In East London, an innocent young man is nearly killed by the horrors of at-grade rail. Watch the footage here.

Part of the Transit Oriented Lifestyle is coming into contact with the craziest people on earth every once in a while.  I know in L.A. I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with people who are clearly mentally deranged, but this clip of a woman screaming, ranting, and … freestyle rapping at an old lady on MARTA in Atlanta may just take the cake.  Let’s just remember that these people are the exception, not the rule, when it comes to transit riders.

In a random California suburb a group of boys evade the Feds using pedal power. If there was ever a more powerful and inspirational ode to the power and freedom of bicycles, I don’t know about it.

Via CurbedLA I discovered this now ancient video (from 1991) provided on YouTube by the Metro Librarian.

Metro continues to move into Web 2.0 with this new video posted on Metro’s very own YouTube Channel.

Blogger Ubrayj02, of the bicycle activist blog Brayj Against the Machine, attended Thursday night’s Community Workshop put on by Metro to discuss the Draft 2008 Long Range Plan. At the workshop, DVD presentations were given out, the contents of which are presented above. You can also view the presentation directly by visiting Google Video. Ubrayj also has a detailed recap on the workshop on his blog, and his conclusion is that the long range plane continues to orient Los Angeles around the automobile.

Before moving Downtown, East Hollywood was my ‘hood. To me, it’s the original transit oriented ‘hood because of its proximity to the Metro Red Line and ample bus service, along with its lack of ample parking which led me to dump my car and birth MetroRiderLA in its place. The East Hollywood Neighborhood Council has put together an informative video listing the various transit modes that serve the neighborhood and outlines suggestions on how to improve mobility in East Hollywood. I think every neighborhood should do the same.

I was shocked to find out that over half the people who attend Giants games get there without a car. I bet under 1% of Dodgers fans get to games without a car. The AT&T Park’s website lists public transit directions before car directions in the Getting To The Park section. The Dodgers website, on the other hand, has its own special mini-site dedicated to parking with FAQ’s, safety tips, traffic info, and other such crap that would be irrelevant if they made it easier to get to the stadium without a car. Pathetic.I wonder what kind of overall cost savings (internal and external) the ballpark and stadium sees by having more that half the people attend games without a car.

Click the above image to watch the commercial.

I found this commercial for the Madrid Metro via the Carfree USA blog.  This stunning ode to urban life and subterranean transit shows that in some places the kind of money and time that goes into car advertisements also goes into promoting mass transit.  According to the Wikipedia entry on the Madrid Metro, the 12 lines that serve Madrid’s 3.5 million people (6 million in the larger metropolitan area) span 175 miles and make it the 8th longest urban rail system in the world.  Los Angeles, a city of 3.8 million people and a metropolitan area of 12.9 million people comes in 18th place, with 73 miles of urban rail.

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