MetroRiderLA

• High gas prices cause people to give up more and more of their own lives to pay for their car. Drive to work and work to drive
• People are getting scared about the end of free freeways.
• A 70-year woman experiences the car-free life for the first time, and makes some startling revelations.
• Metro rejects cuts of Tier 1 bus service.
• Dodger Stadium is getting a facelift, but will transit play a part?
• Awesome: Hipsters ride Amtrak’s free Coachella Express to the Indio rock festival

I discovered this bad boy, the Ford F-650 XUV Conversion Truck by the Alton Truck Company, from the consumer blog Uncrate. Big enough to be a Metro bus, but built for you and maybe your high-class prostitute date, this truck represents the pinnacle of personal private transportation. Don’t be fooled by the rugged exterior, inside is a world of class and comfort with hardwood floors, wi-fi, and 42-inch plasma television. At only $200,000, this one-of-a-kind truck is sure to fit into your budget.

Further research led me to the anti-MetroRiderLA… Jalopnik! Where MetroRiderLA tries to create a transit oriented culture, Jalopnik is proudly “obsessed with the cult of cars”. MetroRiderLA often has articles poking fun at bad auto drivers, and Jalopnik is not above making fun of stupid bus drivers. Jalopnik is part of the Gawker Media blog empire, which means it probably gets 5 billion more readers than MetroRiderLA, further cementing our automotive future.

Last but not least on this auto-centric opposite day, I want to tell you about a guilty pleasure I’ve been enjoying… well that is until my XBOX 360 died on me for the third time. Burnout Paradise (XBOX 360, Playstation 3) is probably the best racing video game I’ve ever played. I confess, I love racing video games. How does this square with my hatred of driving? Well, racing video games, especially ones like Burnout Paradise, are fun… driving in reality is not. Burnout Paradise gives you a complete virtual city (Paradise City) to drive through at top speed without having to worry about death, gas prices, or traffic. There is traffic in Burnout Paradise, but you get extra points for pushing other cars off the road. In a funny nod to the pervasiveness of car culture, the in-game announcer makes it known that all trains were removed from Paradise City in order to create more room for stunt driving. If you have to drive, this game is the only way to go.

Disclaimer: I have joined Amazon.com’s affiliate program, so the above links to the Xbox and Playstation versions of Burnout Paradise will earn me a small percentage of the sale if you end up purchasing them from the links.

Image courtesy of Thomas Hawk.

• The Bus Bench says no to extending the Gold Line to Whittier.
• Kuruma Banare? Car sales are down in the US, but automakers hope the federal economic stimulus package will get people buying cars again.
• The Daily Breeze prints the exact same stupid opinion piece on Mike Feuer’s Assembly Bill 2558 (the “climate-transit tax”) that the Long Beach Press Telegram printed last week.
• Classic Los Angeles: Intense regulation meant to keep the private car culture flourishing prevents a form of alternative transportation from functioning. Taxi cabs spend most of their time at the curb, not driving people around

I don’t remember paying for that… Image courtesy of kalavinka.

In spite of their name, freeways aren’t really free. No, in fact they are actually quite pricey to build, maintain, monitor, clean up, and expand. But when is the last time you reached into your wallet and handed out some cold hard cash to pay that price? I bet you can’t remember, because you never did such a thing. A hand reached into your wallet and took some money, but that hand wasn’t yours, no it was the frosty hand of the government.

That’s all fine and dandy, the government is always reaching into our wallets. In a few weeks the government will finish its job of taking a large percentage of my earnings from 2007. Federal, state, city, they’ve all got their grubby little hands in my pocketbook and there is very little I can do about it. Some people think this is the way it should be. They think the government knows best and that the government should have the power to take your money and distribute it for the betterment of the entire community. These people are called socialists. On the other end of the spectrum are people who think that the government is a bunch of morons, and that each individual should be free to do what they wish with their own money and lives.  These people are called libertarians.

It would seem logical that someone who doesn’t like the government intervening in the lives of individuals would have a big problem with freeways.  But as Alex Marshall notes in his article for Governing.com, that’s just not the case.  Most libertarians, by and large, love highways and auto roads, even though they are funded by the cold hand of the government picking our pockets.  At the same time, they despise mass transportation because, these days, it’s funded by the cold hand of the government picking our pockets.  How is it that publicly funded mass transit is socialism but publicly funded auto roads are the pinnacle of American freedom and free market capitalism?  It’s simple, these libertarians are actually not libertarians, they fall into another group: hypocrites.

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Image courtesy of bruceley.

The headline is my impression what a Valley Girl might say if the youth of America felt the same way about cars as the young people in Japan. According to a recent article in Newsweek, in Japan the car has lost its cool.

Last year car sales in Japan fell 6.7 percent and since 1990 sales have fallen over 30 percent. The reason? According to the article, demographics play a part, but there’s another factor as well: kuruma banare, or demotorization. To the young people of Japan, cars are just another gadget, and in a country of a million gadgets, cars are low on the “must-have” list. Status is defined by the coolest cell phone or gaming device, not your mode of transport. An increasing number of people in Japan live in urban areas, and the urban areas are served by extensive mass transit, making the expensive prospect of car ownership unnecessary. Why spend so much money on cars when you can get around just fine with out one? That money can be spent on cool gadgets, as is evidenced by the increase in spending on internet and mobile phone subscriptions (up to $1,500 since 2000 according to Newsweek) and the decrease in spending on automobile expenses (down to $600 since 2000).

The article opens with a quote from a young Tokyo-based businessman who no longer owns a car, and gets around instead using mass transit: “It’s not inconvenient at all…having a car is so 20th century.”

Like sushi, karaoke, and anime, it’s time for Americans to embrace the newest Japanese trend: kuruma banare.

Image courtesy of tatianes.

• If car culture is unsubsidized then why does Metro spend $27 million a year giving 300,000 broke down drivers a free tow?
• In the North East, passenger rail proves competitive against airlines.
• Marina del Rey Visitors Bureau promotes the Marina as “one of the few places in Los Angeles where you won’t need a car to enjoy an array of exciting activities that are all accessible on foot, by bike, public transportation or boat.” Nice!
• $43 million in bond money to Union Pacific? Only if they allow more passenger service, the Sacramento Bee opines.
• A 60% increase in motor vehicle traffic in the next 20 years will negate any gains from “greener” cars.