MetroRiderLA

I’m usually a huge fan of Santa Monica’s historic bus system. They provide great service with polite drivers, a comfortable ride and easy-to-understand schedules, along with surprisingly frequent and reliable service for a community that’s debatably a suburb. They’ve also managed to provide debit-style fares, along with the other “MetroCard” systems in LA, while Metro is still using tokens, which even Boston and New York have finally given up, and at that for some bizarre purposes to this East Coast kid.

Having said that, their “modernization” of the Little Blue Card has been a Big Blue Mess.

(more…)

You just knew it was coming, didn’t you? “Coalition sues in bid to block MTA fare hikes,” which roughly translated means “the rail-hating BRU’s at it again.” Memo to Eric Mann and co.: I’m a local public transit rider, and you most definitely don’t represent me - and I ride the bus each and every weekday.

Long Beach Transit is surveying customers to find out about transit needs in the City:

http://lbtransit.com/transportationsurvey/

You can tell them what you think are the biggest transit problems, and what solutions you would prefer.

If you live in the area, fill this out!

2nd District City Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal is flaunting her progressive creds by asking the City Council to fund a study to create an East-West rail line in Long Beach. The proposed line, whose route is not yet determined would connect downtown with points of interest on the east side, such as CSULB.

You can read about it in the Long Beach Press-Telegram:
http://www.presstelegram.com/news/ci_5890224

I am delighted to see this being discussed!

Now let me put on my Negative-Nancy face:
It’s really annoying that all this transit planning occurs on a local level. We have a REGIONAL transit problem. A short-distance rail will be of limited use to those of us who commute around LA and Orange Counties (as so many Long Beach-ies do).

But when you have an incompetent County Board of Supes in charge, it’s up to the few broad-minded municipalities to take on this burden….

Here’s some mass transit fun. While leaving the Pershing Square station on the Red/Purple line today, I saw this bizarre subway route map standing next to the escalator. It took me about half a second to realize this was a prop for some upcoming movie shoot. But they did a great job designing this totally fictional system map, which is fascinating. It shows a fake non-place, with some place names from L.A. and others from Washington D.C. Oddly, they’re using the real MTA “Metro” logo though. (Sorry, my camera freaked out here.)

Take a closer look. Meet you at Jack Avenue!

On the back of the map stand was this lenticular map, three maps in one actually, depending on the angle where you stood. This one has place names from New York City. Must have cost a bundle to make this.

The Pershing Square station was playing the part of the 14th Street Station on the Green Line. Okay then. Note Metro logo at left.

At this fake newstand was the security guy, keeping a close dutiful watch on all these expensive sets…oh no, wait…Dude’s reading a magazine.

The funniest part of this was that while I was taking these pictures, a number of people stopped and looked at this map, trying to figure out what the hell it showed and where they were. “Don’t bother homez,” I told the guy, who looked stumped, “that map isn’t real.” He wouldn’t believe me. As far I know, he’s still looking for the Gold Line to City Center Plaza.

Anyone picked up that “Green Line Destinations” brochure yet? I grabbed one after work a couple days ago because, sadly, I needed a good laugh. It’s great to know that I can take over an hour to get to a McDonalds or an El Pollo Loco, if I’m ever feeling deprived and in need of a pleasure tour along the Century Freeway.

What do people know of the green line? My understanding is that the travel industry lobby (e.g. taxi drivers, LAX garages, area hotels) advocated for the green line to stay out LAX, in order to keep it from being easy to get out of the area. So that makes that part of the Green Line kind of useless. But my further understanding is that, when it was built, there was a hope that the aerospace industry would be a huge employer on the western edge, and that folks would commute from the eastern edge of it, and thus create independent demand for the line. I’ve also heard rumors that the BRU advocated for the line, which would explain why it’s the runt of the MTA litter.

But instead, the military-industrial complex collapsed under its own weight after the Cold War, and now I have trouble seeing the use for it. It follows the freeway medians, which isn’t exactly the most comfortable way to wait for a train, Hollywood/Vine it ain’t. Frankly, I fail to grasp why we didn’t simply split the blue line into two branches, west and east, so that you could at least get a one-seat ride to LAX and Norwalk. A flying junction at Imperial/Wilmington would be annoying but not impossible, and by the time you’re building a flying junction, you could put in switches that would allow the Norwalk-Redondo service that currently exists. Sort of like the NY/NJ PATH, where at peak hours you can go from almost any station, to almost any station, in a single ride.

So, any thoughts on the green line in its current state?

Photo by Peter Ehrlich, hosted by the NYC Subway fan site.