MetroRiderLA

Photo by Fred Camino; available in the MetroRiderLA Flickr pool; used with a Creative Commons License

Walk Score has factored in transit service into its latest addition recently. Straight Outta Suburbia just completed its survey of Walk Scores for stations before the Transit Score was deployed. Chewie, the author, finds the scores around the subway to be some of the highest in L.A.

The same goes for Transit Scores. Walk Score calls a score above 90 a rider’s paradise, 70-89 excellent, 50-69 good, 25-49 “some transit”, and 0-24 minimal transit. Keep in mind that it pulls its information from what’s on Google, so about 6,000 smaller systems in L.A. County are missing.

I have 7 categories for the Transit Score. The station, which is self-explanatory, the walk score, the top 10% score, the percentage of areas with a better walk score, the average score, the transit score, and how many available transit lines are at a station. Since the subway is within Los Angeles city limits, the top 10% score for Los Angeles is 92. The average score for all Los Angeles neighborhoods is 49. The subway runs through the top 10% of L.A.’s most walkable areas, with the Vermont/Beverly station with the worst score but within the top 15%. The Wilshire/Vermont Station is judged to be the best neighborhood, and if you’re into that sort of thing, you can live right over it.

Note: Transit Score data were not available for the Valley stations.

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Did MetroRiderLA founder Fred Camino find this image that has been aging in a trunk for generations? That can’t be — the oldest parts of the Red Line are merely 17 years old, and Fred hadn’t been in L.A. during that time.

This shows the wonders of Photoshopping. This image, taken just this past June, according to the Flickr date stamp, shows a Red or Purple Line train arriving at 7th Street Metro Center. The collection of blemishes help this month-old photo seem like an heirloom. Note the jagged photo edges, the graininess of the train and the sepia tone near the top corners. Very artistic, very nice.

Before the sunken garden, before the apartments and school, Wilshire/Vermont station was a pit of dirt, concrete and steel. The Metro Library has a black-and-white scan of Mid-Wilshire in the midst of subway construction. This open pit would, once completed, hold a double-level station with different tracks for inbound and outbound trains. This station also has the junction to Hollywood and Wilshire Boulevard to Western Avenue, and with any luck, Westwood.

The clear line of sight to Wilshire Boulevard facing east-southeast exposes some of the street’s landmark buildings. In the center is the former Bullocks Wilshire, which is now in use by the Southwestern School of Law. Across the street to its left is the Welton Becket-designed US Borax Building. Far in the background at left is the former Sheraton Town House hotel.

Copyrighted image by rjmcconnell; used with permission from the MetroRiderLA Flickr pool. All rights reserved.

Koreatown and Wilshire Center wish a happy 14th birthday to the then-Red Line, now-Purple Line extension to Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue. It was July 13, 1996, when the subway was first extended beyond downtown Los Angeles and its immediate vicinity.

Before then, the Westlake/MacArthur Park station, seen here, was the western terminus for the subway that only ran five stops from here to Union Station. Despite its short length, and the wide perception that it was an expensive toy for downtowners, the subway still attracted about 20,000 boardings. It had also been well-patronized by the Westlake neighborhood even when the only trip possible was east.

Westlake/MacArthur Park was the end of the line from Super Bowl weekend in January 1993 to July 12, 1996. After a few weeks of pre-revenue testing, the Red Line made its way westward. Then northward. Then through the Cahuenga Pass.

And with a little luck and effort, westward again.

Hat tip to Justin Walker on the Transit Coalition message board

We interrupt the use of photos from the MetroRiderLA Flickr pool to bring you another anniversary to celebrate. It was on July 9, 2009 — that would be one year ago today — that MetroRiderLA took the liberty of naming the new mascot for Metro.

Transit agencies, like sports teams, ought to have a mascot. The most famous is Boston — which beat L.A. in the NBA Finals 2010 (of Transit) — and Charlie, immortalized in song and the MBTA fare card. In New York, the Mets‘ Mr. Met moonlights as the MTA mascot. What does L.A. have?

Nada, until this PowerPoint graphic discussed bus arrival displays in subway stations. Inspiration!

The little gray figure emerging from the Wilshire/Western Purple Line station is the very embodiment of the transit passengers. Sure, it was just a Metro graphic designer having a little fun on the job by drawing a question mark over the figure’s head, but it is just profound. Like most iconic works of art, simple messages can provoke complex and varied interpretations by its audience. The MetroRiderLA reaction, from the July 9, 2009 post:

THE LITTLE QUESTION MARK MAN is the true everyperson. The form is androgynous. The figure is gray, reflecting the composition of Los Angeles’ tremendous diversity. But the question mark says nothing, and by doing so, says a whole lot. Is it a question mark of confusion? Melancholy? Joy? Wonderment? Or a simple post-modern WTF? Is he angry at the buses being late? Is he wondering what’s playing at the Wiltern across the street? Or is he just realizing that he, like most others at the Wilshire/Western station, didn’t get on the correct Red Line train again?

The Little Question Mark Man, you are L.A.’s answer to Edvard Munch’s “Scream.”

And like Andre the Giant, The Little Question Mark Man has a posse.

We tap the Metro Library and Archive‘s public domain treasure trove for this weekend shot in the Summer of Rail series.

This photo is dated June 1996, one month before the then-Red Line would open on what would happen to be the birthday of this MetroRider blogger.

This 1996 photo is the “before” picture. When the subway was being built, the northeast corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue had been occupied by a Thrifty Drug, a See’s Candy shop, and behind these, a simple strip mall. Metro had taken over the land in the early 1990s, set off a proverbial neutron bomb as construction all but wiped out Mid-Wilshire until 1996.

What had re-emerged was this concrete-and-marble desert. Wilshire/Western station had been a station entrance with the stairs facing away from Wilshire Boulevard. This was also the 1990s-style station marker pylon, which had been replaced by the new red-band marker during the Metro graphic design awakening of circa 2004. The stonework, elevator steel and tile patterns are meant to be an architectural tribute to the Wiltern Theatre across the street. Behind it was a large parking lot, used as a layover point for Metro buses.

It would be almost a decade later when a developer saw the land and placed atop this concrete desert the mammoth Solair luxury condo development. The ground floor has a sprinkling of retail, but a lot of the spaces remain empty. And transit-oriented development wouldn’t be vintage L.A. (trademark Michael Cole) without including more parking than even suburban shopping malls. (In fairness, it replaced what had been a Los Angeles city pai-parking lot at Western Avenue and Sixth Street).

Happy Fourth of July, MetroReaders. Remember, fireworks are illegal in L.A. city limits. Leave the pyrotechnics to the pros.