MetroRiderLA

The American Planning Association has released their list of the top 10 neighborhoods in the US (and top 10 streets, too).

The neighborhoods were ranked “by several characteristics, including good design, functionality, sustainability, and community involvement.”

Not surprisingly, LA failed to make it onto either list. Probably because it lacks good design, functionality, sustainability, and community involvement.

We were out-did by out neighbors to the north (North Beach in SF) and south (Hillcrest in SD).

(Personally, I’m a bit hurt that my hometown of Boston didn’t get mentioned on either list.)

Anyway, I toss this out to the group: what neighborhoods in LA should have made the list? Or at least, been a good contender?

Pick from this map:

In case you aren’t familiar with it, MuseumsLA is an offshoot of the ExperienceLA website, but focused (of course) just on museums. These websites encourage angelenos to take advantage of our city’s rich cultural offerings by taking the train. Or bus. Anything but a car.

I think it’s a terrific idea, but I’d like to see the public transit trumpetted front and center.

Anyway, MuseumsLA is promoting a Museum-Free-For-All day on Saturday, October 6. Here’s a link to their announcement/

And here’s a list of participating museums (note that some of these museums, like the Getty, are free anyways):

* Armory Center for the Arts
* Autry National Center’s Museum of the American West
* California African American Museum
* California Heritage Museum
* California Science Center
* Craft and Folk Art Museum
* Fowler Museum at UCLA
* The Getty Center
* Hammer Museum
* Japanese American National Museum
* Laguna Art Museum
* Long Beach Museum of Art
* Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
* The Museum of Television & Radio
* The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)
* Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA)
* Museum of Tolerance
* Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
* Norton Simon Museum
* Orange County Center for Contemporary Art
* Orange County Museum of Art
* Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits
* Pacific Asia Museum
* Santa Monica Museum of Art
* Skirball Cultural Center
* Southwest Museum of the American Indian.

I may be “organizing” a group of Long Beachers to hit up the MoLAA. But personally, I’ve been eager to check out the Autry, or the NHM (although, sadly, the Spider Pavillion would still cost extra, I think).

Looks like noted train loather Randal the Tool, er, excuse me, Randal O’Toole, is trying to poison another well against new rail mass transit, this time Honolulu. Check out his article claiming how
horrible trains are. If I were selfish, I’d let Randal go on about his business, hoping his nasty work would just mean fewer projects in other cities and more federal transit money for L.A. But I don’t think that way.

I hope some of you would like to debunk this article and Randal’s raucous ranting, and send off a response email to this Hawaiian website, which I have already done on more than one occasion.

An article in today’s LA Times discusses the various projects the MTA has planned to address congestion, and how it lacks funding sources for all of them.

Click here for the map. [If that didn't work, sorry! Try the LA Times site directyl]

Essentially, the MTA is pinning its hopes on getting Sacramento to raise the gas tax, or to allow congestion pricing, as in London and (maybe sooner or later) New York.

The article highlights a bunch of light rail projects the MTA would like. It’s nowhere near as extensive as some projects others have mentioned, but here are the highlights:

-A Vermont Ave light rail from the Red Line to the Green Line.
-Crenshaw Boulevard from Wilshire to the Green Line’s Aviation Boulevard/LAX, through Leimert Park
-A downtown Blue Line to Gold Line connector, making a 1-transfer trip from Long Beach to Pasadena
-Bob Hope Airport/Metrolink Extension of the Red Line
-Silver Line from Hollywood to Downtown to La Puente in the San Gabriel Valley
-Extension of the Gold Line from East LA to Whittier
-Extension of the Green Line both north and south along the Bay, from Santa Monica to Wilmington
-Yellow line along the 5 from NoHo to Downtown through Silverlake.

What do you guys think? How does it compare to other fantasy maps you’ve seen? Any of these you particularly like/dislike?
What about funding sources? What would be the most economical? Do any of the funding sources have a chance at passing within the next 3 years?
How do these plans hold up to the inevitable BRU accusations of transit-racism?

For those of you unfamiliar with it, ExperienceLA is a website put together by the MTA to encourage people to take transit to cultural events throughout Los Angeles. It has neighborhood guides, trip planners, and current events.

Anyhow, take a look at their website. They are conducting a survey to assess how well it works, so give them your feedback.

It took me two hours tonight to get from Hollywood/Vine to Wilshire/Normandie. I think I probably could have walked it in that time. Not kidding. Two hours.

I leave H&V at roughly 10pm, maybe 10:15. Take the red line to Wilshire/Vermont, try to get on the elevator, and find that the cleaning crew has taken over the elevator with a large piece of equipment. Wanting to make the transfer, we try and fit on but the cleaning folks refuse to make room, breaking the outer door to elevator WVL-1. WVL-2 has been broken in its entirety for weeks now. I make it downstairs, see two Hollywood trains go by until Metro finally has the courtesy at about 11:15pm to tell the folks via loudspeaker at Wilshire/Vermont that the Koreatown trains are leaving from the upper platform. This is news to some 20 or 30 people, who crowd the stairs and the only remaining elevator.

Thanks for putting notices up, for putting it on the rail status page, and for making announcements on the train. Any of those things could have saved all of those confused people from waiting so long.

I finally go to the upper platform, and leave W/V around 11:30. I get to Normandie, go to the lobby level, and find the sole elevator from lobby to street, WNL-1, out of service. Great. I tell yet another cleaning lady, and say that I’ve probably missed the last train - she informs me that there’s one more train back downtown. So back to W/V I go.

I get to W/V again around 11:50, only to find that now BOTH elevators WVL-1 and WVL-2 are out of service. I call Metro (thank God that Helio has a strong signal in LA, I usually have cell phone service in subway station lobbies), only to be told that the elevator is being manually held in emergency mode on the Courtyard level by… wait for it… the incompetent cleaning people. She apparently pages the cleaning people via the elevator, who send it back down. I get upstairs at about 12:00 and proceed to walk home, getting home about 10 minutes ago. At 12:10. After leaving my friends’ apartment near Hollywood/Vine at 10pm. Had any of this information been made available to me while I waited on the platform at Hollywood/Vine, I simply would have walked home from Wilshire/Vermont and been home in time for the 11pm news.

This will all be going in an angry letter to Metro. It’s inexcusable that they would pay so little attention to elevator maintenance, inexcusable that a cleaning crew would insist on priority over the elevator over a disabled passenger, and even more inexcusable that they would allow their same moronic cleaning crews to hold the only functioning elevator at a major transfer station out of service for their own convenience. The whole mess was unacceptable on more levels than I can count.