Category Archives: Inside Metro

Chat with Metro CEO Art Leahy at tonight's Transit Coalition meeting

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The Transit Coalition is hosting Metro CEO Art Leahy at their monthly meeting tonight. If you’ve never attended a Transit Coalition meeting – it’s a casual event where Leahy will discuss the latest happenings at Metro and field your questions while dining on french dip sandwiches at Philippe The Original near Union Station.

It’s a good opportunity to meet Metro’s head honcho, get the executive view of the various projects you’ve read about on The Source and even swap transit stories – Leahy is a regular rider! Plus you can learn more about the Transit Coalition and their efforts to improve transit through advocacy.

Here are the details:

Transit Coalition Meeting with Art Leahy
Website: http://www.thetransitcoalition.us/
When: 6:50pm-8:40pm
Price: FREE
Where: Philippe The Original, 1001 N. Alameda St.
Nearby Metro Rail: Union Station, Red/Purple Line Union Station, Gold Line Union Station
Nearby Metro Bus Stops: Alameda/Main (76), Cesar Chavez/Main (704/745), Cesar Chavez/Alameda (33, 70, 71, 78/79/378, 84/68, 733)


Metro Board Operations Committee considers June service changes

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The Metro Board of Directors Operations Committee on Thursday met to consider the proposed June 2011 service changes. A full list of the proposed changes is available here [PDF].

After a line-by-line review of the changes, the Operations Committee voted to forward the proposed bus service changes to the full Board of Directors, who are scheduled to vote on the issue next Thursday, March 24.

Also of note, the committee authorized Metro CEO Art Leahy to purchase up to 700 new 40-foot advanced transit buses through 2015 using a “best value” criteria for the order. These new buses would replace the oldest in Metro’s bus fleet that have outlived their useful service life.

During the public comment period, members of the Bus Riders Union spoke against the proposed service changes. Below the jump is Metro’s official response to the Federal Transit Administration Review of Metro’s service Changes, which was initiated in part at the request of the Bus Riders Union.

Continue reading →

Metro Library's photo collection logs one million hits on Flickr

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Found on the Metro Flickr photostream: The 50th anniversary of Disneyland in 2005 was also the 50th anniversary of Metro bus service to Disneyland. Metropolitan Coach Lines' “Snow White” bus went into service on Nov. 22, 1955. When the inaugural bus pulled onto Main Street in front of Disney's City Hall, it was greeted by Walt Disney himself, the Mouseketeers and a 16-piece band.

Found on the Metro Flickr photostream: The 50th anniversary of Disneyland in 2005 was also the 50th anniversary of Metro bus service to Disneyland. Metropolitan Coach Lines' “Snow White” bus went into service on Nov. 22, 1955. When the inaugural bus pulled onto Main Street in front of Disney's City Hall, it was greeted by Walt Disney himself, the Mouseketeers and a 16-piece band.

One million hits can’t be wrong. The Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library’s Flickr photostream can take you anywhere you want to go visually in the transportation history of the Los Angeles region.

With no bells and whistles, the one-millionth hit on the photostream crept past the counter this morning at 1:40 a.m., too immersed in history to even notice, we presume.

It was only a little more than two years ago that the transportation library began uploading some 7,000 scanned images from its historic archive of more than 20,000 photographs.  The library wanted to share its resources more broadly with its users, but had no idea how popular these images would be, said Kenn Bicknell, Metro’s digital resources librarian.

The Flickr photo collection was an instant hit, receiving enthusiastic feedback from a wide variety of users, including the USC School of Architecture, History Channel, PBS, the Los Angeles Times, Arcadia Publishing and the engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff.

Looking for a photo of a northbound streetcar on Broadway in front of the former headquarters of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner Building in, say, 1963? Search a keyword and you’ll come up with this beauty, shot by photographer Alan Weeks.

From the Metro Flickr photostream: Check out the slideshow for more.

From the Metro Flickr photostream: Check out the slideshow for more.

The library has simplified both browsing and searching for photos by organizing them in broader collections as well as topic-oriented sets. Read all about it here.

For the entire range of online resources offered by the Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library, check it out on the home page.

Art for the Expo Line: Ephemeral Views by Ronald Llanos

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Ronald Llanos speaks with Saskia Siebrand, Creative & Technical Director, Mosaika Art & Deisgn about his work for Expo/Western Station.

Ronald Llanos describes himself as a visual journalist. “My images are inspired by people and by the places I travel to or frequent,” he says.

Ron collects drawings in a sketchbook while people watching in a café or walking through Los Angeles neighborhoods. He creates thousands of quick sketches of people engaging in city life: talking with friends, walking past businesses carrying shopping bags, pushing a baby carriage or talking on a cell phone. These vignettes become the subject matter for zines – small self-published magazines that tell a story about a particular place at a moment in time. You can see more of Ronald’s images and follow his blog here.

Ronald Llanos shares pages of his sketchbook documenting his urban adventures.

In preparing the artwork designs for the Expo/Western Station, Ronald spent time filling his sketchbook with drawings of people and activities he observed around the station area. He then mapped the art panels at the platforms to unfold like the pages of an open book. A series of 16 watercolor paintings describe scenes from the local neighborhood.

Ronald’s watercolor paintings have a fresh, spontaneous quality to them. The task of translating his translucent washes of color into a hard, permanent material was a challenge. Artisans at Mosaika Art & Design traced Ronald’s designs onto ceramic tile and added thin layers of glaze to preserve the feel of the artist’s hand in the work. Next the work was fired, cut into small pieces and placed within the panels.

Hand glazed art tiles are cut into small pieces then placed within the art panels.

Speaking about the artwork for Expo/Western Station Ronald says, “I feel that if I search within myself for that which I find interesting about the places and people of those areas, I might be able to communicate with people across time.”

Art panels in process at Mosaika's shop.

Art panel depicting neighborhood teens.

More ‘Art for Expo Line’:

Need assistance? Live Help beta arrives on Metro.net

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Live Help Screen Shot

Metro has recently launched a new feature on Metro.net, Live Help beta.

Live Help beta creates a seamless link between Metro.net and Customer Relations, allowing patrons to chat live with Customer Information Agents via a web based instant messaging interface. This provides web savvy (or phone-phobic) customers with an easy alternative to calling 323-GO-METRO, Metro’s Customer Relations line.

Robin O’Hara, Senior Communications Officer at Metro, says the purpose of implementing Live Help is simple: better customer service.

The growing popularity of Metro.net, which has seen a 27% spike in page views since relaunching last year, also played a part in the decision to launch the new service. “More of our customers are using Metro.net and we wanted to deliver the best technology possible in helping them to navigate not only our website but also the Metro system,” says O’Hara. Continue reading →

The art of transit

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photo by Faria, via Flickr

A nicely exposed and framed shot of the Red Line’s Vermont and Sunset station, with its starscape murals. As noted on the photo’s Flickr page, on weekends subway passengers can exit the train at this stop and access the city of L.A.’s DASH bus to the nearby Griffith Observatory.

To submit a photo or photos of something transportation-related, post them to Metro’s Flickr group or email them to sourcemetro@gmail.com. The photos we’ve featured can be seen in these galleries on Flickr.

Metro.net gets updated with an improved Service Advisories page

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The Metro web team has revamped the Service Advisories feature on Metro.net with an interface facelift and improved functionality to make it easier for Metro bus and rail riders to stay on top of service issues that may affect their travels.

What’s new? Here’s a list of features that have been rolled out:

  • Filter by mode (bus, rail, special)
    Allows customers to view advisories be specified modes. Only ride Metro Rail? Choose rail from the dropdown menu and filter out the bus advisories.
  • Filter by date
    Allows customers to view service advisories by a specific date. So if you know you have a big meeting coming up you can check ahead to see if there are any planned service advisories that may affect your trip.
  • Current and upcoming advisories
    Complimenting filter by date is the ability to view upcoming service advisories (more than a week in future) in addition to current advisories. On the main service advisories page the current advisories are display, but an additional column lets you see if a given line has any upcoming advisories.
  • Better organization
    In addition to filtering features, the service advisories page has been reorganized to make information easier to find. Instead of a long list of advisories with full descriptions all on one page, the list has been truncated. Wordy descriptions have been replaced with succinct headlines that link to a page with a more detailed description of the advisory.
  • Live service alerts and Trip Planner integrated onto Service Advisories page
    Customers don’t have to search Metro.net for other useful features when viewing service advisories – the @MetroLAalerts Twitter feed and the Trip Planner are now included in the sidebar of the Service Advisories page.

Access the Service Advisories feature directly from the homepage of Metro.net – it can be found in the sidebar or from the top menu under Rider Tools. You can also access the page directly by going to http://www.metro.net/service/advisories/.

So what do you think of the updated Service Advisories feature? As with most features on Metro.net, feedback is encouraged so that the service can be improved to better serve customers. Leave your comments here on The Source or contact the web team directly using this form.

Metro Art Tour takes bloggers to L.A.'s largest underground gallery

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Photo by Dustin Downing.

Photo by Dustin Downing, Chinashopmap.com.

Nicole Pajer writes for the arts and culture blog Chinashop. What she doesn’t do is take mass transit, “Something about cramming into a tiny train car underground and being smashed up against random strangers just doesn’t sit right with me.”

Which means her tour of the Metro Red Line courtesy of Metro’s free monthly art tours was an eye opening experience – and her photographer Dustin Downing was there to capture it.

The four station tour included Hollywood/Highland, Universal City, North Hollywood and Hollywood/Vine. The latter was Pajer’s personal favorite, and if you’ve ever been curious about the yellow tiles that line that station, here’s the answer: “The artist that created this station was Gilbert Lujan (nicknamed Magu) and Adolfo Miralles was the architect.  The ceiling of the station contains over 20,000 actual 35mm film reels that were acquired from an old production studio.  The ground is Magu’s version of the Yellow Brick Road, as MGM has a patent on the original one.’

If the story inspires you, Metro Art Tours – cheekily called “Art’s a Trip” – are free, require no reservations and take place on the first Saturday, Sunday and Thursday of each month.

Reminder: take our Reader Survey to help improve The Source

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The Source has been working hard to share Metro news and views for a year now and we’re looking to you, our readers, to grade our performance so far – and tell us what you’d like to see from us in the next year.

We’ve had a great response to our 2010 Reader Survey so far and we only posted it two days ago, but there are still plenty of readers out there who have yet to chime in. It just takes a few minutes of your time, and your feedback will help us adjust what we’re doing to better serve you.

And remember to be honest! We love praise, but constructive criticism is most helpful.

You can take the survey here: http://thesource.metro.net/2010readersurvey/

Help improve The Source by taking our reader survey

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The Source last week hit a milestone: one year of Metro blogging!

At its core, The Source is all about communication. As scribes, we can’t build the rails, raise the funds or make the buses show up on time. But we can tell you how the agency is dealing with these issues, inform you of the challenges faced, tell you how to best take advantage of what’s there now and even give you an outlet to voice your two cents on all of this.

Admittedly, the government blog is a new beast on the media landscape and can be hard to define. The Source is a lively mix: part news, part PR, part promotion, part interactive communication and — hopefully — fun and readable.

But instead of patting ourselves on the back for making it this far, we’re turning to you, our readers, to tell us how we’re doing and how we can do better.

With that in mind we’ve put together the 2010 Reader Survey and we encourage you to take a few minutes to fill it out. Doing so will help us better define who our readers are and what they want — and focus our resources appropriately.

You can take the survey here: http://thesource.metro.net/2010readersurvey/