The Bus Bench

Saw "Something" and now I am saying "Something": STUPID!

For all the bullshit about the way Roger Snoble, Pam O'Connor, Wendy Greuel, Tony V and the MTA board are perpetually on about it, one wonders why the most fundamental facets of the single subway is so damned backward.

SO I am saying something, and I will be stating it in person, soon: FUCK YOU. The answer, however, is obvious:

Enough, already!

If you are not a cop, nor veteran service, then shut the fuck up.

Let me be frank, and come what may.

I was schooled to be a third generation cop—after having had my first 18 years that was supposed to have dumped me into Colorado Springs. I even had an endorsement by my then-senator, Howell Heflin, who had hoped I would be something that my adopted state would appreciate. I have considerable credentials for the applications of firearms and other munitions, owing to my sundry training. And I have a lot of lost friends.

That was back in the 1980s.

Since then, my father (a 20-year capital city cop whose own 20-year tenure was cut short by a few months when he was called out to pick up the scattered body parts of his former partner) has been a bit sad that I endeavoured to do punk rock audio engineering, typography and whatnot. But I never forgot what I were trained to do, and I know all too well what I am about to state.

I also know what it is to lose a loved one in a national tragedy. I spent nearly five years in New York City trying to oversee the diminished estate of a loved one who disappeared September, 2001.

What I find repulsive is that there is so much for someone who signed up for something, and who is posthumously exploited when during his lifetime was so poorly appreciated.

I have friends who were in the FIRST Gulf war who are entirely forgotten by the very nation they were told to be saving, and as I see 50 in the near distance I am relieved of having legless and armless friends coming home. Instead, I get to hear how all of Los Angeles "honours" the fallen of someone whose name they never knew.

No matter the race nor creed nor sex of the person wearing the boots or pulling the trigger, the heel still hurts and the bullet still kills. Doubt me? Then argue someone who knows better than you: George Orwell. "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever."

For the fuckwits what will inevitably offer commentary, be sure to reiterate that dreadful attempt to be droll that our beloved LAPD police chief stated about employing the battering ram at the gates of heaven. And be sure to tell me where said police chief previously served, as well as how one of his former eastern colleagues "served" south Philly with thermite grenades that burned down several hundred apartment buildings in a vicious attempt to evict a few MOVE members.

-BusTard

(The photo is from a story I covered in Santa Ana, CA, in 1994. It was a cop's funeral. This shot was taken at MacArthur and Main, if I correctly recall.)

Collect all three rags, dumbass!

What else can one state? Collecting rags? How much was wasted to compel private motorists to purchase over-priced refined fuel? And what can we expect of the cretins whose decision to purchase fuel is compelled by the desire to collect these damned rags?!

ghod help us. . .

The secret to working escalators

Get the mayor to pop by. Alan Mittlestaedt, in the 14 February 2008 edition of CityBeat, lays out the bleeding obvious: "One of the amazing feats of the morning: Every escalator the mayor encounters is working. Maybe that’s a coincidence, or maybe the Metropolitan Transportation Authority took some precautions."

Apparently the little people do not matter, and one can only correctly assume that it is only a matter of time before the escalators are once again failing on a remarkable scale.

Having added two and two, I am back to doing the dead escalator. Look for the Valentine's Day edition later this evening.

-BusTard

Broken Brakes and Trapped Passengers on the Red Line

OK, so that is a rather dramatic title, one suggesting that straphangers were imperiled. (I should know better, having been stranded on the N line under the East River when the tunnel was flooding; then again, I have been employed as a tabloid headline writer, so there you go.) Anyhow, riders were kept in suspense as well as on the unmoving train, and it was damn aggravating. The driver was brusque, which only made the situation worse; had he simply announced that there was a problem rather than making straphangers wait I might have been civil. (Are the motormen in competition with the buses? is this why he would not let us off the train despite the brakes being locked?) I had two talks with him, and after the second, he went back to unlock the doors. (As the second video exhibits, I had to wait for the motorman to let himself out so as to exit.)

 

 

The anonymous "help" personnel was of no help either, as the third video shows. Surely the MTA has a wall map to show when trains are stopped. (Unless the L.A. MTA is straggling behind the New York of the 1970s; check out "The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3" for an idea of how the New York Metro kept track of its trains way back then.) Or are they going to allow the running trains to collide with the stalled ones? What the hell is going on at  One Gateway Plaza?

I am only glad that the motorman under review was not driving THIS bus!

-BusTard

Bus Lines Cut but City Council Keeps Taxpayers' Cars

Even as the MTA considers cutting a considerable amount of bus lines, the councilmembers of Los Angeles are whining about having their taxpayer-funded city cars taken away. The argument is that they all have late-model SUVs and that taking away their city-owned hybrids will contribute to pollution. Nevertheless, our gracious public servants have chosen to purchase as their personal vehicles "gas-guzzling SUVs, minivans and sedans" long after we all knew that such vehicles are bad for the environment owing to the very reason they now wish to keep vehicles for themselves that are forcibly paid for by other people.

MTA forces me to use the word FUCK. Proposed cuts for June.

The MTA is filled with assholes, but I am certain the problems start from the top.

I’m on the 757 going up Western and what do I see? A pamphlet discussing cuts in service (it’s only on this one bus, because for some reason while MTA prints beautiful material it seems to have a problem with disseminating it.) I’m on a bus where everyone is standing (in the middle of the day) on a rapid and the MTA is going to cut service to downtown.

People are on the busses, so why in the hell are they cutting bus services.

I understand what you dumb fucks at the MTA are doing. You’re changing the busses to compliment the rails, but guess what you dumb fucks? You haven’t finished building the rails yet.

Why not wait until the rails have been built and UNTIL they run after 12am before you start fucking with the bus schedules?

As an example of how you did this, so that you know it can be done: There used to be a 1 bus, but then you cut it, BUT you cut the 1 line AFTER you built the red line. Who was the CEO of the MTA then, because whoever that CEO was, was a bit smarter than you Roger Snoble.

By the way Roger, which bus do you take to get to work?

I get the whole you want to get money without having to do anything, but lying is wrong. You guys seem very moralistic at the MTA with all of those damn rules you have posted everywhere.

You cut the service then make people transfer to two extra busses, so they have to get on the rail so your rail numbers can be inflated, but then when those same people have to come home from their working class jobs after 11pm, you have nothing for them. You have nothing, but extra busses that run once an hour (on a good night.)

What is that?

I know the MTA depends on the bloggers that discuss this issue to be yuppies who take the rails or disabled people who can’t walk and take one line into the suburbs, but I’m not a yuppie and I take all of the lines simply so I can bitch about your abysmal service.

You are my hobby MTA. You are my knitting club, drinking club, bird watching club all rolled into one incompetent ball of mess.

I take the bus in to South Central, East L.A. the valley, to the Westside and I do it all to uncover your bullshit.

I also appreciate how you guys seem to forget to tell the busriders about the proposed cuts. Bloggers, you seem to actively participate in reaching out to and you even send PR material to the bloggers that lick your behinds, BUT the people riding the bus have you informed them? Of course not, maybe you should spend more time doing your job and less time on myspace. And you folks at the MTA know exactly what I'm talking about.

Don’t worry, I’ll do it for you, you MTA bastards.

To be redundant here are the "secret" hearings about the proposed cuts for the 10, 14, 60, 68, 175 and a lot of other lines that people who aren’t fabulous take.

San Gabriel Valley Sector Feb 11. 6pm San Gabriel Valley Sector: February 11, 2008, 6 p.m., San Gabriel Valley Sector Office, 3449 Santa Anita Ave., 3rd Floor Council Chambers,

El Monte Gateway Cities Sector: February 12, 2008, 6 p.m., Girls Club House Recreation Center, 4940 Southern Ave. (S. Gate Park), South Gate

Westside/Central Sector: February 13, 2008, 5 p.m., La Cienega Tennis Center, 325 S. La Cienega Blvd., Beverly Hills

Gateway Cities Sector: February 14, 2008, 4 p.m., The Gas Company, 9240 Firestone Blvd., Downey

Persons unable to attend the hearings may submit written testimony postmarked through February 14, 2008, the close of public record. All written testimony should be addressed to Metro Customer Relations, One Gateway Plaza, 99PL4, Los Angeles, Ca 90012-2932, Attn: June 2008 Service Changes. In addition, comments can be e-mailed with the subject line “June 2008 Service Changes” to customerrelations@metro.net or faxed to (213) 922-6988.

You’re not so slick you bastards and this isn’t Paris or Madrid or some other country where people give a damn. Stop cutting the bus service you damn
”not in LA reality bastards” at the MTA.

Maybe you should stop sending your employees on fact finding missions to other countries and start sending them to Watts at midnight and give them the assignment of pretending to get to their security job on the Westside. That might be a better use of OUR resources and you could stop begging the gov’t for money. You damn welfare cheats.

Again Roger Snoble, which bus do you take?

Browne

Dead Escalator Reports laid to rest—for now

This past week, a team of inspectors was in the Metro tending to the escalators and lifts. Quite a few escalators were fixed, and for that I am happy. The lifts may take a bit longer, but we'll see.

I spoke to one MTA official about the inspections and problems with the escalators in particular, and found out a bit more about how things work as well as fail to work. The MTA apparently has 16 specialists constantly in motion to tend the problems. The emergency stop button is frequently engaged by school kids (whose idea of a prank is frighteningly dim, I might add) and to re-start the escalator in question, one must reach into the lower left panel for the switch. (Those panels are rarely locked, a statement that prompted no responce from the MTA official that day.) The aluminum steps —"teeth," as I call them—cost several thousand dollars each. When a metal item—say, a penny—is dropped and becomes stuck in the upper or lower skirt, the aluminum ridges are ground down and the "tooth" has to be replaced. Several million a year are spent replacing these parts. Finally, there is an emergency number for the reporting of dead escalators that is placed not very prominently near the emergency  stop button. (I feel that there should be a simple electrical circuit alert that is generated by the movement of the escalator; when the escalator stops, the alert—like a simple door or window alarm—sounds out and shows which one has stopped.)

Apparently the biggest problem with dead escalators are the school children pressing the stop button. Perhaps the MTA can replace the unlocked panel covers with one that requires a breaking of light glass. Too, while I have never witnessed such an action, I have to wonder why people do not say anything if it does occur so frequently. Were someone to pull the emergency brake as a prank on the train, school child or no, I will immediately get involved; I find stopping escalators for fun less urgent but no less demanding of taking action. (Call me curmudgeon, if you must.)

In any case, I am happy that there has been noticeable improvement in this area. But I have loads more to bitch about, especially with all the bus line cuts offered by Tony V and the MTA board.

-BusTard