A Line, women riding Metro, subway construction video: Metro News Now, Dec. 5

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Dept. of Construction — This was shot a couple weeks ago on section one of the Purple Line Extension and shows tunneling and other work. Cool.

Dept. of Twitter

This involves the federal grant for section three of the project between Century City and Westwood/Va Hospital.

Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia is also a Metro Board Member and said the above during this morning’s Board meeting, where Metro provided an update on A Line (Blue) since the reopening Nov. 2. A few points to consider:

•The A Line’s performance the past couple weeks has improved and the number of service alerts is down. .

•The crossing gate issue at 108th Street has been resolved as of last night, so trains do not have to stop before proceeding at that intersection.

•Metro officials said they are continuing to work on travel time savings and hope to see improvements in the coming weeks.

•Here’s a presentation that shows run times in different A Line segments before-and-after the reopening.

The long-time eatery in Union Station closed this spring — and then had a soft opening under a new owner earlier this fall. Both the restaurant and bar are open and the menu has been updated.

I shudder to think about any L.A. area freeway with snow on it. Rain, sun, dry is bad enough.

In the news…

•Another note from this morning’s Board meeting: coming soon will be a program that will allow anyone to use the ExpressLanes without a transponder. Those without a transponder will receive a bill in the mail for the toll plus a $4 fee. Your thoughts?

•LAist has an unflinching post headlined, “Stalked, Cornered, Hit, Sexually Assaulted, Yelled At: These Are The Stories Of Women Riding LA Metro.” The post includes many tough anecdotes about using our system.

The post was prompted by a report Metro issued in September titled “Understand How Women Travel,” which detailed the many concerns women who use (and used to use) the Metro system have. The next step is for Metro to adopt a Gender Equity Plan to address many of the concerns in the report in addition to other upcoming improvements to the system to boost safety/security and customer experience concerns.

•This NYT interactive feature looks at particulate matter pollution. As expected, L.A. doesn’t fare well compared to most other large American cities — although some are worse, such as Houston. But pretty good compared to New Delhi, India, where the air is terrible. And Beijing, where air quality is poor but much better than it was a decade ago when the government started imposing rules to clean the air.

•Trio of letters to the LAT raise concerns or just don’t like the planned 405 ExpressLanes between the 10 and 101.

•CurbedLA takes a look at the Crenshaw/LAX Line as well as how the local transit system has changed in the past decade.

•After years of depressingly low turnouts, the city of L.A. is finally moving its elections to even-numbered years so they coincide with state and federal elections. LAist takes a look at the seven Council races in 2020, in which five incumbents are running while the two open seats are being pursued by a variety of folk, including a current County supervisor, current LAUSD school board members.

•The city of L.A. has introduced a new weekend shuttle connecting Griffith Park attractions. This supplements the existing everyday DASH shuttle that runs between the Red Line’s Vermont/Sunset station and the parking challenged Griffith Observatory.

 

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5 replies ›

  1. Here are some recent observations–the good, the bad, and the ugl:y:

    1. Recently saw Metro workers scrubbing the 17th Street station in Santa Monica. It was a great sight. Vagrants tend to loiter there and grime accumulates.
    2. This morning discovered a vagrant sleeping UNDERNEATH a seat in the Red iine, preventing people from seating. At the next station, I signaled a guy who was about to board to summon the police officers down the hall. They came over and took the filthy vagrant away.
    3. This morning, also on the Red line, three passengers around me had to put plastic sheets on the seats in order to sit down. I myself will soon by a cushion. Often, the sits are wet, plus who knows what kind of vermin reside there.
    4. The Red line trains are too warm all day long, unlike other lines where cold air is blasted regardless of exterior temperature in order to prevent contagious diseases from spreading. Why is that?
    5. Lots of people keep boarding with their bikes. Why does Metro encourage this? I have ridden subways in other countries, even the Third World, and never seen people with their bikes. THey take extra space and are a hazard (Often they fall to the floor).

    • Hi Torcuato;

      There is no doubt we have challenges with the homeless and we are trying to connect homeless to social services while recognizing their civil rights to ride. As for wet seats, this is one reason we switched to vinyl seats and put in drainage holes. We have been receiving fewer complaints about wet seats on the subway.

      As for the trains being too warm, is there a particular car number (we have received complaints about car # 534 and are trying to get the issue fixed). The subway tends to be a little warmer than the light rail cars but this is not an issue that we get complaints about.

      As for bikes, in summer 2010 Metro modified its policy on bikes on trains at peak hours — see this blog post. We previously said it was at the discretion of the agency when to allow bikes on board, but in 2010 we changed to always allowing bikes. The impetus was to encourage more people to bike and to use bikes for first/last mile connections to transit.

      Steve Hymon
      Editor, The Source

  2. A Line? What idiots are responsible for re-naming our Blue line? Why not take it even further and get sponsors and possibly name it the Snoop Dogg line?

  3. Still got my fingers crossed that metro will move forward with the latin america style telefericos/gondolas. Can see them being great for griffith observatory (from the red line) and dodger stadium (from union station). In an ideal world, we would even get them in baldwin hills (e/expo line) and whittier (gold line) if they succeed. Just think of the views.

  4. Cheers for the Parkline… now can we get one of those in Elysian Park? There are zero bus stops inside that park and most of the entrances don’t even have sidewalks. Walking up the sidewalk-less, freeway-like Stadium Way is a harrowing experience that needn’t be.