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ART OF TRANSIT: A cargo ship on the mighty Columbia River near Astoria, Oregon. Photo by Steve Hymon.

Raise the gas tax already: our view (USA Today)

This editorial drills a few holes in its paddle and then takes a few swings in the hallway at Congress, arguing fixing our nation’s roads and expanding transit service in cities should be easy: raise the gas tax to 1993 levels and index it to inflation. As the editorial points out, Congress refuses to do that and has instead resorted to the kind of budgetary tricks that would get most private citizens into all sorts of trouble if they attempted with their own budgets.

In the meantime, Congress is still working on a multiyear transportation bill.

Bus schedules in chaos: mathematics might explain why your bus never comes when you expect it (Pacific Standard)

Fun article. A recent study found that it doesn’t take much — a bus speeding up a little or slowing a little, an aggressive driver, a traffic signal staying red a few seconds longer — and chaos theory kicks in. Meaning that a bus a couple minutes early one day may be a couple minutes late the next day even though much else hasn’t changed.

Bikes, sweat and tears: getting to work on two wheels in Los Angeles (KPCC)

T-reporter Meghan McCarty joins a ‘bike train’ for a ride from Silver Lake to JPL in La Canada Flintridge. Easy, it’s not. Fun fact: percentage wise, chilly-willy Minneapolis has a higher rate of bike commuters than sunny L.A.

L.A. business and cultural leaders want to see an Angels Flight plan (L.A. Times) 

The Metro Board approved a motion yesterday to have the agency recommend ways to get Angels Flight reopen. The funicular between Hill Street and Bunker Hill has been closed since 2013 because state regulators want several safety upgrades that the nonprofit that runs Angels Flight has not yet made, according to the California Public Utilities Commission.

An online petition to reopen Angels Flight has attracted hundreds of signatures, but it’s unclear how Metro may help — the motion’s sponsor, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti — said it’s not his intent for Metro to take over the line, which presumably would be an expensive proposition. I assume it’s also a steep order for the city of L.A. Is it something downtown residents/businesses would pay for?

Hard to say. That’s one issue of having a giant downtown. Angels Flight probably means a lot to folks in the area around Bunker Hill, the Civic Center and Grand Central Market, but perhaps not so much to other downtown neighborhoods.

Folson, Orovilla and Shasta reservoirs, July 2015 (California Department of Water Resources) 

Not directly transportation related, except the people who take transit in California presumably need some water now and then.

Review: In “Oregon Trail,” two brothers take an 1800s-style road trip (New York Times) 

Photo by Baker County Tourism, via Flickr creative commons.

For those looking for something to read during their Transit Time, this one sounds fun — and is on my short list after I leave the company of Karl Ove Knausgaard, who is making for an excellent Gold Line companion.

Quasi-related: I recently watched “Meek’s Cutoff,” the 2010 film about a few families who get lost in eastern Oregon trying to find a shortcut along the trail. I certainly don’t mind films with slow pacing, but this one takes it to a whole level. But the film’s true crime is its ending, or lack thereof. Again, it’s one thing to have an ambiguous ending. It’s another to simply end the film in mid-narrative and to call it art. In other words, don’t waste your time or money.

In the spirit of not being entirely antisocial, yeah I’m on Twitter but lose five followers every time I tweet. I do slightly better (or is it slightly less worse?) on Instagram. My photo website and blog haven’t been kicked off the Internet. Yet.