Browne Molyneux is a freelance journalist and a friendly gadfly in the LA based blogosphere. She formerly wrote a transportation column for
LA City Beat: Tracks and is a contributor to
LA Eastside and The LA Progressive. She does not own a motorized vehicle, but she does have a bike.
RANDALL (BusTard) FLEMING has spent two decades working in most every facet of publishing. A former magazine publisher (Angry Thoreauan, 1987-2001), he has also contributed to a great many books, periodicals and newspapers in Los Angeles and New York: New York Post, Brooklyn Spectator, Discover Hollywood!, Ben Is Dead, Flipside, Los Feliz Ledger, Sabotage in The American Workplace (Pressure Drop Press), Notes From the Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture (Verso), and several of the Unreinforced Masonry Studio books about Los Angeles.
Art Gonzo was raised in Los Angeles. He is a visual artist. He has seen a bus. When not at The Bus Bench he is a contributor at LA Eastside.
Hey, my name’s aka Mika Muyo and I’ve been sitting on the bus bench since 4th grade. I’ve taken all sorts of public trans that varied on the scale of “not bad” to “you have to be kidding me, this is bullshit!”. At any rate, I currently live and cycle in LA and you can find me at various bike mobs, art shows, open bars and on Candied Cartel dot com.
Rogelio Gomez is a public transit rider and an avid cyclist. He blogs at My Daily Ride when he's not sharing his adventures on The Bus Bench.
*****
One person never making a mistake shouldn't be the difference between a safe journey home and death.
*****
There's this radical concept in this place called reality where the society and courts consider any product, which requires perfect human behavior (a complete contradiction in terms) to prevent death to be by definition "unsafe" and the manufacturer of said product "negligent." Somehow our rail transit system has escaped this law (that's the beauty of having the people who write the laws in charge of building the lines) and advocates for public transportation seem too comfortable ignoring it by continually attempting to direct people's attention to car accidents. (A totally unequal example).
Incidentally, platform doors are becoming a regular item on new subway lines across the first world and not just luxuries. Indeed, the few number of people who decide to commit suicide on the Red Line every few years would be completely walled from doing so if instead of installing fare gates on our system we were installing platform doors. It also has the benefit of allowing the subway system to be automated, drastically reducing operating costs.
Posted by: Damien Goodmon | 09/15/2009 at 12:09 AM
"advocates for public transportation seem too comfortable ignoring it by continually attempting to direct people's attention to car accidents. (A totally unequal example)."
Can you explain what's wrong with that? If you exclusively ride mass transit your risk of being critically injured is much lower than if you exclusively drive. Even these shitty light rail lines are still better, from a public safety point of view, than the next best alternative, roads.
Your "reality" where any product which requires perfect human behavior to prevent death to be by definition unsafe is not, in fact, reality. If the butcher sells me a few pounds of beef I am expected to exhibit perfect human behavior by fully cooking it. If I eat it raw or undercooked, my risk of food poisoning increases significantly. And yet, there's no law saying that all meat sold in the United States must be pre-cooked.
Of course, even completely grade-separated automatic subways can screw up and send trains crashing into each other. Humans are behind every safety feature and piece of technology that goes into making railways safer, and those safety features are not failsafe. In your reality, even grade separated metro networks would be unsafe and their operators negligent.
The fact of the matter is this. The value of a human life is not infinite. Where that value actually falls is steeped in controversy, but in order to make good decisions on what to do with public money, we must keep this concept in mind.
That doesn't necessarily mean that walling off the platforms at rail stations is a poor use of public funds. I think it might work. But I do think that spending billions to "save" the 93 people who died on the "most dangerous light rail line in the country" since it opened 19 years ago to be a poor use of scarce transit resources, especially considering that the behavior of many of them were negligent and we could reasonably conclude that they would have died in some other way had the train route not been built.
Yeah I know this an unpopular opinion, but I have alot of them.
Posted by: Spokker | 09/15/2009 at 10:41 PM
By the way, Damien, if you really do want gold-plated metro lines crisscrossing South Central, you should be shuttling your ass between Sacramento and DC and lobbying for a number of things, including an increased gas tax or an implementation of a vehicle mileage tax, and a shifting of transportation funding priorities away from highways and toward transit.
Any time you spend on Expo and badgering Metro and gay transit advocates who just want to discuss their little light rail toy trains is time wasted because even if you're right, they can't do anything for you anyway.
Sacramento and DC is where the problem is.
Posted by: Spokker | 09/15/2009 at 11:02 PM
Spokker, now that you are getting serious, I will address your problems with Browne and Damien's arguments.
The amount of money that is being spent on certain portions of the Expo Line to be underground in certain nabes is a problem that nearly no-one is addressing. Far more money for far fewer miles for an affluent nabe seems to make clear that who has the money is worth more. The Gold Line clearly exhibits this, and The Bus Bench has documented this fact. Anyone who has taken the Gold Line from just Chinatown to South Pasadena will see the way Metro and certain nabes work.
As for suggesting Damien go to the state and fed capitols to argue, well, just remember that your tax dollars help pay politicians and their fellow lobbyists to enjoy easy strolls down K Street. If Damien asked you for money to do the same, would you hand it over? Of course not; and nothing would come of it. But refuse those who use your hard-earned cash to take junkets and go to Sac and DC to glad-hand how your money is abused and eventually raided for other funds, and you go to prison.
The problem is with each of us. I am not advocating a true tax revolt, nor fare evasion, nor any illegal act that might reclaim the efforts of a decent working American siphoned off by a scum-sucking sycophant and equally repulsive staff who with every mayoral year makes every wrong decision and grows smaller in stature. No, I am not suggesting that at all. What I am suggesting is that Metro had and has the resources to make mass transit less stupid, but chooses to do otherwise. One can only hope Art turns this wretched Shame Train around.
Then again, Art was forced to replace Roger's early retirement, if Art wanted to keep his job with LACMTA, so we can't blame Art for having to work against a bunch of fucking jerks, schmucks and schmoes.
Posted by: Randall BusTard | 09/19/2009 at 09:53 AM
Just wondering, when and where was this picture taken? (Obviously somewhere on the Gold or Green Line)
Also, did I imagine it or were there these barrier poles installed on the Red/Purple Line platform at Union Station, and then removed?
Posted by: Erik G. | 09/21/2009 at 04:33 PM
"Far more money for far fewer miles for an affluent nabe seems to make clear that who has the money is worth more"
Yeah, but then there are others who attempt to debunk that claim. It's based on traffic patterns, local conditions, blah blah blah. It's not like they have a horse in the race either. They are just out of shape dudes with too much time on their hands who like trains, like most of us Internet nerds tend to be. Who am I supposed to trust? You can surely see the predicament I'm in.
"One can only hope Art turns this wretched Shame Train around."
I can't imagine what he could do to please everybody who has a chip on their shoulder about whatever. I personally think he's been making some good decisions recently, but I doubt that he will drastically change transit in Los Angeles.
Down here, I think he got some night owl routes up and running, but it was freeways as usual here during his tenure at OCTA. We still don't have any rapid bus lines, but the buses are clean. Want to trade?
"Then again, Art was forced to replace Roger's early retirement, if Art wanted to keep his job with LACMTA, so we can't blame Art for having to work against a bunch of fucking jerks, schmucks and schmoes."
How long until you guys turn on him? :)
By the way, Art will be at Phillipe's The Original tomorrow at 7PM answering questions as time permits. Wanna come? You can be my date.
Posted by: Spokker | 09/21/2009 at 11:01 PM
Randall,
It can't be the Green Line -- the Green Line has ATC (it can have that since it's fully grade-separated), so it would have to be computer, not human error.
Posted by: JimS | 09/22/2009 at 01:30 AM
It is the Green Line at Norwalk . The "computer" backed up when I
pulled out my camera. -Browne
On 9/22/09, typepad@sixapart.com wrote:
Posted by: writer | 09/22/2009 at 06:03 AM
Late last week, there were yellow barriers on the Union Station platform of the Red Line. I didn't get any photos, but there was one odd feature: they each had two strips of tape on them. I don't recall, but it may have been painter's tape; I think it was blue.
I do not plan on "turning on Art," Spokker; I have hope that he will fight the MTA Board (as he has done with the Ansaldo-Bred fiasco) because he knows a thing or two up and down the Metro ladder.
Oh, and Spokker, sure, I'll be your date. But be polite, because you know how quickly Bart Reed can up and call someone a "bitch" or "shrill, shrieking shrew."
In all seriousness, I am always keen to know what Art Leahy has to state about the public transit system on which I almost exclusively rely. (Feet don't fail me, now.)
Posted by: Randall BusTard | 09/22/2009 at 02:40 PM
"But be polite, because you know how quickly Bart Reed can up and call someone a "bitch" or "shrill, shrieking shrew.""
Especially when they throw things at people ;)
Posted by: Spokker | 09/22/2009 at 03:58 PM