MetroRiderLA

For those of you who weren’t aware, today is the last day to enter Metro’s Miss Traffic Contest! Write 100 words on how you miss traffic for the chance to win a t-shirt, a tiara, and a bouquet of flowers! Oh, and receive the honor of being L.A.’s official Miss Traffic!

This poll will close Tuesday, March 4, 2008 at 12:00 PM.

Previously:

• Miss Traffic Vs. i-Ride

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.

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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