super Tuesday Celebration at Seven Grand in Downtown LA.

Starting at 7pm bloggers will congregate at the whiskey bar and discuss the presidential race and other issues facing our world today. Or they will just get wasted. The first 75 peeps who show up wearing their “I Voted” sticker will, unbelievably, receive a free drink! Sounds like a pretty good reason to vote, hell just Christmas Tree the ballot if you don’t care and grab some free booze (jk).

Seven Grand is located in the transit hub of Los Angeles meaning there’s no good reason to drive. Especially since drinking and driving is not only illegal, it’s dangerous as well. I know most of you bloggers are a bunch of pinko green libbed out Obama supporters anyways, so don’t let me catch you being hypocritical! In fact, MetroRiderLA will help you out with transit access info. See ya there!

Oh, yah: Sorry guys, Seven Grand is 21+. I know you’re legally allowed to vote and fight in wars, but you can’t have a sippy sip. Sowwy. And yes, we can blame the car-culture for this. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 held states hostage, like a dealer to a junkie, by withholding federal highway funds from states that did not enforce a minimum drinking age of 21. So although technically the drinking age is set by the states, it was actually coerced by the Feds! Go big gov! I often wonder why my fellow libertarians claim the car-culture offers freedom…

HOW TO GET THERE:

Seven Grand is located at 515 West 7th Street and is served by rail and bus. Click the above map for transit stops near Seven Grand from Public Routes. You can also check the Metro Trip Planner for the best route from your location.