Art of Transit: 

Good ol’ Pigeon Point light house south of the Bay Area. They gotta lose that chainlink fence. And I gotta figure out how to lose the wide angle distortion. Photo by Steve Hymon.

Ideas on how Metro and the Rams can expand fan transportation choices (Streetsblog LA)

We asked for your ideas and Joe Linton responds with a lot of good suggestions on expanding walking, bike share, bike parking and the creation of shuttle buses similar to the ones that have long served the Hollywood Bowl.

Related: thanks to the many Metro customers who emailed me directly or commented with their experiences and ideas for better service to the Rams game. I sat through a very long meeting by our operations staff on Tuesday morning that looked at what went well on Sunday, what could have gone better and what to do different in the future.

Without diving into the weeds, the big things we’ll be working on are: better placement of the lines after the games to get on trains at both Expo stations near the Coliseum; better managing the buses on hand to help ferry Expo riders, and; more Silver Line service.

Streetsblog endorses Measure M (Streetsblog LA)

After not taking an official position on Measure R in 2008 or Measure J in 2012, Streetsblog LA backs the Measure M sales tax ballot measure going to voters this fall. The endorsement spells out what they like and don’t like about the measure with, in this case, the scales tipped on the ‘like’ side.

Here is the ballot measure page on metro.net and here is a link to the ordinance and project/program timeline (scroll down) — which perhaps will be of the most interest to voters.

City Council approves controversial Westside development (Streetsblog LA)

This is for the 4.7-acre Martin auto dealership at Olympic and Bundy — a very short walk to the Expo Line’s Bundy Station. “The development will have over 516 housing units, 20 percent of which will be affordable housing and five percent of which will go to house the recently homeless. The original proposal did not have an affordable housing component,” reports Streetsblog. There will also be retail, as is often the case these days.

Potential bullet train alignment between Burbank and Palmdale (California High Speed Rail Authority)

The animations travel south to north and looks routes under study for this section of the bullet train project. Keep in mind that funding still needs to be found for getting the train built from the Central Valley to Southern California. All the above routes look  is expensive with all the tunneling and bridges required. We’ll see if any of them flies — or flies enough — with local stakeholders.

More on this section on the CAHSR website.

L.A. Council Members vent over distracted drivers and pedestrians (LAT)

The venting doesn’t really translate to much in the way action. But I’m including this article because of this key sentence which reinforces my notion that enforcement of driving laws in our region is often lacking or downright absent:

A report released last year by the Department of Transportation found police officers cannot use radars or lasers to catch speeders on most city streets because those streets lack up-to-date current engineering surveys.

“People are dying because of it,” said Councilman Mitch Englander. 

Hmm. Reading this jogged my memory, which summoned up the best two paragraphs I wrote back in days of yore:

As the friendly wrangling wound down, a football was flung across the council chambers and school fight songs blared from the sound system. Councilman Tom LaBonge, a former gridiron star at Marshall High School, made a lunging catch across the middle of the room and then avoided being tackled by a podium.

Meanwhile, the tenants sat and waited. Their item was at the very bottom of the agenda.

Things to listen to whilst transiting: to help you celebrate Bruce Springsteen’s 67th birthday tomorrow. Listen up kiddies: you might hear something you like. The “Adam Raised a Cain” cover is very sweet.