The Bus Bench

Good Consumer

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Bus Bench Service Alerts. Sept 30. The economy had a stroke!!

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Metrolink is going to have to add a second engineer on SOME trains, oh well how about them letting the engineers have more than eight hours between shifts, oh that would be real change and cost money.
LA Times/ Sept 27

Shooting near the Blue Line. What does that mean exactly? If it’s not on the Blue Line, aren’t most shooting near something somewhat significant?
LA Times/ Sept 24

Izip (the electric bike) was using Darryl Hannah to sell bikes, but they forgot to tell her.
Sify/ Sept 28

The economy had a stroke; lets see which side gets paralyzed.
Washington Post/ Sept 29

A list of freeways that should be torn down, none of the freeways of LA, you know probably owing to our questionable bus service.
CNU

The Eastside. An education.
LA Eastside/ Sept 28

Compiled and edited by Browne Molyneux

Rita L Robinson we have some concerns. LADOT’s unreliability problem.

“Today I took the Commuter Express instead of Metro to work. That meant I had to wake up nearly 2 hours earlier, but the 549 goes straight from my residence at Sepulveda/Ventura to my office at Pass/Alameda. It seemed all worthwhile when I got on board and discovered the plushy seats, air-conditioned comfort and quiet clientele.

Then the Commuter Express failed to show up in the evening. There I was, sitting at the stop marked 549 Encino. I stood there for 45 minutes, a period of time that, according to the schedule, two different buses were supposed to arrive, and eventually just gave up and walked over to the Metro 96 stop down the street. That bus, of course, showed up - and on time, I might add.

What gives? Is there someone I can complain to about this? It sucks to be stranded! Is this what you meant by "outside of downtown LA it's extremely unreliable" in your post?” Nancy, public transit rider and The Bus Bench reader.

Lady Robinson, General Manager and goddess of city parking and special event street closures public transit riders have a bit of a problem with your service. Yes you run a clean busline, but it’s only clean on the surface.

The LADOT is the supermodel and star footplayer of transit. On the surface it’s a superior specimen until you try to talk to it.

LADOT in it's human form  the supermodel (Giselle Bundchen) and the star football player (Tom Brady)

The LA I know and love and hate is coming back!!!

A MTA 204 passenger's injuries were called slight by the LAPD. A bullet coming near you and glass shattering and hitting you is only a slight inconvenience.

If we're going to use the LAPD's definition of levels of injuries, being hit with a butt of a knife twice is practically no injuries. I think a criminal almost causing no injuries is probably not that dangerous. Not dangerous enough to risk the life of the passengers on the 204.

Would officers had fired into a school yard or a parking lot with personal vehicles?

A photo taken by BusTard outside the Children's Hospital (in the vicinity the shooting took place) two hours before the shooting. Every parents' nightmare combined in one shot. Your teenage daughter having sex and your little sick kid getting shot.

MORE AFTER THE TRANSFER

Bus Bench Service Alerts. 08-21.

Bus Riders Union Button in Korean.

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Bus Bench news from around the English speaking the world. I dropped my fourth year Spanish and third year French, had to stay competitive for college.

Kyberleigh Richards has some opinions on the sales tax.
Daily News/ August 20

The Alt Fuel Expo in Santa Monica wants to offer you choice.
Market Watch/ August 19

Gas is the modern day equivalent of wine. Modern day Jesus (science) can turn water into gas. Thank the Lord.
Plant Engineering/ August 19

In Artesia a 17 year old is found shot near his bicycle.
LA Times/ August 21

There is a reason grandma keeps driving. The streets are scary. See above.
LA Streetsblog/ August 20

Bikes can cause pollution too, especially if you bring your car attitude with your cycling. A non-car owning pedestrian advocate fights back the cycling menace in his city of San Francisco. Crazy, interesting, valid points? Read and find out.
WSJ/ August 20

US inflation at a 27 year high. So it is the 80s again, its not just the clothes and the more frequency in random shootings. If we’re doing a do-over maybe I can move back to my parents house and re-do 3rd grade, hell I could do 3rd grade. I was in a hippie commune we didn’t do grade levels or grades or judgments or shower.
AFP/ August 20

More people will use transit, if it has some of the ugly public art slapped on it.
Treehugger/ August 21

Compiled and edited by Browne Molyneux

Telepathic Trip Planners Don't Exist

I’m on my way to see the goings-ons at the Fix the Expo Line and I’m using the MTA’s trusty interactive “how to get there” map aka trip planner. While Metrorider had issues with the map, owing to it's lack functionality and it not being attractive, I didn’t really care. I just wanted to do two things; find out where I was going and not have to think in the process.

Exhibit one is what I put in the trip planner.

Exhibit two is what I got from the trip planner.

1.                  

2.

MORE AFTER THE TRANSFER                        

Bus Bench Service Alerts. 8-07.

Foothill Transit, a public transit organization that WORKS!!!!!

Bus Bench Bits

Bus Bench Service Alerts 08-07

“I’d rather wait for the very late and dirty MTA than have to carpool with someone who thinks Celine Dion is music,” an American.
Carectomy/ 08-04

Remember last year when people did that park(ing) day when people who had electric vehicles (which are still cars)  put their cool interior design sci-arc sanctioned ideas in a truck drove them to a parking spot and then sat in that spot to protest driving or to champion open space, but actually it was real annoying and pretentious (especially in a place like LA, I mean really who is using up the most space the rich and pretentious or the poor and angry, how about doing parking day in Beverly Hills...) well for the version in NY,  this Friday is the last day to sign up to be one of those annoying people.
Streetsblog/ 08-06

Not having money to pay for your bills causes causes your power to go out, which conserves energy. That’s pretty eco.
LA Times/ 08-07

Port pollution death is so early aught.
California Progress Report/ 08-08

Do you care more about eating or trees? If you said eating you’re a horrible person.
Times Transcript Canada/ 08-02

Train riding hobo girl.
The City Paper Baltimore/ 08-06

The MTA is racist.
The Wave/ 08-08

Tapping your bus ride.
Daily Fusion/ June

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Sometimes when you're on the bus and you're angry because it's late and stinky and the MTA is ripping you off in all kinds of ways, some you don't even know yet. Think about this, at least you're in LA. At least you're not in Canada on a bus and some guy (he worked at McDonalds, more reasons to never eat there) decides that your existence is bothering him and decides to end your existence, separate your head from your body and then put your ear and nose in his pocket for a late night snack.

At least the MTA isn't that bad. If you look at it that way, a 30 minute late bus maybe isn't SO BAD..

WOW!!!!! Thanks for the heads up on that insanity 110 at the 10.
Bus Bench Bits edited, compiled and made funny by Browne Molyneux

Bus Bench Service Alerts. 8-06.

Amelia Bloomer’s fashion statement helped us ride bicycles.

Bus bench bits and a little bit of news from the 1970s

Even little Fresno heard about the LA County Supervisors smack down of METRO.
Fresno Bee/ 08-05

Toll Roads coming to a freeway near you
USA Today/ 08-04

Lets all use natural gas, it is the cleanest of all fossil fuels and I’m rich, so I know.
Herald Tribune/ 08-05

Proposition 1b money went mostly to highways, because we didn’t want you to die. Earthquakes you know.
LA Times/ 08-05

That wait at the DMV is going to get even longer (didn’t think that could be possible.)
LA Times/ 08-05

They want to build this very fast train, but they don’t know the most environmentally friendly sounding way to get away with it. Lying is hard.
Merced-Sun/ 08-04

Pam O'Connor former metro board chair, is going to speak on Friday in downtown LA. She wasn’t chair very long.
SOCOTA/ Alternative Transportation Advocacy website.

Department of Rail Roads??!! I didn't even know that option was possible, well no one will know about it now.
Desert Sun/ 08-06

Car drivers still don't like cyclists.
Economist/07-31-08

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Vintage news…back in 1974 disco wasn't dead yet and the  MTA which was the RTD had a strike, apparently it was pretty ugly. Valley News/ August 1974

Edited by Browne Molyneux

Navin: An Orange Line Story. A podcast radio show.

We at the Bus Bench thought it was interesting that once a shooting occurred on the Orange Line it went from being a "rail" to a bus rather quickly. We wrote this podcast imagining what the Orange Line might have thought upon founding out, he was just a bus.

Download Orange Line, Radio Show

Bus Bench Service Alerts. 8-05

A bus made Frida Kahlo an artist.

Bus Bench bits (and a video game) for the 5th day of August.

A woman got stuck in traffic owing to construction and she sued, for 16 dollars. Is that my Aunt Gladys, she’d waste time to make a point.
Toledo/ 08-04

The LADOT may have some problems, but in my opinion they don’t suck nearly as hard as the MTA.
Citywatch/ 08-05

The Dodger Shuttle, well I don’t really associate with people who do or watch sports (I’m assuming they are related to the french manicure and shopping at Bebe set), but apparently it’s not working out.
BottleNeck LA Times/ 08-04

Someone or something is murdering cute little porpoises. Enemies of Douglas Adams unite.
Planet Ark/ 08-04

“City Hall shuttle services will be terminated.”
LADOT/ 08-04

Got a DUI, want to keep driving, well we want your soul first.
Landmine Magazine.

Pretty skinny people take the bus, so that must mean the opposite in regards to car drivers.
CBS/ 08-04

Does art imitate life or does life imitate art, doesn’t matter it’s the art that always gets BANNED.
AFT/ 08-05

Edited, compiled and made humorous by Browne Molyneux