MetroRiderLA

• After a century long bender on oil, Americans are finally facing the inevitable hangover. Thank goodness I’m a teetotaler.
• People are driving less and less, which unfortunately means there’s a lot of people stranded in the suburbs.
• The Daily News reminds us that gas is only a small part of the overall costs of car ownership. And prices are going up.
• Charge market rate for street parking in Los Angeles?
• Private commuter rail may be coming to Seattle.

It’s not uncommon to see expressions of bewilderment on the faces of others when you tell them you live a Transit Oriented Life, especially in Los Angeles. People will assume you have run into a major financial crisis, lost your vehicle to accident or crime, got caught driving under the influence, or that you’ve just gone batshit crazy. After reassuring them that everything’s okay and that you indeed came to the decision through personal choice and reasoned logic, not faulty wiring or Acts of God, your auto-addicted friend is likely to wonder what possible logical reasons there could be for you to make such a choice. Ben W. over at the Seattle Transit Blog faced this very question, and decided to put an end to the confusion by listing five benchmarks that set him on his way from car-dependent to car-free.

Here’s what did it for him:

1. Using transit to get to work
2. The ease that Google Transit provides when planning transit trips
3. Taking part in Seattle’s One Less Car Challenge.
4. Finding out about Flexcar (now Zipcar) and becoming a member.
5. Taking transit to someplace new.

(more…)

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”