Reminder: A public meeting on the draft spending plan for Metro’s potential ballot measure will be held tonight in El Monte:
Thursday, April 7th, 2016, 6–8pm
Grace T. Black Auditorium
3130 Tyler Ave, El Monte, CA 91731
Served by Metro Bus Line 176 and
Foothill Transit Line 486
It’s one of 10 meetings being held this month. In May, there will be 13 “telephone town hall” meetings that will allow people to call in or listen online. More soon on time and dates for those meetings.
Art of Transit:
Things to listen to whilst transiting: Riders of a Certain Age (read: my age) will enjoy Jesse Thorn’s extremely delightful and funny interview with 90-year-old Dick Van Dyke on Jesse’s Bullseye podcast.
Only six months to go: Until the 3-0 Dodgers play the 3-0 Reds in the NLCS. The Dodger Stadium Express free bus service has 81 regular season games to warm up, starting with Blue’s home opener against the D-Backs on Tuesday.
Go Metro to Rams versus Dallas Cowboys on Aug. 13 (NBC)
The NFL today announced dates for pre-season games. The Rams plays the Cowboys at the Coliseum in a nationally televised game at 5 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 13. The Coliseum is easy to reach from the Expo Line’s Expo Park/USC Station or Expo/Vermont Station. It’s a rematch of the 1976 and 1979 NFC Title games!
America has fewest teen drivers since the 1960s (Citylab)
We’ve been hearing for several years about the trend of teens waiting to get drivers licenses. New federal data neatly shows the trend:
It would be cool if every 16 year old in L.A. County automatically received a TAP card in the mail on their 16th birthday 🙂
https://storify.com/metrolosangeles/you-and-your-driver-s-license
Star Wars: Rogue One clip apparently filmed at London Tube station (Guardian)
https://twitter.com/JamesLiamCook/status/718059725259153408/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Londoners are debating which station is featured in the new teaser that was released today. If for some reason you haven’t watched it, kiss two minutes of your workday goodbye. BTW, I’m completely unauthorized to offer free use of my office to any future Star Wars movie. I’m quite certain my workplace can easily be made to appear like an Imperial prison cell or something of that ilk.
Bike share stations in the U.S. (USDOT)
Los Angeles will soon be joining the list when Metro’s pilot program in downtown L.A. opens this summer. More soon.
Want a bike lane in California? It’s not so simple. (LAT)
Good story on why California environmental law punishes bike lane proposals that may cause car traffic impacts. Legislators in the state are still working on a work-around. Bottom line: if keeping car traffic from being impacted is always the threshold, good luck getting anything worthwhile done. Geeshers.
Amtrak: state-of-the-art gear was operational at time of fatal collision (Guardian)
Anti-collision technology — designed to prevent trains from colliding — didn’t detect a backhoe on the tracks doing rail maintenance. The backhoe operators died in the accident last weekend and 37 people on the train were injured.
The invisible catastrophe (NYT Magazine)
Good article, good photos and good reporting on the gas leak above Porter Ranch that was finally sealed by So Cal Gas in February. Pretty killer kicker, too:
“If you compare the Aliso Canyon leak to other leaks,” said Stephen Conley, the aviator-scientist, “it’s top dog. It’s a monster. It throws off L.A.’s emissions for the year. It’s a significant percentage of California’s annual carbon budget. But it’s about 0.002 percent of the global methane budget. It’s not like next year will be warmer because of Aliso Canyon.”
This is true. It’s not like next year will be warmer because of the car trips that Porter Ranch residents make to their temporary rental homes, or the gas they use to cook dinner, or the energy required to heat their swimming pools. Next year won’t be warmer because of the 200,000 airplanes passing through Van Nuys Airport. Next year won’t even be warmer, necessarily, because of the roughly 140 billion cubic meters of natural gas that oil companies flare into the atmosphere. But next year will be warmer.
Quasi-related: a photo gallery in High Country News on the price of asthma in Bakersfield.
RTA promo video (RTA)
The Regional Transit Authority is proposing a new bus rapid transit system for the Detroit area. Nice job on the video and good to see BRT — more affordable than rail — getting some love.
Categories: Transportation Headlines
I’m 16 and I have no interest in a driver’s license anytime soon. I actually prefer my bike, purely because it’s so much faster than driving. I’ve started to ride my bike all 8 miles to school on certain days because it beats driving by about 15 minutes in the Lincoln Blvd traffic. I’ve been saying for awhile now that all it takes to beat LA traffic is a bike and good knowledge of public transportation.
BRT is more affordable than rail and perhaps the only option for on-the-ropes communities such as Detroit and San Bernardino, but as Metro has seen on both the Orange Line and the Silver Line (and many of the Rapid routes including the 720) there is only so much that rail can do.
i love the idea of TAP cards for 16th birthday! I’ve suggested preloaded 1-day TAP cards in the airport and within strategic areas with close proximity to (reliable / frequent) transit. I’ve met so many Angelenos who’ve never even consider metro and their unfamiliarity with the system is a major inhibitor.
I wonder if the decline in young drivers is population adjusted? The US population in 1960 was 180 million, almost 50% smaller than today, albeit with a high percentage of younger teen coming of age out of the “baby boom” Either way, I’m glad to learn of the trend that minimizes the cars negative impacts in our country.
I think I saw the pre-loaded TAP type cards at the airport in Orlando a few years ago. It would be great if there was a 7-day preloaded pass was available. The first time I visited NYC, I bought a 7-day card from one of MTA’s service vans. Loved the idea, worked great.
The Star Wars trailer station is definitely Canary Wharf, two stops along the Jubilee line from where I live in London. Being there between 5pm and 7pm on a weekday, is an amazing experience, as commuters appear on the island plaform (which is about four times wider than those on the Red line) via multiple escalators. They line up by the platform doors (where you’ll be sure the door of each car will stop), then a train arrives and they pour on to it until it can no more. As it pulls out, the lines have grown again right back tothe foot of the escalators, but another train to clear the platform arrives a minute or two later, just in time to clear the backlog. And on it goes until the end of the rush hour.
As a frequent visitor to LA, who longs for you to get all those Measure R projects done as fast as you can, I can just imagine that, in ten years time, that could be the scene at Century City Station