ICYMI: Our year-in-review post is here. It’s not short.

Art of Transit: 

Rest in Peace, Carrie Fisher. Credit: 20th Century Fox.

Things to read whilst transiting: Creep on the Hayward Fault, in the New Yorker. The fault runs through the East Bay in the San Francisco-Oakland metro area and is thought to be one of the more dangerous ones in the state.

Things to watch after transiting: “Moonlight” is every bit as good as the critics say, and it’s playing at many theaters along bus and rail routes. Try the new trip planner on the beta version of metro.net.

Going to the Rose parade or game? The Gold Line or NoHo to Pasadena Express bus (the 501) are pretty good options. More here.

Plan on having an adult beverage Saturday night, aka New Year’s Eve? You, like many others, may want to toast the departure of 2016 and the, uh, joys that will surely/hopefully come with the arrival of 2017. If so, please don’t endanger others or yourself by getting behind the wheel. Metro fares are free from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m., which is a lot cheaper than even a cheap taxi. I plan on doing neither as I plan on being in my backyard, working on the new underground and highly fortified addition capable of holding no less than 5,000 canned goods. But hey, that’s me. You may be less optimistic.

Things to never watch: I found “Captain America: Civil War” on Netflix last night and watched the first 27 minutes before giving up and concluding that stick figure animations drawn by third graders would be more entertaining and believable. Go watch how the action scenes are choreographed in something like “Raiders of the Lost Ark” or “Allied” and compare it to this desiccated pile of drively nonsense.

Metro clarifies the future of an Arts District Station (Urbanize LA)

Coverage of last Wednesday’s community meeting in the Arts District to discuss a project that will help Red/Purple Line trains turn around much quicker at Union Station, meaning more trains can run on both lines. As we wrote last week, the project is being designed so that it doesn’t preclude a potential future Arts District station near 3rd Street or 6th Street (or both).

As this post neatly and accurately sums it up, “As Metro moves to complete this essential work for the Purple Line Extension, transit service to the Arts District remains a suspended possibility, neither directly imperiled, nor materially closer to reality than it was five years ago.”

‘I just hope it’s not too awkward:’ the names of Metro stations and bus lines are now sale (LAT)

The Metro Board approved a policy at their Dec. 1 meeting that allows the agency to potentially sell the naming rights to stations and even bus or rail lines. As LAT transpo reporter points out, other agencies around the U.S. have similar policies although there haven’t been terribly many sales of rights.

As Metro officials explain, revenues from potential sales don’t have strings attached — whereas funds from Metro’s four sales taxes and other grants or funding streams usually has very specific requirements on how it’s spent. Metro Board Chair John Fasana also has a good quote: he may not love property naming but he loves fare hearings even less.

Others raise the point about the aesthetics and morals involved in selling the names of public spaces to private firms. It’s probably worth emphasizing that station names still must emphasize the location of the station first and foremost. That said, I’ll leave it to others if a Firestone Tires or Roscoe Chicken-and-Waffle Station would ever past muster. 🙂

Below is the main Board report (pdf download here) and here are the attachments, including the actual policy.

Preview some of the design options for the Slauson segment of Rail-to-Rail project (Streetsblog LA)

Good post with some renderings (there are more at Streetsblog) from a recent Metro presentation that show how the pedestrian and bike path may be configured along Slauson Avenue. The Rail-to-Rail path would take the place of the old railroad tracks that run along the street.

Here’s our recent post on the project.

This is what the DTLA skyline may look like in five years (LAist) 

Good post with a rendering that looks at some downtown Los Angeles projects that have been approved or proposed and how they may look as part of downtown L.A. Many of the new projects will be on the right shoulder of downtown in the pic above.

My three cents: They certainly help bolster the skyline but the photos also show that most of L.A. surrounding DTLA or part of it is filled with remarkably low-rise buildings.