MetroRiderLA

At any rate. The New York Times reports a great real estate deal in NYC: Look what you can get for merely $225,000:

A parking space.

All of this talk about transit-oriented development and NIMBY obstructionists and everything else, and at the end of the day, this article explains why what should be patently obvious to basically everyone in the Western Hemisphere: LA is not New York.

We have two separate issues, which often mistakenly get conflated into one.

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If you weren’t aware, (and I was definitely not) today is Dump the Pump Day. What does that mean? Well, the answer was not immediately clear to me. Obviously it means is a national day of public transportation awareness, but other then that I’m not really sure what happens. Public transportation is definitely not free for the day, at least not on Metro. I know there have been arguments for and against that in the past, but today seems like it would be ideal if well promoted.

So in honor of DTPD, Metro has announced four new rapid lines. Two of which are the new Rapid Express lines. How very exciting of them. The new lines are as follows:

- Line 704 on Santa Monica Boulevard

- Line 760 between Downtown Los Angeles and Metro Blue Line Artesia Station via Long Beach Boulevard

- Express Line 920 along Wilshire - KNBC reports it will start at Vermont and stop at Western, , Fairfax Avenue, Beverly Drive, Westwood Boulevard and Fourth Street in Santa Monica

- Express Line 940 along Hawthorne Boulevard in the South Bay
According to the official Metro press release, these lines will cut travel time by 15% over existing Rapid lines. So is that 40% total or 36.25% total? I was never very good at math.

The two express lines will start service on Monday. The release wasn’t clear on when the 704 and 760 would start running.

[tags]ditty bops, bike to work, metro, city hall, los angeles[/tags]

Celebrate Bike to Work Week with The Ditty Bops!
Photo courtesy of Jason DeFillippo via Flickr.

To kick off Bike to Work Week 2007, Metro is throwing a party downtown, on the South Lawn of LA’s iconic City Hall with a couple of the cutest musicians on two wheels - The Ditty Bops! Last year these ragtime inspired nymphs took their music on a cross-country tour by way of pedal pushing - logging over 4,500 miles riding from LA to NYC. Now if they can bike 4,500 miles for work, you should have no problem hopping on a bike for your commute.

The kick-off rally starts tomorrow, Monday May 14th, at 11:00 AM with a Health and Bike Fair featuring a chance to win a commuter bicycle from REI. The Ditty Bops performance will commence at noon. Don’t forget, if you take Metro to the event (or anywhere this week) with a bike or bike helmet, your ride is free! Make your pledge to bike to work!

[tags]metro movies, car free, uncar, copenhagen, urban planning, contested streets[/tags]

[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9067416427722807670&hl=en[/googlevideo]

Los Angeles bicycle blogger Brayj Against The Machine brought this clip from the film “Contested Streets” to my attention. The clip offers a fascinating and inspiring look into the reimagining of streets in Copanhagen from the traditional automobile oriented streets to streets focused on the bicyclist and the pedestrian. What’s so interesting to me, is that according to the clip, Copanhagen wasn’t always this way, but they fought against the trend, political dispute, and naysayers to bring a about a better city. It gives hope that perhaps such a transformation could happen in car-centric American cities.

[tags]san diego, kpbs, car free, yelp[/tags]

KPBS, San Diego’s public broadcasting station, has a story about on San Diegan who has decided to uncar and see if it’s possible to survive in “America’s Finest City” without a car. Ramie Tateishi, who has been car-free for five months now, decided to join the ranks of the car-free not for environmental, financial, or political reasons, but just because he wants to see if it can be done and how long he can last on his own two feet. You can read the entire story here.

Check out my Yelpcast for countless reviews on San Diego Trolley Stations.

Photo courtesy of KPBS.

[tags]car free, uncar, chris balish, book review[/tags]

Last October I told you all about a book called “How To Live Well Without Owning A Car” by Chris Balish. Well I finally got around to reading it and now I’m going to tell you about it as promised.

“How To Live Well Without Owning A Car” is a practical guide to converting to a car-free lifestyle. I emphasize practical because the book more than anything else emphasizes logical and reasonable explanations on the whys and the hows of dumping your car and surviving (happily in fact) without it. There’s not a lot of theoretical mumbo-jumbo, emotional appeals, or political rhetoric to get you sidetracked - just straight up common sense (however contrary that sense is to common culture). In addition to being a practical guide, it’s also a very personal guide to becoming car-free. Countless anecdotes from real people across the country (and across demographics), each with their own unique car-free lifestyle, are presented throughout the book allowing the skeptical or fearful to find a story close enough to their own to prove that it can be done. This book is also about personal finance, because in many ways it’s a book about saving money (akin to “The Millionaire Next Door”) by ridding your life of unnecessary costs. Balish sets out to convince us that by going car-free we can “avoid the gas pump, cut expenses, reduce debt, and simply your life”, does his book do the job?

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