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.
Continue reading "If He Is Alive, Will He Vote to Renew Metro's Contract with Sheriff?" »
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
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.
Continue reading "L.A. Sheriff deputy allows ADA violation (Pershing Square)" »
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.
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
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.
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.
'Nuff said.
-BusTard
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:
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.
Continue reading "TransitVue Takes A Dive on The Red Line" »
The Bus Bench is doing an art project on January 10th and we need a car to murder.
Are you ready to release yourself from the chain of car ownership? Do you want it documented?
(LA Bus) Metro Trip Planner. This would include directions on how to get anywhere using any bus or rail line in LA Country.
Big Blue BusWestside!!
Montebello Bus Eastside!!
Gardena Muni Southside!!
Foothills Transit The SGV!!
Did you know there was an official where to go and how to do fun stuff in L.A.? Well now you do: Experience L.A.
L.A. is a special place, so we have lots of events. Your public transit ride could be impacted check here. Special Events Street Closures.
The Bus Bench’s roots are in Social Ecology.
The Bus Bench takes a satirical and editorial approach to dealing with the issue of mobility in Los Angeles. The emphasis of The Bus Bench is public transportation, but we also discuss class, race, gender and Downtown Los Angeles.
In commenting on The Bus Bench we do not mind if your opinion differs than that of an opinion of a writer on a particular post. We welcome discourse. We only ask that you be respectful. Do not be violent with your words.
Contact us at: browne@shametrainla.com
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.
A Valley-born Los Angeleno, Simon Ganz only recently returned from the liberal enclaves of Northern California where he, to his surprise, found himself more than happy living without a car. Now back in his hometown with only a political science major to show for his journey, he is of course constantly unemployed and hoping to join/start/follow a movement to create better transit for everyone in Los Angeles.
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.
Sirinya Tritipeskul is a graduate student studying to become a transportation planner at UCLA. She writes on The Bus Bench about living car-free on the Westside. Her own blog, The Valley Girl Planner (in training), is a tribute to her Valley Girl roots and her travels around the Los Angeles area.
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