The Bus Bench

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:

Need A Job? Drive for DASH!

I am not sure if this advert on a DASH is done out of desperation (owing to the cheap design and Day-glo orange) or if LADOT is subtly celebrating Halloween:

-BusTard

Get Yer Butt to BusCon!

We missed this year's event, but there is always next year!

Could These Be Unsold Embezzled Metro Drivers' Day Passes?

There is all sorts of wrong with Metro's poor compensation of bus drivers. The public's safety is but one facet (and apparently an insignificant one) of hiring drivers for rates at which even a lowly newspaper production schmoe would scoff: "Trainee Rate:$11.09 p/hr - Start Rate:$14.38 p/hr - Top Rate:$22.12 p/hr."

As such, it is no wonder that the Daily News found out about a Metro drivers' scam that has been employed for quite some time.

The REAL Reason for Exorbitant Oil Prices

Don Pardo tells us why oil prices are so damned high. In 1976.

-BusTard

Black Monday prompts Blue Metro

As there is neither a recession nor a depression, then it follows that tits and ass, drugs and death, wrong and right, AIN'T. Or so Metro implies, as this single slice of the debauchery to follow clearly illustrates:

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

Bus Bench Service Alerts. Sept 22. Are we in a recession yet?

(Well this isn't very eco is it?)

Highway 66 is the main migrant road. 66 - the long concrete path across the country, waving gently up and down the map, from Mississippi to Bakersfield. 66 is the path of people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunders of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert's slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.

-John Steinbeck
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Gender specific bus passes are causing some problem in Philly.
Philadelphia Inquirer/ Sept 20

The South Bay may get some dedicated mass transit.
Daily News/  Sept 20

Who got cut in the Budget Cuts:
-Maintaining a 10 percent reduction in the state’s Medi-Cal program
-Monthly premiums for families in poverty with children enrolled in the Healthy Families Program will rise by $2 to $3 per child.
-The budget eliminates cost-of-living increases for the California portion of the Supplemental Security Income payments to 1.3 million blind, elderly and disabled.
-Exempts workers earning over $75,000 a year from collecting overtime pay.
-$950 million will be cut from public transit agencies
(There are lots of other fun cuts, but I just wanted you to feel the overall theme song of the budget cuts, which sounds alot like a middle finger waving to the non-rich.)
WSW/ Click HERE for the budget/ Sept 22

Montreal goes car FREE all day today.
CBC/ Sept 22

Redefining what is poor; is probably a good idea right about now.
Pittsburgh Review/ Sept 21

Recession crime in Idaho; recession crime is when people steal food and diapers, it's very similar to inner city crime.
Fox News/ Sept 22

Bernanke speech that our economy is pretty fucked came to a shock to members of congress…really, that was really shocking to congress?!!!
ABC News/ Sept 21

compiled and edited by Browne Molyneux

Browne's Been Busy

Before the day wears me out, and I find myself wandering the Art Walk, let me tell you about the Bus bench's busy editrix's latest writings in L.A. Progressive and L.A. CityBeat.

'Nuff said.

-BusTard

The Bus Bench related, not so transit related

I've lived in three different places in the last twelve months, which is good for me, but not so good for my computer.

During my move from Boyle Heights my computer was killed in a horrible car accident (cars are bad) and I was forced to share a computer with my boy. Do you know how annoying that is? Boys play video games. Video games like War Craft. Boys don't get that my time on-line is more important than a pretend video game war.

I wanted to get the perfect computer, preferably a laptop. Preferably a PC (my boy has an apple, no need to be redundant with computer platforms.) I wanted something cheap. I wanted something light enough for me to carry (I can't carry the same amount comfortably as a guy that is 180, tech people sometimes seem to not get that.) I did want something used, but people who sell used things don't get the whole "it's not new" concept and charge too much. I then found the Asus.

It's cheap. It's little. It's not heavy (I hated taking the G4 out, it was heavy it hurt my shoulder.) The Asus looks like a toy. It's Hello Kitty cute!!!! Hello Kitty is the most cute anything can get. But it's so far shaping up to be a kick ass computer.

The Asus is slightly bigger than a clutch purse. And very sticker friendly.

What does this mean for The Bus Bench? Lots more posting. I can now post outside of my house and outside of the four block ratio of my home (because the G4 is too heavy to carry farther.) I can be that annoying person who blogs live to tell you things you don't need to know, things like how the person next to me on the MTA 720 is picking his nose (and it's so small, nose picker wouldn't even know it.)

This blog also has a built in camera. Imagine the things The Bus Bench can do now.

Grosses bises,

Browne, Editor