MetroRiderLA

• America’s Funniest Transit Videos: Shabby Los Angeles Metro Buses!
• Density must be centralized to be effective.
• The United States poor transportation infrastructure, and lack of a plan for the future, spells trouble for the economy.
• Car Accident: 75-year old woman dies after making an illegal left-hand turn into oncoming traffic.
• Wired takes a look at Metro’s Long Range Plan, and the challenges L.A. faces when it comes to mobility

Image courtesy of mattlogelin.

What makes a good bus ride? This is the question posed over at EcoWorldly in an article that traverses the world in search of the best (and worst) buses. Gavin Hudson, the car-free author of the story, lists three key elements that he has found to be the difference between a good bus and a bad bus, they are:

1. You have access to a good schedule and map of the bus routes.
2. You feel clean and comfortable on the bus.
3. You feel safe on the bus.

Here’s my list:

1. Your bus comes frequently, as in every 5-10 minutes. Schedules be damned, I want to walk to a bus stop and know that my bus is going to come within 5 minutes, so even if I miss a bus I know I’m not screwed.
2. You aren’t packed like sardines. The only thing worse than waiting forever at a bus stop is having to squeeze onto a standing room only bus.
3. All stops are clearly announced. Automatic stop announcements are a life saver, because the only thing worse than waiting forever for a bus only to be packed in like a sardine is missing your stop because it wasn’t announced.

Those are my three, what are yours?

Related:

• 10 Ways to Improve L.A.’s Public Transportation System
• MetroRiderLA Forum: Speeding Up Buses

“Gold Line, Pasadena” Image Courtesy of Nevin.

I leave the house five minutes just before

the scheduled time the bus is set to arrive.

I got my pass, schedules and the map

within my pocket just waiting to board and go.

It’s one more minute

I see it down the street.

It’s right on schedule, not often

but this time has managed to arrive within the slotted time.

I board and grab a book

I’ll read along until I get

to the transfer point so I can get

the Blue Line and then the Red.

I love the Metro if you can’t tell

and try to speak about it to other people

you could say it, I guess

I try my best for them to use it and convert.

© Rogelio Gomez

As Good As It Gets starring Jack Nicholson made me laugh. It might have made me cry too but don’t tell my dad. I laughed like everyone else because of how crazy this man was and what a life such as his must be like. I cried because I saw way too many similarities between he and I.

For the longest time I had forgotten about most of those similarities (I’m not one to re-watch, re-read, re-whatever anything that points out things I’d rather not think about). Then I started riding public transportation.

When I first joined the world of public transit I tried not to hold railings, I wouldn’t sit down, and I carried anti-bacterial hand lotion with me. The little pocket sized tubes replaced chap stick in pocket priority for some time. Most annoying was that I didn’t really know why I was doing all this. I have my fair share of neuroses but at no point in my life was I victim to germaphobia. I may not have been open to the sharing of a toothbrush or underwear but a germaphobe I was not. Germs were never real to me. They were to absurd and there were too many products out there to stop the spread of them that the panic had to be fake—a marketing gimmick is all. To me, Airborne couldn’t have been more absurd.

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Aus-car the Transit Grouch is a Seattle based transit blogger and family man. It seems that he, much to his wife’s chagrin, enjoys taking his kids on “bus adventures” in Seattle. Whether or not this counts as child abuse these days, I don’t know, but he does it anyways. On a recent trip to Los Angeles though, he did the unthinkable… suggested to his family that they take the bus to see a movie at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood. Not surprisingly, the only person who took him up on his offer was his 5-year old daughter. His story of a ride to Hollywood on a Metro Local 2 with his daughter offers a charming and insightful look at our buses through the eyes of an outsider on an adventure.

Here’s one of my favorite bits:

My wife called via cell phone as we walked — she’d just arrived in line and was hoping and praying that we wouldn’t be too late. Apparently, some of her relatives had been laying side bets on how late we would be. The consensus was that we had no chance to get there by showtime. We got there 10 minutes early. Ha!

Read Aus-car’s story here: “A Bus to Hollywood”

The Bay Area Diaries takes a noticeable departure from the usual quality and tone brought to the entry on Muni’s bus operations.

The Diaries, and L.A.-oriented Ride Reports published on MetroRiderLA, takes pride in copious attention to the fundamental details of the ride. What time did the bus arrive, what was the number and make of the bus, what line is ridden and how many passengers were aboard. The pedantry’s message: We care.

There will be no effort to maintain that level of detail for Muni buses. Muni earned heaps of well-deserved scorn from San Franciscans for management and operations that seemed to have been mailed in — by Pony Express. If a transit agency, through concerted inaction or lazy inaction, could treat its riders this way, the Bay Area Diaries’ feedback loop senses that it can act the same way with its readers. And will.

Fortunately, this entry is going to be lightly patronized since it’s about buses and most people couldn’t give a crap about them in the first place. Rail’s another matter. That attracts a lot of attention and very passionate viewpoints, so commentary must tread with caution. Muni buses, though, get the tritest of all literary and discussion devices: A Top 10 list. Unroll your eyes for a second and click below for MetroRiderLA’s Complete Muni bus Info and Rider’s Guide.

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