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.

If He Is Alive, Will He Vote to Renew Metro's Contract with Sheriff?

Just over a week ago, a man was beaten and left for dead on the Blue Line's Pacific platform. The downtown Long Beach platform, which is supposedly overseen by the L.A. County Sheriff, is one of many Blue Line platforms obviously neglected by the deputies.

Late Night Video Runs All Day on Metro!

Metro's social experiment—funded by many private (and at least one not so privately funded) enterprises is set to start next weekend. The Bus Bench is excited, and will be announcing a Red Line Bar-hopping party later this weekend. (No sheriffs allowed, natch!) We will be starting in Hollywood and making our way downtown to Redwood Bar & Grill with stops along the way.

This morning, we noticed that Metro appears to be equally excited—so much so as to repeatedly announce the wonderful new development in L.A. mass transit. To wit:

-BusTard

L.A. Sheriff deputy allows ADA violation (Pershing Square)

This summer, my interest in the significant presence of L.A. County Sheriff's deputies at pershing Square was piqued when I observed a terse conversation between a deputy and a frustrated, wheel-chair bound Metro patron. The deputy appeared to be annoyed that he had to answer to a person regarding the blocked passageway—the vehicle blocking it being a Metro contractor's vehicle.

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.

Pallet Mover on Sixth Street

These are tough times and even the LAPD knows it. At least, that is what I imagine may have prompted the cruiser in the far right lane to not see what my camera caught last week as the guy with the stack of pallets wheeled uninterrupted to one of the pallet recyclers on Alameda Street:

-BusTard

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

Is Metro Hiring? They Should Be.

We have all heard that adage about good help being hard to find. Apparently, Metro Customer Relations Manager Tom Horne has abandoned any desire to overcome this bulwark of human nature and just let L.A. transit be plain LAzy.

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.