MetroRiderLA

UPDATE: We have a winner, by random choice, congratulations BZCAT!  The Metro 2009 Calendar is yours, and good luck on taking those baby steps…

Hey folks and Happy Holidays!  I’ve got an extra Metro 2009 “Opposites” Calendar and I want to give it to one of the faithful who still check out this dead zone of a blog.  This calendar is actually incredibly cool, Metro commissioned a bunch of Los Angeles illustrators to take their “opposites” campaign (you know, car bad metro good) to the next level.  The art is absolutely beautiful and witty to boot.

Here’s what you gotta do to win it.  Leave a comment telling me what your Transit Oriented New Years Resolution is.  Are you getting rid of your car at last?  Are you starting a transit riders club?  Are you moving to some snazzy new T.O.D.?  Are you going to give a transit-blogger-on-hiatus a bunch of money so he can blog again?

A winner will be chosen randomly from the comments.  Make sure to include your email address so I can contact you if you win.

Oh yah, and comments have to be posted by noon tomorrow, because I’m leaving town for the Holidays, so get to it!

While Metro awarded Miss Traffic her tiara and t-shirt, San Bernardino County’s largest transit operator, Omnitrans, announced the winners of its D.I.Y. TV Student TV Commercial Contest earlier this month. The contest, which had local high school students competing to create a commercial promoting Omnitrans, had significantly higher stakes than Metro’s Miss Traffic. A grand prize package of $1,000 cash, a new laptop computer, a year of free bus rides, and the honor of having the winning commercial played on local television and in local movie theaters surely motivated these Inland Empire kids to come up with creative ways to promote something most teenagers might dread, riding the bus.

The online votes were tallied and the grand prize went to Trevor Stevens of Redland High School for his spot, “Save Gas Use A Pass“. The commercial pits transit user against car driver in a turtle-and-the-hare race, where the bus rider comes out victorious because high gas prices and an empty wallet stop the car driver in his tracks. Trevor, who according to the Inland Empire newspaper The Sun has plans to embark in a career in TV and film production, chose to focus on the money savings that come from riding public transit because “the biggest issue for students right now is the price of gas”.

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The Miss Traffic Saga has finally come to a close. The videos were posted, the people watched, and the votes have been tallied. Your second runner-up is the sassy Sharon Butler, with 428 votes. Your first runner-up is the spunky Roz Brown, who garnered 445 votes. And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…

With an astounding 1,867 votes, your very own Miss Traffic…

Stefanie Perez!!!

The little latina that could, did, and she did it with flying colors. Picking up more votes than Roz and Sharon combined times two, the people of Los Angeles had no doubt who they wanted to represent their Metro system. What is it about Stefanie that makes her the obvious choice for Miss Traffic? Is it her mysterious smile? Her dry wit? Her undeniable love of missing traffic with Metro? Or maybe it’s a combination of all those things and more… that je ne c’est sais quoi that defines all women who capture our hearts and minds.

It’s not known whether Stefanie has received her prize package yet, but I know a lot of ladies and gentlemen (maybe even yours truly) who are very jealous. It’s not every day you get a free Metro t-shirt and props from an advertising photo shoot.

It seems to me that the Miss Traffic Contest was a rousing success. In a period of 6 days since the finalists were announced, 2,270 votes were cast, more than half of them for Stefanie. In contrast, Metro’s highly publicized Imagine campaign has a poll that has only received 708 votes since March 12th. And the Imagine blog has a poll that has only received 77 votes in the same time period. I guess the old adage is true: sex sells.

Things aren’t that sexy over in Austin, where you may recall they are holding a similar contest. But, a guy named Chris Stangland has submitted a video that might give Stefanie a run for the money if Miss Traffic goes national. Imagine what Chris could do if he was competing for a Metro t-shirt instead of a stupid iPhone and $500 cash.

Photo courtesy of savemejebus.

Note: I will be out of town for the next three days, so expect light to non-existing posting until Thursday. Here’s some tasty morsels for you to talk about in the meantime.

• The BusTard takes an in-depth look at the transportation mess that was the L.A. Marathon.
• Gold Line to Ontario?  Think again after reading this detailed report.
• Omnitrans whoops Miss Traffic! Omnitrans will award $1,000, a laptop computer, and free bus rides for a year to the student who creates the best Omnitrans commercial.
• 12 miles of bus only lanes coming to Wilshire Boulevard courtesy of Arnie.

Who will win, Metro’s Miss Traffic or Capital Metro’s i-Ride?

Cue the Rocky theme song, because today ladies and gentlemen, we here at MetroRiderLA are bringing you ringside to the transit fight of the season….

In one corner we have the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority, better known as Metro. Metro is a heavyweight in the transit world, holding the record for third largest transit agency in the country. Metro has a daily ridership of 1.6 million people, 191 bus routes covering 1,433 square miles, 5 rail lines (3 light rail and 2 subway) with 73 miles of track, and was voted “America’s Best” in 2006 by the American Public Transit Association. In addition, Metro has made numerous television and film appearances. Metro is the very definition of a contender.

In the other corner we have the Capital Metropolitan Transit Authority, also known as Capital Metro. This bantamweight from Austin, TX is scrappy in every sense of the word. With only 68 bus routes, no rail (a commuter line is scheduled to open this year), and a ridership of 130,000, Capital Metro is a David to Metro’s Goliath. Sure Capital Metro offers dirt cheap fares (50 cents is the most you’ll pay), interactive Google based bus maps, HTML formated schedules, and Wi-Fi access for passengers, but does that stuff even matter?

What’s brought these two clearly unbalanced fighters here today is the marketing contests both agencies are currently promoting. Metro will henceforth be represented by Miss Traffic and Capital Metro will be reprsented by i-Ride. Miss Traffic and i-Ride are both contests that attempt to get people excited about transit by telling stories about why they ride. This fight is over which contest is better.

Let’s get ready to rumble!!!

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Do you have what it takes to be the next Miss Traffic?

• LAist reminds us that if your company pays for parking and you don’t drive, they owe you the cash for that space
• USC Master Plan has some decent ideas about pedestrian safety and some whacky ideas about mass transit (eg. Personal Rapid Transit over light rail)
• Metro introduces “Miss Traffic” contest, aka Public Transit American Idol
• Mayor V. tries to cut some car out of his diet… can he break the addiction?