The Bus Bench

Former LA transit guy says: The Barbie Dream House of Public Transit is not real.

Rhetoric always seems to trump reality in the headline department. This has been evident as a fawning press and commentators have made the most of the decline in driving from high gas prices and the related increase in transit ridership. As gas prices rose to their above $4.00 peak, driving in the nation’s urban areas had declined 2.0 percent over a year. At the same time, transit ridership rose 3.3 percent, leading to the impression that transit ridership increases had accounted for most, if not more than the loss in driving.

Now, as gas prices dip below $2.00 nationally, $1.50 in some places and to their lowest point since well before Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there are indications that the new riders are returning to their cars. Here in the St. Louis area, where I live, prices are now $1.39, the lowest in the nation.

Wendell Cox,"From Rhetoric to Reality on Transit" New Geography

So according to Mr. Cox the reason that people were taking transit were not for green reasons or mother earth or for the reasons of global warming. Apparently public transit rise was directly connected to gas prices being high.

Oh my god!!!

Friday Night Rides: Cocktail Mass.

This Friday, 21 Nov, Metro experiments with late night Red Line service—and the Bus bench plans to be on board!

Join Browne, BusTard and other daring, soon-to-be merry straphangers as they go bar-hopping on the Red Line. We'll be going around downtown but are starting at Traxx bar at Union Station at 10:30 p.m. We'll be heading out from there around 11:30 p.m.

They'll be disguises and cocktails.

 

There will be time enough to stumble back home, as the Red Line will be running until 3 a.m.

Bible Thumpers Save Souls at "Unsafe Location" Bus Stop

Repent! lest one be consumed by the eternal damnation of the DASH!

Or so one might surmise from the religious crackpots packing up their signs at this DASH stop on 7th between Broadway and Spring. Even LADOT has formally implied the evil of this particular bus stop: "Unsafe Location" is hand-lettered at the top of the sign.

-BusTard

Metro Sheriffs to Transit Advocate: "Your First Amendment Rights Are Not in Service"

What happens when a well-recognised transit advocate waiting to buy a newspaper is physically threatened by Metro sheriffs that gather daily at Pershing Square Red Line station? Libelous and unfounded accusations of terrorism as well as intimidation, unwarranted arrest and all manner of implicit threats to one's future liberties and life, followed by constant accusations of creating scandal for scandal's sake. My protests of being unlawfully detained were met with the phrase, "Tell it to the judge." The day's motif is sure to be best appreciated in the final video of this post's Twin Towers/County Jail misadventure, which satirically addresses a few of the very topics that the hired guns of Metro's Transit Security Bureau alleges in a fashion too serious to forget.

Angels Flight Finally Reopens, Um, Like—Soon?

After nearly a decade of promised openings, Angels Flight is finally ready to take flight for a third time.

A DASH of New York, now in L.A.

I make a weekly tour or two to pick up mail in Franklin Hills, and occasionally the DASH happens to be waiting at the curb as I exit the Red Line's Sunset/Vermont station. Last week I spied a development on the DASH that I noticed was remarkably similar to a mid-town (Manhattan) LED crawl while awaiting the downtown R last December.

First the new DASH:

Now the mid-town marque:

-BusTard

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.

Priority Seating for Boneheads

'Nuff said.

-BusTard

TransitVue Takes A Dive on The Red Line

A year or so ago, Metro elected to blow $2.2 million to install 350 46" plasma screens, allegedly for the betterment of communicating to straphangers the arrival times of trains. But as with all things Metro, not only has the usual gone undone but all manner of new problems have been introduced despite the promises of the contractor, TransitVue.

They were just people and this was MY stuff!!!

Just People.

I’m on the bus and this a**hole is on her cell phone, taking up two seats, ignoring dirty looks, just being a total ass. The bus was standing room only. Mothers with babies, elderly and disabled people were packing on. A guy with a cane stood next to her, but she didn’t care. Her stuff was more valuable than everyone on the bus. When she got off the bus, she was completely oblivious to her surroundings. She ran over an old lady's foot and she didn’t even say excuse me, because she was texting someone about a bar.

“The Cole thing is next month, darn,” selfish public transitist.