The Bus Bench

North East Road Trip, Prologue

Ah, it's good to be back in the sunny and smoggy environs of my hometown.  Over the next week or so I'm going to be posting just a few entries about my recent North East Road Trip (New York, Philly, Hartford, Boston, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont), with the focus, of course, on the roads, buses, and trains I relied on during my trip.  I rushed through most of these places, but I spent a decent chunk of time as a tourist on Philly's SEPTA system and Boston's MBTA, and those two will get the bulk of the attention.  You'll have to forgive some of the pictures I took, as the combination of my embarrassed girlfriend, a rushed schedule, and general prohibitions against station photography led to a lot of blurry, off-angle work.

Here's a short first entry to get us started, this time centered on John F. Kennedy Airport's AirTrain.

Sitting in The Middle of 5th Street

Good thing I had my camera to document the foolish position that best describes sitting in the middle of a one-way street facing away from traffic!

-BusTard

Pershing Square: What Was, What IS and what will never be. . .

Being a fan of cartography, typography, illustration and print, I was excited to take some time from my itinerary of fighting, drinking and satire to drink in the Central Library's latest exhibit, L.A. Unfolded: Maps from The Los Angeles Public Library. It is a decent exhibit (the garish lighting against the Plexiglass and protective glass coverings is rather annoying, to state the least) yet one that I highly recommend. The late 19th Century maps on display are small in number but certainly worth the trip; here are a few, after the jump. . .

Metro's Secret Street Closure

Okay, so perhaps it is not too much of a secret. I found one mention of it on-line as well as one pithy piece of paper on a downtown bus two days before the barely announced street closure.
Nevertheless, if so few people are affected by such an event (which will last until the end of summer 2009), why is there service in the first place? (One wonders if this is why the RTD sold 17 lines to Foothill Transit in the first place.)

-BusTard

Measure R: The Live Debate

The following fortnight will be a series of showdowns. On the national level is a shoo-in that only a cave-dweller would not know; on the local level is what may well be a watershed moment: Measure R.

Measure R represents far more than what appears to be a desire to fund southern California mass transit. Political cartographers are still combing the relatively brief disclosure, and daily editorials abound.

This Wednesday, two different trains of thought stop on the same platform of Measure R. Here is your chance to hear which whistle appeals to you and get ready to get board the line destined for "yea" or "nay."

-BusTard

Is Metro Hiring? They Should Be.

We have all heard that adage about good help being hard to find. Apparently, Metro Customer Relations Manager Tom Horne has abandoned any desire to overcome this bulwark of human nature and just let L.A. transit be plain LAzy.

Sometimes I can't make fun of Metro.

Supervisor Robinson of the MTA when I first called to complain about your MIA bus I didn’t have much faith in the customer service system of the MTA. (I still don’t) In general calls to your company have gone into another dimension, one that I am not part of, but when I called to complain about the 51 in Compton two days in a row, the day the message was forwarded to you the 51 came only ten minutes late and the day after that it was only five minutes late and on Friday it was on time.

A vast improvement over the 20-30 minutes late it had been coming prior.

Stay Hotel. Fishbowl living in microlofts.

 

I was walking home from the 51 bus and I saw people in the display rooms at Stay. I had been looking out for them since it was brought up at Angelenic that Stay would be having fishbowl rooms.

I wonder how cheap the rent is?

Browne

Priority Seating for Boneheads

'Nuff said.

-BusTard

TransitVue's Latest Failure

An hour after a post compiling TransitVue's various failures and glitches, a pair of monitors at the Santa Monica station along the Red Line introduced a new screw-up: