MetroRiderLA

This post is to confirm what you already know, I’m taking a hiatus from blogging.

This wild foray into transit blogging in the car capital of the world has kept me occupied for a little over two years now.  It’s been great fun, and attracted more readers than I ever imagined, and in many ways a real community formed from these silly postings.  The fact that even the most mundane posting of a few news links can garner 60 comment flame wars is a testament to that.

I started this blog two years ago because there weren’t really any sites devoted to promoting, discussing, and informing people about the mass transit system of the second largest city in the United States.  Well, things have changed in the last two years, and I’d like to think that MetroRider helped in some small way spur that change.  Today there’s no shortage of people online talking about Metro, and there are in fact two blogs devoted to Los Angeles specific transportation issues that are run by full-time professional journalists and updated daily.  If Streetsblog LA and (the new and improved) Bottleneck Blog were around two years ago, it’s likely MetroRiderLA never would have been born.

Other essential L.A. transit blogs that have appeared since MetroRiderLA came on to the scene include John von Kerczek’s collection of fantasy maps and insightful commentary on “Ditch the Car, Take the Metro” and the ever critical, vulgar, and often hilarious “Bus Bench“.

So the reason I’ve decided to take a break from MetroRiderLA for an indefinite amount of time is that, for one, I’m really busy with my work that I get money for, and in a sagging economy it’s important that I concentrate on making dat money.  Also, I’ve been finding it hard to compete with the full-time bloggers (and full fledged journalists) over at The Bottleneck Blog and Streetsblog LA.  I simply do not have the luxury of time or the journalistic skillz (to say nothing of the monetary incentive) that those platinum playboys do to offer that kind of in-depth, compelling coverage of “the transit oriented lifestyle”.  Also, for whatever reason, I’m just kind of sick of blogs in general right now.  I used to check the LA blogs and transit blogs daily, but for the last month or so I haven’t felt compelled to read or comment on them.  Blog burnout.

The time for hiatus has come because of all of this, and I can’t be sure how long it will last.  Ideally I’d like to find a way to reorient the blog in a way that will address a niche that the other two major L.A. transit blogs don’t cover.  My vision for MetroRiderLA has always been to focus on the “lifestyle” of being a transit rider in Los Angeles as opposed to the politics of the mess.  But unfortunately, to truly cover the lifestyle in the way that I have imagined would require a lot of time and energy that I don’t currently have.  If you have any ideas for the future of MetroRiderLA, feel free to comment, I’ll take anything and everything into consideration.  Until I return, enjoy the forum and all the other great L.A. transit blogs.

Hopefully this break will lead to a new and improved MetroRiderLA upon my return.  Thanks for the support for these last two years!

The transit communications blog, Permanent Campaigns, recently posted an article targeted at transit agencies about a topic very close to home here at MetroRiderLA, unofficial transit blogs. Entitled “Beware of the Blogger: A Guide to Dealing with Unofficial Transit Blogs“, the article lists some guidelines transit agencies can take to develop a positive relationship with bloggers. It has a list of different transit blogger archetypes to look out for:

• The Fanboy/Fangirl: the purest geeks of the geeky world of transit advocacy, these guys have nothing but love and passion. I don’t know if L.A. has one of these, the closest I’ve found is the Go Metro MySpace page.
• The New Urbanist Wannabe: ultra critical intellectual bloggers with a background in urban design for whom nothing is ever good enough. I might put the L.A. Metro Mole in this category.
• The Journalist: news hounds with only one beat: transit. This is the realm of Streetsblog LA and in a less traditional way, The Bus Bench.
• The Crank: nutty types who rant endlessly about nothing much in particular. Although it’s not updated any more, I’d put the What’s Wrong With L.A. Public Transportation blog in this category.
• The Hater: these people just be hatin’. Hmmm… are there any pure haters out there?

I think MetroRiderLA is a little bit of all of these. I’m probably a reluctant fanboy at heart, why else would this site exist? While I don’t have anything near formal training in urban design, I sure like to pretend I do. Every once in a while I’ll try to be a journalist, but my lack of formal training in those arts is obvious. And often, I can be a cranky hater. Luckily, I’m not the only one who writes for MetroRiderLA, and the other contributors help create a somewhat balanced blog that Permanent Campaigns kindly listed as an example of a good unofficial transit blog, and even quoted The Big Lebowski by calling the blog “very thorough”.

All of this inspired me to revamp MetroRiderLA’s links to external sites. I’ve created a new page, the Links Index, which has a fairly extensive list of some great blogs, websites, and resources relating to the transit oriented lifestyle. It’s nice to note that Los Angeles has at least 15 transit oriented blogs that are currently active, let’s hope Metro is listening to Permanent Campaigns and establishing positive relationships with all of them.