MetroRiderLA

Image courtesy of Marco Siguenza.

• Average white guy goes Metro, doesn’t like it, shares some ideas on how to improve the system.
• A new report shows that Los Angeles has the worst traffic congestion. Woot.
• It’s Dump the Pump Week, or, Save a Whole Buncha Money Week.
• Gas prices get peeps onto public transit, even in places like Durham, North Carolina.
• Anecdotal evidence proves that high gas prices are thinning out traffic in L.A.

Image courtesy of xero79.

The dust has settled from the Dodgers historic reunion with the Los Angeles Coliseum this past weekend. Over 115,000 people showed up for this game, and many of them were hoping that the mass transit alternatives offered by both Metro and the Dodgers would spare them the parking and traffic nightmare they’ve grown accustomed to at Dodgers games. According to the L.A. Times, 35,000 people showed up at Dodger Stadium hoping to take advantage of the shuttles to the Coliseum provided by the Dodgers. Unfortunately, the shuttles turned out to be a colossal failure. Apparently most of the shuttles were just that, smaller van-like buses that could hold a very limited amount of passengers, and according to people who were there, the whole process was very chaotic and unorganized. Some fans were still stranded at Dodger Stadium while the game had been going on for an hour some six miles away. These people will likely never attempt to go to a baseball game without a car ever again.

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• “We’ve widened and widened and widened . . . over and over again,” yet the Costa Mesa Freeway remains one of the worst traffic bottlenecks in the country.
• Palmdale Airport and Metrolink connected by new Palmdale Flyer Express Bus, modeled after the FlyAway.
• Parking problems at Los Angeles Coliseum are nothing new.
• Sidestepping Metro to bring Green Line to LAX? Maybe, but funding still the main problem.
• Line 256 is on the chopping block and Councilman José Huizar hopes to save it.
• Los Angeles the third densest city in the United States.

• Traffic accidents cost L.A./Orange County nearly $11 billion… add that to  the $9 billion cost of congestion.  Oh yeah, this is the yearly cost.  The American Autombie Association conducted the study.
• CityWatch knows best: subways are not for L.A., “modern computer controlled cars suspended from or running on top of rails” are.
• City Beat looks at the absurdity and cost of fare gates.
• The Orange Line may be headed to Chatsworth… in six years.