2009-07-01
Although Vor was hard at work with a high pressure hose, “cleaning” the LAX City Bus Center, the poor creatures shown above have still have not been given a decent burial. Too, the kiosk tops still are coated with several millimeters of accumulated grime.
The LACMTA published an information card(1) entitled “Protect your health” with common sense tips on avoiding “swine flu”.
Another publication(2) is of even more interest to me in that it is directed at stopping vandalism. One statement, “Ignoring vandalism has been found to promote an increase in crime”, is surprizing in that almost nothing has been done by the LACMTA about the “whois” bumper stickers which deface many buses system wide. Their incondite approach, has resulted in their not being able to track down the perpetrator, coupled with the brochure mentioned here examplifies, yet again, that the right hand thinks that it is alone in the world.
Feeling good about the economy? Read this(3): http://www.slate.com/id/2219599/ and the feeling will soon go away. The former governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer (you may know him by his code name), is the author, and one who knows that “data” takes the plural form, “are” as well! Unfortunately, he has bad news for us, bad news which no amount of “feel good” platitudes can overcome.
Here is a brief summary: “So, despite trillions in public spending, we are short millions of jobs, are rapidly sliding further into debt, are losing our capacity to borrow at a manageable cost, and are producing fewer of the goods that will generate real wealth.” But please, read the entire piece.
On June 7th, a piece(not cited) at http://www.breitbart.com/ introduced the idea that public transportation might NOT be a “green”, i.e., environmentally friendly, as one might wish. Unfortunately, the copyright citation disallows linkage to the AFP (Agence France-Presse) source. So, go to the brietbart.com site and search for “Think twice ‘green’” (without the bookending “). OR, use this link to read the lengthy paper(5): http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=its/future_urban_transport
Or http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/4/2/024008/erl9_2_024008.pdf?request-id=0c7d014a-0062-4519-8c84-058d69624863
This, from the paper’s abstract: “Current results show that total energy and greenhouse gas emissions increase by as much as 1.6X for automobiles, 1.4X for buses, 2.6X for light rail, 2.1X for heavy rail, and 1.3X for air over operation. Criteria air pollutant emissions increase up to 30X for automobiles, 7X for buses, 10X for light rail, 29X for heavy rail, and 9X for air.”
La Taupe’s brief conclusion based upon his reading, is that if a given transportation sub-system, light rail or subway, is powered by electricity AND that electricity is produced by incorporation the combustion of coal or oil then the given sub-system might not be ‘green’. But don’t be satisfied with that read all you can, and come to your own conclusions. Relating this paper to our own LACMTA, it would seem that that agency’s beloved [but not by this author] “Expo Line” which is powered by electricity generated by oil, is less than green.
Another related article has this "New rail systems should serve as links to other transit modes, as is often the case in Europe and Japan. … We should avoid building rail systems that are disconnected from major population areas and require car trips and parking to access [and, your Mole inserts, are not part of an overall transportation system which links buses and other modes]."
In the same vein, traffic, please download and listen to this IBM produced podcast: http://download.boulder.ibm.com/ibmdl/pub/podcasts/future/SPTrafficFinal.mp3
Our 73.1 mile Metro “system” –subway and light rail– is tiny by Big Apple standards where the
NYC subway system alone is, at 722 miles(6), roughly ten times as large.
Snoble redivivus: One definition of insanity is repeating the past and expecting the future to be different. That is pretty much the case wih the rail cars which didn’t meet specifications, destined for the light rail system, were accepted by the LACMTA. Now they want to find another vendor and/or put the project out to bid. Where were the on-site inspections at the fabrication location(s) during the early build phase? Oh, there weren’t any? This is like the store owner who was losing a little money on every transaction who hoped to make up the difference on volume. Another example of this philosophy toward ROI (Return On Investment) is the TAP card “Day Passes”.
Plus ça change ….
Although Snoble was wasteful and inefficient, at least, his lapses were not responsible for the number of deaths for which Solow must accept responsibility. No matter how the work is contracted out, Metrolink has/had a duty to supervise, NOT to sit on their big, fat, overstuffed chairs and point fingers at the contractor. I have seen NO evidence that there was ANY manner of quality control exercised over the contracted crews. There is no question that Solow should be fired and those who fire him have any number of legitimate causes.
Ear to the Rail
As you know, su Topo likes history. Here is a link to a series of podcast about the life of Napoléon http://napoleon.thepodcastnetwork.com/2006/02/06/napoleon-101-episode-001/ . There are, currently, about 50+ hours of recorded materials. A word of caution, these are very unprofessionally done and suffer greatly from a lack of post-production editing. There may also be some historical inaccuracies.
One of the participants, an American, who drinks as he records, tends to wander off the subject. He is the author of a “for dummies” book about Napoléon and unlike many of the combat veterans I know, likes to brag about his “Bronze Star” and “Army Commendation”.
The other, a much more likable guy, is an Australian. It is real work to extract knowledge from these podcasts. I have listened to about 30 hours worth so far and although I have a much better understanding of Napoléon than I did before, it is likely because I have listened to a number of the podcasts several times.
On the positive side, I did learn about a number of Napoléon’s non-military accomplishments and gained respect for his intellect. The vestigages of at least one of them, the Napoleonic Code, remain in the laws of the state of Louisiana.
La Taupe’s intention is to listen to the entire series and then find a thick volume that is judged the “best biography of Napoléon” and read it. Please give the linked episode a listen and follow-up as you see fit.
Now one line of study often leads to another, so in researching what I had heard on the Napoléon 101 podcast, I found an extremely interesting juxtaposition of the R (Statistical Language, see: 2009-02-27, bibliography item (9)) and the visualization of data as found in Charles Minard’s map of Napoléon’s Russian Campaign of 1812-1813, all produced by http://pbil.univ-lyon1.fr/ (Pôle Bioinformatique Lyonnais at the Université Claude Bernard Lyon I in France). Pôle Bioinformatique Lyonnais means, approximately, [the] Center for Biological Computing in Lyon.
You can find Charles Minard’s (civil engineer and statistician 1781 –1870), map, which has been described as “The best statistical graphic ever drawn“,by Edward Tufte, "The Leonardo da Vinci of Data" (See: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5673332 , on page 7 of
http://pbil.univ-lyon1.fr/R/cours/lang04.pdf which also includes an English translation of the chart. There are also some excellent examples of graphical techniques using the R language. All-in-all, this is a beautiful document. Merci bien à le Pôle Bioinformatique Lyonnais!
The reason la Taupe likes this diagram so much is that it is rich in information, it is also dense in information and easy to read and interpret. By dense, I mean that it “carries” lots of information, in the same as the manner as a Japanese (Chinese) Kanji is dense. Such characters, in relatively few strokes, tell us about the subject to which the character refers, e.g., people, water, fire, sun and etc., as well as other indicia. Minard communicates the number of troops flowing in a given direction, to or from Moscow, by the colour and width of a band, as well as by figures. If our LACMTA would use Minard’s methodologies to depict traffic, i.e., passenger origins and destinations, then a mass transportation system built on logic, rather than suppositions, could be planned.
(LACMTA management may skip this section) Your computer may have a sticker which says “dual core”. This means that, in essence, that it has the ability to process “two jobs concurrently”. One theory of computing says [approximately] that while in the past we wanted to make processors faster – 1MHz CPU (Central Processing Unit, i.e., processor) and etc.— we now want to have more, although they might be slower, processors. So, data are distributed to several processors to accomplish the desired task.
Let’s say that we wanted to add up all the telephone numbers in the Los Angeles telephone directory for the 213 area code. Since an imaginary problem can be allocated to any equipment we desire, we will use an IBM Sequoia system(9) which is capable of “… making up to 20 quadrillion calculations per second thanks to its 1.6 million microprocessors”. This is overkill, but we will assign a processor to sum the numbers by the letter which is at the beginning of the name for each entry. Those names which begin with the letter “A” will be summed by processor 0, initial “B” names will have their numbers summed by processor 1 and so on, those names which begin with the letter “Z” will have their numbers summed by processor 25.
All of this will go on concurrently: while processor 0 is busy adding up numbers for the “A” group, other processors will be adding up their assigned initial letter’s numbers, up to and including the “Z” group, which will be added by processor 25.
When the job is finished the 26 partial sums are added into a final total, in NOT 1/26th of the time (partly because of the unqual distribution of initial letters of name, there will be more “A” than “Z” initial letters) but mostly because there is some “overhead” required to organize and control the subtasks.
Our LACMTA could use this approach to say, find the bus closest to a given bus that broke down by constantly tracking the real-time locations of all buses, then the closest bus could be rerouted to pickup the stranded passengers and then arrange for their ongoing journey (LACMTA management, if you read this anyway, it is not science fiction). This is all possible using a much smaller system than IBM’s Sequoia.
Su Topo is working with the Erlang computer language, developed by Ericson which has offers fairly, as these things go, concurrent programming and could accomplish the example of the telephone number addition described above.
The language can be freely downloaded from: http://www.erlang.org/download.html
A brief introduction is available at:
With more details at: http://www.erlang.org/doc.html Thank You Erlang Org!
An IDE (Integrated Development Environment, used to organize your work as a programmer) is available for Eclipse see: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/eclipse/downloads/ganymede/
Thank You IBM, for making Eclipse open source!
The Eclipse plugin, erlIDE, (establishes the IDE i.e., Integrated Developed Environment) is available at: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=58889&package_id=145847&release_id=678940 Thank You Eclipse!
Read about the creator of Erlang, Joe Anderson —warning this is moderately technical stuff— at: http://www.ddj.com/linux-open-source/201001928?cid=RSSfeed_DDJ_OpenSource
To see a brief overview of Erlang, en Française, visit http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca/erlang/impressions.html Merci bien à M. François Pinard.
If these things interest you, happy concurrent programming!
In one of my occasional visits to youTube I found this Paris Metro Music, it is not a concert hall but, … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE1_SIgcOrs
A Foreign Policy piece(4) describes how the ability of humans to think will evolve in the future. “By 2050, the result should be humans who are able to address issues and solve problems previously beyond our reach, redefining how we as a species imagine, work, and think.” Hmmm … I wonder if that will also apply to the LACMTA?
The Mole Rides Again, so that you need not think about paying more for less
I sat pondering about the single attribute which best characterizes the LACMTA. Is it its’ cresent ignorance, sans limite or its’ insensitivity to and lack of concern for the ridership, which already stands at an irreducible minimum. With the LACMTA, it is not so much a problem of not being able to think outside the box, as the lack of the ability to think even inside the box.
To illustrate my point, let’s take the recent severing of Metro service to El Segundo. Lines 124 and 125 had low ridership, yet somehow Metro was able to convince BCT (Beach Cities Transit) that even if Metro was losing money hand over fist on the lines, BCT would be able to make money. What should have been done is, in these days of (again) raising gasoline prices, to mount a sales campaign which would have informed people about the 124 and 125 lines as a link to the Green Line and therefore Los Angeles, Long Beach and all the communities between.
Which link to the Green Line is now provided by BCT –just how well remains to be seen. The losers, as usual, the ridership, like su Topo, whose monthly pass has AGAIN diminished in value.
But sell they can’t. People are expected, somehow, to just know how to use public transit. As a result, many who might be possible users of the bus and trains are unsure as exactly how to do it. Your Mole has suggested in an earlier post that Metro’s “marketing department” should set up meetings at local libraries, in El Segundo, for example and explain the service. Exact itineraries could be planned for people, questions answered, demonstrations of the “Trip Planner”
But no, the LACMTA decided to foist the two lines on BCT, in what might be considered a transportation sector instantiation of the financial sector’s “Greater Fool Theory”. The idea is that there is always a buyer … who will pay a better price than the seller paid < http://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Greater+Fool+Theory > , or perhaps the bigger fool is the one who, believing profitability is just around the corner, will suffer even greater losses.
La Taupe feels that the LACMTA just wants out of this service area and once such service is assumed by BCT, if BCT cancels the service, well, it is not the LACMTA’s fault.
As usual, the LACMTA botched the handover printing a smallish flyer that suggested one call BCT for information on the new service. BCT need not be unhappy to see the switchboard lit up when a printed link to the new schedule on BCT’s site would have reduced the communication load somewhat. BCT’s ridership will lose some coverage too, because in order to cover the routes abandoned by Metro, they are rerouting their line 109 and dropping some coverage. It is a Lose-Lose proposition all around. Ignorance? Insensitivity? or that perfect blend that can only be formulated by the LACMTA?
Then too, is the lack of leveraging the technology which they already have, notably the GPS (Global Positioning System) driven stop announcements. This computer application could easily perform the additional related functions: (i) ensuring that the head sign reflects the actual heading of the bus, relieving drivers of this presently manual and often error prone task; and (ii) showing the next time of departure along with the destination when the bus is on layover.
2009-06-11: The woman seated across from me had an angel's halo peeping out of her neckline and some characters tattooed along her jaw, just under her chin --weird! Sunday, 14 June 2009: As usual, the LAXCBC is filthy. Newspapers litter the street, and every kind of detritus know to man partially carpets the sidewalks, the tops of the kiosks are covered with dirt winch could be accurately carbon dated back the Bush I period. On board a 232 line bus: we pass the bus stop just south of Century on Sepulveda and, as usual [shame on you ] Air Canada, assisted by the [inept] Airport Police, have not halted the work of the serial litterer who scatters [mainly] Air Canada materials in the street in front of the aforementioned bus stop. At a Green Line station: a homeless man punches his bedroll while smoking, knowing that one of the LACMTA's mottoes is"security last ' --actually they should prohibit smoking at all venues where people queue for public transportation. At first glance this guy seemed to have something wrong with his upper lip, but a second look reveals that he is walking around with the tip of his tongue stuck out just covering the upper lip. At the Vermont AV Station a worker wearing a Metro vest is working on the emergency telephone, I hope that he is adding a " cone of silence" because the way things stand, these phones are unusable. I wanted to read on the Blue Line but a man is babbling on about his sister seeing Obama and other things that the men su Topo knows don't talk about. <
2009-06-15 10:50AM: Line 232 (Southbound), Bus # 11046 , Operator I.D., unknown because this rotund woman with an enormous hand bag didn’t have a patch on her jacket. However, typical of these First Transit drivers she was rough, the bus jerked along as she accelerated too fast and then had to brake. One imagines that the LACMTA would say “It’s not our fault, because they are contractors.” But as we found with the Metrolink crash the contracting organization had a duty to ensure that the operators of their equipment meet minimum qualifications. The woman down the aisle was actively pcking her scalp –I turned away.
2009-06-19 A passenger stubs out her cigarette on the side of a bus before boarding. We stop en route to wait for a relief driver, why we couldn’t continue and have the relief driver catch up with us a stop or two later is something, well, actually another think I will never understand about Metro operations. Say, ten minutes wait time times 25 passengers is 250 minutes of waiting.
ON June 23 I am on a 439 bus, I.D. Number 6336, headed to LAX. It is driven by Mr. “I tape garbage bags over the bus windows”. (See: photo, LaCroix, on 2008-06-28) He also has an extremely bad habit of swiveling around in his seat, while the bus in traveling forward, in order to emphasize a point, pass his family pictures back to a passenger or brag about how [next year, his son with a GPA (Grade Point Average) of x.y will be in medical school at UCI]. Believe me, I don’t want to be friends with my ON-DUTY bus driver. I want him to keep his eyes on the road and his mind on his job. But, apparently the LACMTA, in spite of several complaints about this specific driver, doesn’t have the same concept about driver’s jobs.
Today the man seated behind me is engaged in an extended conversation with a person whom I come to understand is in significant-other’s daughter. I don’t want to listen to this conversation but HE chose the venue and I am unable to read because of it. It appears that he has assigned her the task of writing a letter, of about 1500 words, to her “real” father explaining how she feels toward and about said “real” father. This makes me a little sad, another marriage broken up, a family separated. I intend to marry for life.
This conversation ends, only to be replaced by an Oriental man telling someone that “.. the Rodeo is there and he knows that it is my car …”, “… he searched me and found the check that you wrote to me and now he has your address ….”, “… I have been trying to get the neighbours to say that no one is living there, so you have to move the Rodeo …”. We find that this guy is carrying two cell phones when the other one rings.
As usual, I report below those buses who have been defaced by someone affixing “Whois” bumper stickers to the interiors. For a facsimile of such bumper stickers see the photo (above) and also included in the posting of 2008-07-24. The current CEO of Metro has been informed of the following: the web site URL (Universal Resource Locator, i.e., address) of the defacer; his e-mail address; a photograph of the alleged defacer; his home address. Available indirectly, by researching the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) registration and/or related publicly available information, are the name(s) those who may be part of his conspiracy to extract commercial value in the form of free advertising from the LACMTA and as a side-effect to deface the vehicles of the LACMTA. I also have what is purported to be the alleged defacer’s social security number. I currently hold the following LACMTA departments in extremely low esteem: marketing; stops and routes; those responsible for the “Trip Spoiler, er.., Planner”. I will add the legal department to my list soon as they seemed unable to do for their salaries what su Topo has accomplished as a public service, shame on you all!
2009-06-25 Today bus routes downtown are totally munged –the Mayor is making an outdoor speech and they are filming on the streets. The LACMTA, operating at its’ usual 12% efficiency, with a few drivers stopping at unusual places, i.e., not their regular stops because people, like su Topo, are confused as to exactly where to catch a rerouted or “On Detour” bus. Of course the bus I want goes flying by.
2009-06-27 The two men were speaking a language which I didn’t understand –it turned out to be Zapoteco. On the Internet I learned that “…there are somewhere between 12 and 60 different Zapotec languages, each of which is difficult for speakers of the others to understand” http://www.native-languages.org/zapotec.htm . We take a 115 bus, I.D. 6458 driven by a woman, operator 29856. Like quite a few women bus drivers, she doesn’t distinguish between stopping the bus and stopping the bus smoothly –ah…, sorry ladies.
Happy fourth of July!
Please accept this Independence Day e-card from your Mole.
http://www.123greetings.com/events/fourth_of_july/celebrations/fourth17.html
Joyeux fête nationale! Vive la belle France!
In honor of “Bastille Day”, here: http://www.pacocard.com/carte-postale.php?theme=fetes&carte=14-juillet-fete-nationale , is an appropriate card from la Taupe, just for you.
Dedicated to the Dulcinea of my dreams
“Presently he broke out again, as if he were love-stricken in earnest, "O Princess Dulcinea, lady of this captive heart, a grievous wrong hast thou done me to drive me forth with scorn, and with inexorable obduracy banish me from the presence of thy beauty. O lady, deign to hold in remembrance this heart, thy vassal, that thus in anguish pines for love of thee."So he went on stringing together these and other absurdities, all in the style of those his books had taught him, imitating their language as well as he could; and all the while he rode so slowly and the sun mounted so rapidly and with such fervour that it was enough to melt his brains if he had any.”
Miguel De Cervantes (1547-1616), Don Quixote (1605), Chapter II
See: http://www.online-literature.com/cervantes/don_quixote/
Fare Box Score Box
I.D. numbers of buses with Out of Order Fare Boxes: 9356;
Note: Few entries above do not necessarily mean more working fare boxes.
I.D. Numbers of Buses Defaced by WhoIs stickers: 7850+UR; 5177; 6357; 6326; 6370;6429+UR;
+UR = whois sticker and the ugly residue left after passengers partly remove the sticker.
I.D Numbers of Buses whose Head and Tail signs disagree: 5157—Wrong Head/blank; 11056-Missing headsign; 7127-both the side sign and the tail sign are inoperative; 7599- No signs at all; 12546-side sign one third blank; 7039-439/446; 7109- no head or tail numbers.
Bibliography/References
(1) N/A. “Protect your health”. LACMTA 09-20XXTR ©2009.
(2) N/A. “Help stop vandalism”. LACMTA 09-1424TR ©2009.
(3) Spitzer, Elliot. “Green Shoots, Red Ink, Black Hole: Green shoots? Feh. Here's truly terrifying data about the real state of the U.S. economy”. Slate Magazine. 3 June 2009. Accessed 2009-06-04
(4) Toffler, Alvin. “The next Big Thing: A Bigger Bang?”. Foreign Policy. May/June 2009. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4855 Accessed 2009-05-30
(5) Chester, Mikhail and Horvath, Arpad. “Environmental Life-cycle Assessment of Passenger Transportation: A Detailed Methodology for Energy, Greenhouse Gas, and Criteria Pollutant Inventories of Automobiles, Buses, Light Rail, Heavy Rail and Air UCB-ITS-VWP-2008-2”. Mar 2008. http://www.its.berkeley.edu/publications/UCB/2007/VWP/UCB-ITS-VWP-2007-7.pdf Accessed 2009-06-08
(6) Hood, Clifton. “22 miles: the building of the subways and how they transformed New York”. Simon & Schuster. 1993.
(7) Brahic, Catherine. “Train can be worse for climate than plane”. http://www.newscientist.com/ . 8 June 2009. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17260-train-can-be-worse-for-climate-than-plane.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news Accessed 2009-06-08
(8) Meeks, Karen Robes. “Long Beach Transit hybrid buses have a new look” 23 April 2009. http://www.presstelegram.com/news/ci_12213610%20Accessed%202009-06-15
(9) N/A. “US supercomputer will have power of two million laptops”. 03 Feb 2009. http://www.presstelegram.com/news/ci_12213610. Telegraph.co.uk Accessed 2009-06-17
(10) Merl, Jean. "Metrolink moves toward hiring its own train crews”. 27 Jun 2009. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-metrolink27-2009jun27,0,2117907.story. Los Angeles Times Accessed 2009-06-27
Su Topo’s Disclaimer and apologia
Your Mole always attempts to write an easy-on-the-eyes page using text input. Blogger.com however, has other ideas and will often not stay with a single font type or point size, produces extraneous spacing and etc. I wish I had time to debug the HTML which they produce, it is NOT the straight text which I pasted into the form, but I don’t. Therefore, I apologize on behalf of Blogger.com for the changes which they make, of which I do not approve. Sometimes, what I see, thankfully you don’t, is 24 point type –it is giant and other times they swallow my text, although it still seems to be there. In fairness to them, things seem better, although this is partly because I do understand which of their “features” do the most damage to me and consequently do not use them. Communicating these problems to them, for me, is something like having teeth extracted without the benefit of anesthetic, actually it is less fun than that. By their design, there is no simple e-mailing them with "Please look at my say, posting of 2009-06-28, it is weird!” I am hoping that one of their developers will some day read this, copy my code and improve their text to HTML engine. Until then, lo siento.
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This is to certify that I, the blogger who is known as the LaMetroMole, with respect to this blog, except as described below, am not now nor at any time during the past year have been, nor it my current intention to ever be:
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There are no exceptions.
Date: 2009-06-24 S/ LaMetroMole
2009-05-30
The Mole reads the papers (and other things) so you don't have to
The swine, oops, H1N1/A flu is NOT stopped by N95 masks which retail for about $2. What is required is a type N100 mask which will pass only material smaller than 0.3 microns –at a cost of $10 each. CNN told us on April 30, “reported” by “Jeanne Moos” in a silly style, that money was being made on masks, but apparently didn't think that the critical details regarding masks, above, were newsworthy. For this and other of other reasons, I now consider CNN to be the “Twitter” station.
A New York Times column(1) by Maureen Dowd, one of my favorite columnists, one of very few, expresses better than I can, my feelings about Twitter. She says “I would rather be tied up to stakes in the Kalahari Desert, have honey poured over me and red ants eat out my eyes than open a Twitter account.” All that su Topo can say is, “Brava!”.
A discussion of how the GPS system can be used to improve transportation operations, which is too technical to take on here, can be found at http://www.nctr.usf.edu/jpt/pdf/JPT%208-1%20Bullock.pdf
It should be required reading for the LACMTA IF they could find someone to understand it.
Ear to the Rail
Now there is no guarantee that the recording here(6) http://filebin.ca/cemxt is actually what happened at lunchtime on Snoble’s last day at the Taj Mahal, but then again, who can say that it didn't happen.
Seriously, we need to educate everyone about better hand washing techniques as a disease prevention methodology. Here is a link to an excellent site, The Scrub Club) http://www.scrubclub.org/ , especially for children. If you want to try some of the fun things yourself, such as placing the hand washing steps in proper order, then go ahead –I won’t tell anyone. Here is the link to that game http://www.scrubclub.org/site/meet_6steps.aspx . Children and adults too, will like it! If they “win” the game, linked above, they will be allowed to print out a Scrub Club membership card. If you would like to ensure that an adult knows proper hand washing, assign him to help a child learn the steps J. Too, under the heading “Downloads” you can find posters in Spanish and French. Oh, and the scrub Club is produced by the NSF (National Science Foundation) International.
The New York Daily News offers a piece(2) that is sort of a suspicions confirmed article and squares with la Taupe’s experience with the USPS. The reporter discusses her experiences with the USPS. ‘At the Roosevelt Island post office last week, tennis club manager… said he gave up priority mail long ago. "It's a ripoff," he said. "If you do the math, it's just more money. It isn't quicker."’
Su Topo too, has found that, at his Post Office, even when he asks for the least expensive mode he is still forced to listen to a litany of all possible sending modes with the counter person reciting the most expensive method FIRST. Since almost everyone is forced to listen to this undesired “sales pitch” service times are lengthened along with a corresponding lengthening of the service queue. Your Mole has also noticed that the free mailing materials are kept behind the counter while the supply racks are well stocked with the “for sale” envelopes, boxes and etc. This usually means that one must wait on line, obtain the free materials, rejoining the line while addressing the materials and then purchasing the proper postage. Is this a conspiracy? All this lack of transparency on the part of the USPS leads up to a gradual loss of trust in our Post Office by this Mole.
Cosmological Corner
Don’t look now, but a black hole may be gaining on us. (See http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/429/2 ) Than may not really be the case, but the article describes the possibility of roaming, rogue black holes.
Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is mapped for us –at least an artist's conception shows us a sort of “You are here” picture at : http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0806/MWspitzer_lab_2048.jpg Click on the image for a large view.
Then for the big picture, and a fairly simple explanation of how our universe fits into the megaverse: see http://randall.physics.harvard.edu/RandallCV/NYTimesuniversegraphic.jpg
Visit http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-45154219728824809&sourceid=searchfeed%20
and see Charlie Rose (not one of su Topo’s favorites) allow the beautiful, extremely intelligent Dr. Lisa Randall to speak, almost uninterrupted, about her work.
Then consider how one might communicate with possible inhabitants of an adjacent brane.
She mentioned the LRC (Large Hadron Collider) which won’t be back in operation until September 2009 (See: http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/ ) at CERN (Organisation [Conseil ] Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire) whose home page is at http://public.web.cern.ch/public/Welcome-fr.html (Click on “en” in the upper right for English).
The Mole Rides Again so that you don't have to be forced to listen to drivers' interminable conversations
2009-04-27: about 10:30, Line 212, bus # 6342, Driver: 16476 This driver is engaged in a lengthy cell phone conversation –this one on a walky-talky, so we are "treated" to both sides of the conversation, like Metrolink engineer, must they kill a bus-load of people before the LACMTA takes action?.
A 704 bus 9394 bypasses the clearly marked stop at Cañon in Beverly Hills and stops a long bus length away at the #4 bus stop, causing me to run. When I ask the operator why she did that, she offers no coherent explanation. I wonder if Leahy was that kind of driver and whether he condones her 'attitude. I am riding a line 3 Big Blue Bus, the woman who is seated directly in front of me is an excellent time manager –she is making something with yarn and some kind of needle. Molette later tells me that it is called crocheting [crow-shaying] and that it is not a needle but a hook.
The woman doing handicraft is joined by another woman, a stranger, but they fall into easy conversation in Español. The woman's handicraft might be a French flag, she has completed the white section and is working on the blue.
2009-04-29: Oh no, BCT is said to be assuming lines 124, 125 and 130. Yet another decrease in value of my monthly pass.
Green Line: An obviously toothless old man with stringy hair and the number 19 on his cap, silently gums out the words as he reads. His book is thick, its' title is "Executive Orders".
It is still early, about 6:30 when I board the Blue Line, the "transbordo " announcement is still ongoing.
At 8:30 AM. Air Canada materials, this time mostly tightly rolled up baggage labels, litter Sepulveda BL just south of Century BL, at the bus stop on the west side of the street. In the past –this has been going on for quite while– it was the small "tag" type labels that someone had shredded (by hand) and scattered all over the general area. SHAME ON AIR CANADA! The photo above, taken at the site later in May shows a typical littering.
What is needed here is action not only by Air Canada but the Airport Police as well. The police need only install a temporary surveillance camera above the site and, su Topo estimates that this littering can be stopped within two weeks.
This is either one of their employees or someone with easy access to their materials AND is unhappy with Air Canada. Your Mole has seen several reports which were sent to an apparently impotent Air Canada. The reports express concern that having such a person at LAX, with access to aircraft represents a security threat. Su Topo concurs and wonders why Air Canada doesn't involve the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and the Airport Police? This littering seems to take place late evenings by someone who is a bus rider or waits at the bus stop for his ride. This Mole will fly one of the many other carriers who fly coincident routes until he feels that Air Canada has found the culprit.
You, of course, will decide on your air carrier based upon information available to you. In some ways this is a situation like the "whois" bumper stickers which deface buses and which the LACMTA has long ignored and seems disinterested in stopping.
2009-05-05: aboard a Line 439 headed downtown. 8:30 the driver over accelerates then is forced to break when he overtakes the vehicle ahead. He produces severe jerking by rocking his foot on the accelerator. His ID number is 16856.
Gold Line: The door closing warning is too loud and nerve jangling. The current signal in use in Tokyo is much
more pleasant (I will include a link to a sample when I find one).
A woman on her cell cautions someone that "... those summer classes fill up fast, so register ASAP ...". She makes another call, this one to Richard ... " this guy is cheap as the day is long ... he wants to build for $100 per square foot ... architects fees are around 15% ... the drawings must be computer produced .. I don't care what program you use ... I haven't worked since February ... so I need this project ... ".
She is intent on lowering Richard's expectations, while simultaneously teaching me and the entirety of this rail car a "Masters Class in Project Administration" and your Mole is so engrossed in his note taking, that he passes Lake Av. Changing at Allen, he returns to Lake in car number 712, on one of the new green coloured Gold Line trains. It has no "door closing alarm" at all so, on average the system-wide sound level is just right. Like much done by the LACMTA these consistent inconsistencies are bumpkinish, lacking in sensitivity and sophistication!
As I near the staircase I note that the exit to the west side of Lake AV is blocked. Unsurprisingly, there are no signs. I take the east exit, walk south to the 210 FWY entrance, look across at the west side of the street and see that the entire bus stop area is coned off. There are no signs ANYWHERE! With the LACMTA it is not so much of a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, as a case of the left hand not even knowing that a right hand exists. Su Topo ended up walking about three blocks south to the next bus stop. New head at Metro, same body!
A 439 Line bus, number 7594. As I look down into the dirty troughs below the dirty windows of this bus with the dirty floors and un-deployed trash bags, I understand that the LACMTA is ahead of my country in its slide into third world status..
Apple & Fairfax, under the Santa Monica Freeway, is site of the dark and dirty West Los Angeles Transit Center. It is always filthy. The approximately block long site has only two, under utilized, trash cans. Litter is everywhere! In the gutter I even see a discarded hypodermic syringe! The asphalt street has a cobblestone appearance due to a lack of concrete bus pads which would have prevented fragmentation. The lack of civic responsibility on the part of bus-riders contributes to the average of the five blobs of gum which dot each square foot of sidewalk.
I board bus number 8052, a newer vehicle, which is about as dirty as 7594, has no trash bag deployed and, for its age, has more graffiti.
The seediness of Hollywood BL causes me to speculate as to exactly how disappointed tourists to my home city must become once they raise their gaze above the walk of stars. Three women tourists stop at Lassie's star –one poses, sort of dog like, squatting using her hands to emulate paws in the begging position, while another takes her picture.
Only an organization that is truly delusionary could consider it to be "best" of anything when they advertise their ineptness as in the photo above. Years of dirt and grime cap this grafitti covered kiosk at the LAXCBC.
LAXCBC: Birds peck at the bread crumbs which litter the area (photo above). Not that one would notice with all the other litter, filthy kiosks, the graffiti which is to be seen on most surfaces and the thoughtlessly discarded blobs of gum, which identify the sidewalk as a substitute trash can.
I look down at at the base of one of the tall palms which are sprinkled through this bus center. There is an accumulation of all kinds of litter, predominately cigarette related (photo above).
Too, each of the approximately eight foot by eight foot concrete slabs which constitute the “island” portion of the bus center is flecked with gum(photo above). Every slab has space between it and those abutting it, some of these intervals are as wide as two centimetres, but all contain debris, again, mostly cigarette related.
Looking up, somewhat in horror, your Mole sees the desiccated remains of at least four birds, only two are shown in the photo above. These poor creatures must have died of starvation after becoming exhausted attempting to escape from the netting which is used to prevent birds from fouling the area. However, the mesh is wide enough to allow smaller birds to somehow wiggle in, yet too small to allow them to exit. This is indeed cruelty to animals and something that could be avoided if the LACMTA had the intelligence and sensitivity to periodically inspect their various sites, report problems and take prompt remedial action.
At the Hollywood and Vine Station, the sign promises the next train at 12:52 but it is a full minute and a quarter after that before it arrives and the doors open. This is evidence that the display simply projects the schedule rather than dynamically interfacing the real world –as is done on BART in San Francisco.
I exit at Hollywood and Highland, a sick bird tweets, huddled in the space between the wall and the side of the escalator–poor thing!
Of course, the street in front of the station is blocked and someone, whose I.Q. is roughly equal to the square root of his body temperature,has provide an ''explanatory”” sign.
After a short period of wandering, relying on "crowd wisdom" we find the stop. Note to Lahey: they should provide a white rectangle on the bottom of these signs which would allow for a simple map to be drawn.
2009-05-18
At the LAXCBC: Vor is again today, moving trash from one container to another, a single item at a time, using his gripper device –it is difficult to understand how anyone could imagine that this is an efficient operation.
I am aboard a 439 line bus being driven by a driver who I have code named "Chatty Kathy" (73679). She is quiet this morning but her jerky driving gives her away and she allows a passenger to stand in the "forbidden area", forward of the yellow line. They discuss an accident which is in the cleanup stage, while he fumbles for his fare, the two actions seem just beyond his limit of concurrency.
The Greyhound Depot: In an ambiance like that found in the bar, in the original Star Wars, I am asked a question –four times – by a waiting passenger. I pass his query past my known. languages without recognition. It turns out that he is asking "dose donets?". Which translates to "Are those donuts?, referring to the bag containing my lunch. Others pass through the Greyhound station –one man mumbles out his plans. The TV is turned on and begins to show TMZ –a broadcast, the participants of which rank lower than used car salesmen, in my opinion, that is.
2009-05-20 Gratis, free, or tada, no matter how you say it, it sounds great. RTC, the Las Vegas transportation authority was giving free rides this morning between 06:00 and 09:00 AM. My free trip to the convention venue on the Strip, and everyone else's too, was a gift of a local wireless company in celebration of reaching a sales goal. A great idea which got lots of positive coverage –I saw it last night on several TV stations and this morning as well The wireless company (think Jiminy, you know, something which chirps), promoted mass transit use –and dios knows, Las Vegas could use less traffic, while simultaneously garnering free press. The 116 bus offers an alternate slower, less expensive route to the Strip. I shift seats when a man with a tool belt encroaches on my space. My new location is more comfortable so I take out my book. No luck! I am now seated one seat away from a "speed talker" who is on her cell. She had a fleur de lis insignia on her shirt, so she is likely an hotel employee.
Think the guy who used to do the Fedex commercial speaking very rapidly –only she is about 25% faster. "... I made baked beans what you bringin' ... just like it's hard to find a man without kids ... then he knows when he is going to have a seizure ... so I told him 'you're not my man' ... the cheapest Beyonce tickets are $250, I like her but not that much ...". This could have continued indefinitely but I wanted to save some Blackberry battery.
Greyhound bus stations, like this one in downtown Las Vegas, must be the most depressing places on earth. My last trip here was on the now defunct Megabus, thinking back it wasn't too bad. Although we weren't allowed inside the "station" which was our point of departure. The group with whom I return to Los Angeles all have cell phones and seem to be competing for awards given for possessing the loudest and/or most irritating ring tone, being able to carry on a conversation in the loudest and/or most irritating manner. I must also add the categories of making and/or receiving the largest number of calls and the highest percentage of unnecessary calls. The passenger behind me has already made two calls and we are only six minutes out of the Las Vegas station. I will call him "jangles" after his loud, irritating ring tone to which he will only respond to after his lucky number of rings, seven –so far he is leading the competition in all categories. I should have added a prize for carrying on the longest conversation, it would have been won by the woman who carried on a walky-talky exchange with some man in her life. Perhaps conversation in not the correct word because, at least his side, seemed to have a constantly rising tone signifying an escalating argument.
Early this morning as I arrive at the LAXCBC I am greeted by the sight of a homeless person still asleep on a bench. The bench which is his bed, amazingly, is one of the few not defaced by graffiti (photo above). There is absolutely no routine security patrol available at the City Bus Center, although from time-to-time,I have seen various police agencies responding to call. There is a need for frequent routine patrols here in order to eliminate the on going acts which results in the situation described above. Too, the LACMTA should send someone to school so that there is an organisational understanding of the term “maintenance”, that coupled with on-going site inspection and correction would clean up these sad areas. Eliminating smoking at all transit centers, or stops where more than 5 people congregate, would be an excellent first step.
Cannibalizing traffic
The Fly-Away, LAWA's (Los Angeles World Airports) service to LAX is losing money –at $6 per passenger– Metro is talking about cutting service on the 439 line service, which costs passengers $1.75 ($1.25 base fare and .50 Freeway Charge) , so what kind of convoluted logic caused this? The 439 should run full most times, if properly promoted that is. But what kind of promotion can we expect from an organisation which cannot even construct a timely advisory to its' passengers of a change in Pasadena bus stops.
This is a rare digression into politics:
La Taupe is not, by background or training, an economist. However, he is a critic, so here is his criticism of President Obama's approach, at least partially, to stimulating the economy by placing cash in the hands of the population. Let's say that you were given $250 to spend. If you purchased clothing the money would flow partly to stores that sold you the merchandise and perhaps mostly to the foreign producers of the clothing –thereby stimulating that foreign economy. If you purchased shoes the same division of the monies would occur but this time, China as the world's largest shoemaker would benefit. When you buy a foreign car the same cash flow is approximated.
It is time to think America first! Or at least, the U.S. and its neighbours, Canada and Mexico. I am very concerned for my country: it is deeply in debt to foreigners; each year it loses the skills and equipment necessary to produce machinery, machine tools and capital goods; its population, due to an irrational fear of a standardised curricula, is undereducated; I understand that firearm and ammunition sales are very high, which is not a good sign.
The president should, like native American chiefs of old, metaphorically speaking, eat last –that would ensure that there was enough food for all.
He should focus on the provision of jobs for the average American, NOT increasing the wealth of the ruling class (yes, we do have classes in America) and those who, by producing products in low wage foreign countries synchronously enrich themselves while depriving their countrymen of jobs.
Producing goods at home will mean that due to our standard of living, prices will go up. There are those who will say “basket ball shoes cost a lot more!”. If you don't have a job, it really doesn't make any difference how much basket ball shoes cost.
The three areas which su Topo feels offer the greatest opportunity to reduce the loss of our national treasure and in the case of the first area the loss of our fellow citizens lives: (i) immediately cease all military operations and repatriate our troops (police agencies can continue to search for Bin Ladin); (ii) Immediately cease all foreign aid as American citizens are not responsible for being the supplier of free military aid or any other kind and; (iii) Cancel all H1B visas and stop the pretense that American citizens are not available for jobs other than the most menial; (iv) consider legislation which will encourage multi-national corporations to use workers from a given country in some ration to their earnings in that country.
Greater minds than mine make recommendations about jobs(3) and education(4), please read them and come to your own conclusion.
There is much available to read and listen, this Mole encourages you to do so. Please start with(5) below. Change, if it does come to America will not come from on high, it must originate with us.
Dedicated to the Dulcinea of my dreams
“Her name was Aldonza Lorenzo, and upon her he thought
fit to confer the title of Lady of his Thoughts; and after some search for a name which should not be out of harmony with her own, and should suggest and indicate that of a princess and great lady, he decided upon calling her Dulcinea del Toboso -she being of El Toboso- a name, to his mind, musical, uncommon, and significant, like all those he had already bestowed upon himself and the things belonging to him.”
Miguel De Cervantes (1547-1616), Don Quixote, (1605)
See: http://www.online-literature.com/view.php/don_quixote/5?term=dulcinea
Fare Box Score Box
Bus numbers of buses with Out of Order Fare Boxes: 7172; 6309; 6322; 5169; 5163; 5069: 5097;
Note: Few entries above do not necessarily mean more working fare boxes.
Numbers of Buses Defaced by WhoIs stickers: 6342+UR; 9394+UR; 6386+UR; 5213+UR; 6133+UR; 6370; 5188; 7594+UR; 8052+UR; 3331+UR; 6386+UR;
+UR = whois sticker and/or the ugly residue left after passengers partly remove the sticker.
Numbers of Buses whose Head and Tail signs disagree: 6439—42/blank; 5180-115/108; 7379-38/blank; 6459-42/590; 7039-439/446;
Bibliography
(1) Dowd, Maureen. “To Tweet or Not to Tweet”. New York Times. 21 April 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/opinion/22dowd.html
Accessed 2009-05-01
(2) New York Daily News. 4 May 2009. http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/05/04/2009-05-04_priority_mail_isnt_faster_than_regular_mail.html Accessed 2009-05-27
(3) Editorial Writer. “Obama’s plan stimulates the deficit, not the economy”. 19 May 2009. Washington Examiner. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Obamas-plan-stimulates-the-deficit-not-the-economy-45348542.html
Accessed 2009-05-27
(4) http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/2/stream Accessed 2009-05-27
(5) Johnston, David Cay. “Fiscal Therapy”. Mother Jones. January/February 2009.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/01/fiscal-therapy Accessed 2009-05-27
(6) With thanks to a “Bob and Ray” broadcast of 1960-02-03. Still need a laugh? Listen to lots more Bob and Ray at: http://www.archive.org/details/otr_bobandray
Su Topo’s Disclaimer and apologia
I try to write an easy-on-the-eyes page using text input. Blogger.com however, has other ideas and will often not stay with a single font type or point size, produces extraneous spacing and etc. I wish I had time to debug the HTML which they produce, it is NOT the straight text which I pasted into the form, but I don’t. Therefore, I apologize on behalf of Blogger.com for the changes which they make, of which I do not approve. Sometimes, what I see, thankfully you don’t, is 24 point type –it is giant and other times they swallow my text, although it still seems to be there. In fairness to them, things seem better, although this is partly because I do understand which of their “features” do the most damage to me and consequently do not use them. Communicating these problems to them, for me, is something like having teeth extracted without the benefit of anesthetic, actually it is less fun than that. By their design, there is no simple e-mailing them with "Please look at my posting of 2009-02-28, it is weird!” I am hoping that one of their developers will some day read this, copy my code and improve their text to HTML engine. Until then, lo siento.
Mole’s Copyright Statement
All photographs and original written materials are copyrighted © 2007~2009 by LAmetroMole. ♪Clicking a photo will often present you with an enlargement.
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2009-04-28
Mr. Art Leahy, welcome to your new position at the LACMTA/Metro! I wish you every success in turning the present dysfunctional organisation into one which will provide the kind of mass transit system which Los Angeles needs and deserves.
Much is being made of the fact that you were once an RTD (Rapid Transit District) bus driver. Personally, I have a difficult time understanding why that is related, other than tangentially, to your present job, any more than someone having worked as an airline baggage handler would be qualified as an airline president.
That said, Mr. Leahy, I am not hopeful. It is said by some, that the past is the best predictor of the future. On that basis, I find that the door which closed behind you at Orange County Transit (OCT) had barely stopped reverberating(0), when OCT announced dramatic cuts in service levels and fare increases. Therein sir, lies your legacy.
Too, the structure, which you now head, can best be described as a Byzantine organisation. It has, at least, two main irreconcilable constituencies –Metro “system” passengers and automobile drivers. In the past this Mole has suggested –without success– that the structure be split along those lines, i.e., Mass Transit and Highways, with executive responsibility divided as well, both reporting to a common executive who reports to the the LACMTA board. Further suggestions, that the agency be: a) depoliticised and b) professionalised by adding industrial engineers and credentialed transportation professionals to the staff.
My open letter to Mayor Villraigosa (2006-09-17, included below) documents another of your challenges, perhaps an insurmountable one, viz., the fact that politics permeates the structure and organisation of the LACMTA. If a camel is a horse built by a committee, then our present mass transportations “system”, is one built by a political committee with diverse, often irreconcilable, aims and agendas.
“
2006-09-17
An open letter to the Mayor of Los Angeles, the Honorable Antonio Villaraigosa, regarding our local transportation system.
Dear Mayor Villaraigosa:
I am respectively writing this appeal to you in order to request that you take action to address both the dysfunctional LACMTA and to institute a non-political LAC transportation commission to oversee the Metro system.
My rational for this request is outlined below:
As presently constituted, the LACMTA board and management is insensitive to the needs of the users of the Metro system;
Mr. Snoble, has demonstrated, publicly, his lack of fitness and lack of leadership for his position. Including, but not limited to, wanting to eliminate security as a cost saving measure:
Planning for system additions, if it can be called that, is piecemeal, irrational and lacks comprehensiveness. As examples, the expensive, unnecessary and dangerous (it is a grade level fixed rail link) “Expo Line”, the Gold Line Extension which initiated construction BEFORE obtaining firm right-of-way and cost agreements and the “new idea” for “trolley cars” citing San Francisco as a model;
The LACMTA wastes money on things like the money losing “Metro Store”, on board TransitTV which is annoying to riders while offering little hope for the promised income, automatic announcements of bus destinations, triggered by the bus door opening at stops, which seem to be incorrect 75 percent of the time, thereby failing their intended population – those with vision challenges. At the same the LACMTA fails to use technology to solicit ridership feedback about planned route and schedule changes, depending instead on 19th century meetings, which are designed by virtue of location and timing to ensure low attendance by the system users. Readers of my blog at http://LaMetroMole.BlogSpot.com are familiar with a long list of complaints , e.g., the costly line 232 backtracking and others, regarding the LACMTA, some of which have been reported to, and ignored by the present LACMTA.
Therefore, I request that you constitute a new transportation board, comprised of transportation professionals, not politicians. I further request that a staff group, again, comprised of transportation professionals, be established to oversee ALL Metro system planning. This group will report to the new board with their recommendations for system changes which are: rational, comprehensive and supported by a detailed cost-benefit analysis.
It is my firm belief, that implementing my suggestions will result in a system which is better suited to the needs of the city of Los Angeles and to Los Angeles County as well.
Respectfully submitted “
Good luck with the present board and don't hold your breath while you wait for politicians to either i. relinquish power or ii. act rationally for the benefit of the general public. I am sure that your experience in Orange County has made you aware of the political dimension of mass transportation.
Here are my specific, if unsolicited, recommendations in addition to the ones repeated at the top of this posting, for you.
Assign a staff member to read this Mole's blog. Someone in Snoble's administration was reading it. I could tell by the fact that the simple to fix embarrassing mistakes of the agency were often quickly (for Metro) set right. There are more subtle, for Metro staff, issues which have not been addressed.
Decide that passengers and pedestrians and others need to know who is driving these monstrous Metro buses. Therefore, cause the onboard display software to be modified so that the headsign and inside display shows the operator number. One can almost guarantee that, as a result, drivers will improve and complaints will drop.
Consider quickly establishing an Industrial Engineering Group. You can pay them by use the funds freed-up in firing most of the PR/Marketing Department people and especially Snoble's personal high-priced PR consultant. I have heard you speak and I know you don't need that guy as a shield. You will also find that by using technology in place of people as a supervisory control, you will end up with over staffing at the supervisory level –here think about the necessity for the ten (9) supervisors hired by Snoble to ensure on-time bus service. I know that you are already using the GPS and other feedback available from the on-board systems. Industrial engineers can greatly assist in this area, you know, actually doing something instead of writing about how great things are as the present PR/Marketing Department does. Nothing against USC, but Purdue educated industrial engineers should definitely be considered.
Maintenance, a word you will find is poorly understood by your organisation, must be improved.
The “system” is characterized by filth. A photograph, from a past report depicts a dead pigeon on Blue Line tracks at the juncture of the Green Line and Blue Line –I won't give you the names of the two stations, there are so many of them. This is one of the reasons that makes explaining the “system” to new users so difficult. Sadly, the dead pigeon, much decomposed, is still there today. This is hardly the work of a group the pridefully considers themselves to be “Americas Best” (another mistake to be rectified (see the lead photograph above).
Another photograph from the past, shows broken cable supports at the Green Line Aviation Station, since repaired. Now, there is new similar damage at Aviation Station, although in a different location.
Other photographs illustrate the sub-standard work done by the contractors at the Douglas-Rosecrans Green Line Station. Which leads me into a discussion of the Metro contracting process. Which process has left us with poorly joined rails and much of the metal left unpainted, again problems at –but not limited to– the Douglas-Rosecrans Green Line Station.
Not to be forgotten is the lack of deployed trash bags on most buses and the filthy bus stops, pictures of which also appear in this blog.
Drivers contribute to litter too. Almost ever week I see drivers toss something out the window of their moving bus or an often still burning cigarette into the gutter at the LAX City Bus Center and other places where the drivers take breaks.
It would be nice and healthy too, to eliminate smoking at all bus stops.
Each month, I show problems with head and tail sign disagreement, indicated by “Numbers of Buses whose Head and Tail signs disagree:” at the end of the posting.
Assign the 800-commute group the responsibility to randomly, say, one call out of ten, use the presently semi-useless “Trip Planner” to handle calls. Problems, and I am confidant that problems will be experienced, can then be passed on to your IT, department for an attempt at resolution.
Mr. Leahy, do you really want you maintenance group, assuming that there is one, to develop their task list from my postings?
Unfathomable to su Topo, is why taxpayers should have to pay for, but not limited to, the following: rebuilding the Orange Line road base which evidently was poorly constructed; repairing the Gold Line structural concrete which was allegedly built the same contractor who worked on the Boston “Big Dig” tunnel that partially collapsed and killed a woman; any other failures to perform on the part of LACMTA contractors.
Please understand that although the Rapid Bus system looks good on paper, it bypasses many riders forcing them, to transfer multiple times,unnecessarily and increases their commute times.
Rethink the Rapid system and drop lines that are not productive, the 715 comes to mind although there are others, re-instituting lines like the 315 of the past. If you don't want to do this than accept your Mole's description of the Rapid lines, “Moving Fewer Faster” and paint it on all Rapid buses.
Your legal group, needs to have a fire ignited under them. Some one or some group is defacing buses with “whois” bumper stickers. This person, person(s) or group can be quickly and easily located and should be charged with the same crime(s) as those (mostly) young men who “tag” Metro property. For sometime now, I have been listing buses so defaced at the end of the posting (vide infra),See ”Numbers of Buses Defaced by WhoIs stickers:” ) But, of course, under Snoble no action was taken. Defense attorneys for “taggers” could claim selective enforcement of the law and might find a receptive ear and support in the courts. So, someone should get off their fat chair and bring Mr. Whois to a screeching halt, I challenge you to do this before the end of May 2009.
Mr. Leahy, you will have to extract an action plan from the details below, by yourself.
Snoble's legacy. Talk about a customer de-centric organization? The LACMTA no longer sells Day Pass Tap Cards (DPTCs) aboard Metro buses, neither are DPTCs available, as someone with the most basic system of logic would expect, from the rail/subway station vending machines. Instead, paper Day Passes are, at the time of this writing, still available from the rail/subway station machines. I recently rode a bus whose fare box had a neatly printed, if ungrammatical note taped to it, “… M.T.A. no longer sale [sic] TAP cards. …”. This situation forces people who would ordinarily benefit from the use of a Day Pass, to make unnecessary trips to outside vendors, if they can find them, in order to purchase a DPTC from a vendor.
Searching the “vendor directory” at http://www.metro.net/riding_metro/pass_token/SalesLocations.asp and selecting 90045 as the zip code argument resulted in this message: “ADODB.Recordset error '800a0bcd'
Either BOF or EOF is True, or the current record has been deleted. Requested operation requires a current record.
/riding_metro/pass_token/locations_zip.asp, line 13”
All this is brought to you from the people who gave you the “Trip Spoiler”. Your Mole’s term for the software which Metro refers to as the “Trip Planner”.
It is this Mole's assessment that the TAP system, with its' high overhead costs, will actually decrease “system” earnings. That is, given the same ridership after a full year of use, net revenue from fares will decrease year-over-year. My estimate factors-in the fact that by not having DPTC onboard they will collect individual fares and generate more revenue then that earned by selling day passes. This is a easy prediction to make as the cost of paper transfers was pennies, with virtually no additional costs, other than some shrinkage due to the few, perhaps only one, driver who sold passes off-the-books. Although as a Systems/Industrial Engineer, I like the TAP system technology, in this case I believe that ibm (it's better manually). What was needed was a better driver end-of-shift accounting which under Snoble, gave too many a headache. Something no more complicated then what is used by the concessionaires to control their vendors at Dodger Stadium.
As usual, the LACMTA doesn’t disappoint, that is, if one’s expectations are even slightly high. The current Day Pass status is a result of the LACMTA’s nescience and their consequent ephemeral planning.
Well, Mr. Leahy, this is probably not the welcome which you were expecting but I hope that you find my comments germane and actionable. If we should pass each other at the Taj Mahal, I will suppress my desire to smile .
The feedback on Leahy so far, from my sources: Apparently, Leahy will judge drivers by early/late route performance. Just what we need drivers who feel hassled! He is strict on the uniform “dress code”. There are also reports of staff nervousness, especially on the part of those who left Leahy's administration at OCT, now there is an expectation that at least some of those "heads will roll” –All feedback in this paragraph was provided by Metro sources.
Another Times article(2), which this Mole read as a further indictment of Solow, shows exactly how Rip van Winkle like Solow was during most of his tenure. I am not sure that, at this juncture, he is yet fully awake.
Proving that Metro employees are not alone in having criminals among their midst, The Argonaut reports(3) on the arrest of three Big Blue Bus employees. They were somehow making money out of the city’s Rideshare program. Leahy, take note. When I tossed an expired pass into a trash can very near the Taj Mahal, someone was quick to retrieve it and asked if I had any more. I said “No”, and the person told me that her “friend” could submit them as proof of using Metro and get a refund. Perhaps the TAP system will have better control –but I would not count on it.
The LA Weekly in reporting the provision of rail cars for the LACMTA, says(4) “… Snoble sought a transparent approach that allowed even the snafu-riddled Italian firm [Ansaldobreda] to bid on the taxpayer-financed project, but now it would be forced to face healthy competition”. La Taupe was near shock to read the words “transparent” and “Snoble” in the same sentence, in fact your Mole would have bet that such a sentence couldn’t be constructed. This about a guy whose organisation spent about one million dollars ($1,000,000) or the equivalent of eight hundred thousand (800,000) full fares in order to propagandize us in favor of measure R. What is no surprise is that the process is termed in the report “a political procurement”. This article represents great work by Ms Barrett.
A Times account(5) on Metrolink plans, attributes the need for a fare increase to offset “… rising labor and maintenance costs”. There are several line items in the Metrolink budget which could and should be slashed, to offset rising costs –Solow’s $220,000 plus annual salary, and the lines for his perks and expenses.
Another Snoble legacy, the ill-conceived and poorly planed “Expo Line” is covered by both the Santa Monica Mirror and the Times.
Typical of the Snoble era, the LACMTA’s “Do then Plan” approach to life has resulted in a situation, like that which we saw in the case of the Gold Line/ Ramona Opportunity High School, which would cause an onset of déjà vu in normal people. In this case we have conflict which should have been prevented by better planning for a rail maintenance facility [covered in (6) and (7) and the routing of Phase 2 of the “Expo Line”(8).
In a brochure, the LACMTA asks(9) us to help stop vandalism. This is quite a demonstration of nerve from an agency which freely allows its’ buses to be defaced with “Whois” bumper stickers (vide supra). These items allow anyone, whose IQ is equal to or greater than his body temperature, to identify and find the culprit(s). This crime has been allowed for years. (See Your legal group, above).
Your Mole loves music, including classical music. His number one radio source for it is KUSC (91.5FM) www.kusc.org. On which station he recently heard Emmanuel Chabrier’s (1841-1894) excellent Pastoral Suite performed by the Vienna Philharmonic under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner and from the DG 447751 recording.
You can download a Chabrier sample at http://www.kara dar.com/Mp3composer/SearchAutore.asp?Autore=Chabrier and of course hear more complete works on KUSC.
The Saturday before Easter, Su Topo woke up early enough to hear the beginning of “Alma del Bario” at 6AM on KXLU (88.9FM) www.kxlu.org. The announcer, was a lady who, enunciated beautiful, clear Spanish.
Cosmological Corner
Using 100,000LY (light years) as the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy Google told me that the circumference was: “pi * 100 000” = 314,159.265LY. Dividing that value by a nominal 100 year human life span yields 3,141.59265. In other words, 3,141 human life spans (at 100 years) would be required for light to make one circuit of our galaxy. Please note, this is based upon last year’s size –currently the galaxy is thought to be up to twice as large.
One galactic revolution takes 225,000,000 years! (See: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/milkyway.php) Expressing this in human live spans (225,000,000/100) results in 2,250,000 which enable us to express a human live span in terms of fractional galactic revolutions, i.e., 4.44444444 × 10-9 i.e.,[.00000000444444444], a small fraction, isn’t it? Nota bene, the galactic revolution cited above my be incorrect, as la Taupe posted earlier our Milky Way galaxy is thought to be larger than previously thought. The effect is to make the human live span a smaller fraction of the rotation, sorry .
The Technology section of BrandX explains(10) how Johns Hopkins University (The link for the university is http://www.jhu.edu/ ) researchers search for hydrogen cyanide, which is a “compound basic to DNA”, as indication of extra terrestrial life.
2009-04-03: At 9:50 I am aboard a 439 Line bus, number 6412 driven by operator 460(?) (something is wrong with his I.D. number, but three digits are all that he has on the badge). Here is yet another reason why the operator's I.D. number should be displayed inside the bus on the scrolling informational sign and outside the bus on the headsign. This driver is carrying on a non-stop conversation with a woman who is seated at the extreme front of the bus on the right side. The conversation is carried on in a fairly low tone, unlike some of the on-board conversations which have assaulted my ears. They are dissecting someone's personality and the woman offers some personal insight “... I'm not confrontational ... “. The conversation moves on “... hit the Lotto ...”. Another woman, this one a bottle and can collector, the noises made by her collectibles giving her away, boards. A man slowly presses the keys on his cell phone [... beep ... ... beep ....] and then demonstrates that it possible to use many words in a conversation while simultaneously reducing the information load of each word. A five minute conversation reduces to: “I'll see you in Pasadena”.
2009-04-05: Bus number 11047, a 232 Line Bus to LAXCBC (LAX City Bus Center). We "pass" a red light at Century BL and Sepulveda headed north at about 16:20. The driver #71590, with First Transit, is engaged in a lengthy conversation with a passenger who is standing in front of the yellow line, in the forbidden area.
2009-04-19: Bus number 9382, a 704 Line Bus to Santa Monica. This bus should be given a rest so that mechanics could give it a thorough going-over and tighten up everything which is loose and rattling loudly. A woman, on her cell phone, is berating her mother about something. Then, it's: “... hold on, I've got another call ...”. Perhaps it would be better if the mechanics rode along so that they could more quickly find and fix the problems. She is back on the cell, she is apparently someone who, instead of carefully thinking out her plans, prefers to start an endless cycle of calls letting each call fill-in part of the plan and then re-calling all those affected. So far today this has required several iterations.
On board bus number 6577: The third set of seats on the right side have been “repaired". The outer seat top has been repaired with wide transparent tape, apparently to attach the sear back to the frame -- a "Metro fix", at least it's not duct tape .
At the LAXCBC, there is a garbled side-sign on one of the well-kept secret and poorly routed 626 line mini-buses. Vor is at work "cleaning" the LAXCBC. Su Topo believes that Vor is ineducable, well, not completely, as he has hidden his name badge. Unbelievably, he is transferring the contents of a large semi-stationery trash, can one item at a time, using his "grabber" device, to his mobile trash can. They seem to have taught him to sweep up the cigarette butts from between the inter-slab cracks, yet he leaves lots of detritus around the base of the palm trees.
On a westbound 117 a man confined to a wheelchair engages two younger men in conversation: "How many of our presidents are not buried in the U.S.?” ... and on and on. Another wheelchair passenger disposes of his candy wrapper by dropping it to the floor. (Yet another point in favour of deploying trash containers aboard buses –IF the passengers use them.
On 2009-04-17 around 14:30, as we left the LAXCBC aboard bus number 6426, the operator whose number is unknown because she is wearing a short sleeved blue knit shirt without an I.D. patch, made a rolling “stop” over the crosswalk with the clearly marked STOP sign.
Did la Taupe see this correctly? Bus number 5367 painted blue and silver??
2009-04-24: As I ride this morning, I notice an Oriental woman, and although women's fashions usually are of little interest to this Mole, in this case her multi-coloured, layered effect is glaringly "anti- fashionista". She wears: a Burberry "type" jacket; under which is a long green T-shirt; then an orange T-shirt; then, an once white T-shirt.
Next to her is seated a woman with a persistent cough –which, when I see her light up after exiting the bus an take short deep puffs, turns out to be cigarette induced.
Many of Metro's passengers come from our lower socio-economic classes, who, unfortunately, think that they will escape cancer and other diseases caused or exacerbated by tobacco, by having "good luck".
2009-04-24, in the early afternoon I am aboard a 704 Line bus, bus number 18382, the driver of which seems unable to consistently pull up to the curb in order to pick up passengers. I couldn’t see the drivers I.D. badge, which is just another point in favour of scrolling the drivers I.D. inside AND outside the bus.
Dedicated to the Dulcinea of my dreams
Her name is Dulcinea; her country El Toboso, a village in La Mancha; her degree at least that of Princess, for she is my Queen and mistress; her beauty superhuman, for in her are realized all the impossible and chimerical attributes of beauty which poets give to their ladies.
Miguel De Cervantes (1547-1616), Don Quixote, (1605)
Fare Box Score Box
Bus numbers of buses with Out of Order Fare Boxes: 7172; 6309; 6322; 5169; 5163; 5069: 5097;
Note: Few entries above do not necessarily mean more working fare boxes.
Numbers of Buses Defaced by WhoIs stickers: 5113+UR; 5221+UR; 8052+UR
+UR = whois sticker and the ugly residue left after passengers partly remove the sticker.
Numbers of Buses whose Head and Tail signs disagree: 6439—42/blank;
Bibliography
(0) Abdollah , Tami “Orange County to cut more bus services”. Los Angeles Times. 10 march 2009: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/orange/la-me-oc-bus-cuts10-2009mar10,0,530085.story Accessed 2009-04-28
(1 ) Harmon, Steve “Former bus driver new MTA chief in L.A. County”. Los Angeles Times. 6 march 2009: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-leahy6-2009mar06,0,7510085.story Accessed 2009-04-25
(2) Lopez, Robert J. and Weikel, Dan. “Federal inquiry finds rail oversight woefully inadequate”. Los Angeles Times. 4 march 2009: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-metrolink-hearing5-2009mar05,0,1147588.story?track=rss , accessed 2009-04-25
(3) N/A. “Three Big Blue Bus employees arrested for theft after city audit of Rideshare program”. The Argonaut.23 Apr. 2009:p6
(4) Barrett, Ruth. “MTA INFRASTRUCTURE, OR JUST INTRIGUE?: SNAFU-RIDDLEDED RAILCAR BUILDER ANSALDOBRENDA GETS A SECOND CHANCE” LA Weekly. 10~16 Apr. 2009:p26
(5) Weikel, Dan. “Metrolink considers 5.5% fare increase”. Los Angeles Times. 3 Apr 2009:A8
(6) Heineman, Hannah. “Light Rail Maintenance Yard Site Proposal Draws Fire”. Santa Monica Mirror. 9~15 Apr. 2009:p2
(7) Groves, Martha. “Rail yard idea sparks alarm at arts center”. Los Angeles Times. 26 Mar. 2009:A5
(8) Groves, Martha. “Expo rail board prefers direct path”. Los Angeles Times. 4 Apr. 2009:A7
(9) N/A. “Help stop vandalism”. LACMTA brochure 09-1424TR. © 2009.
(10) Johnson, John Jr. “Life, actually?”. BrandX. 22 Apr. 2009:p16
Su Topo’s Disclaimer and apologia
I try to write an easy-on-the-eyes page using text input. Blogger.com, however, has other ideas and will often not stay with a single font type or point size, produces extraneous spacing and etc. I wish I had time to debug the html which they produce, it is NOT the straight text which I pasted into the form, but I don’t. Therefore, I apologize on behalf of Blogger.com for the changes which they make, of which I do not approve. Sometimes, what I see, thankfully you don’t, is 24 point type –it is giant and other times they swallow my text, although it still seems to be there. In fairness to them, things seem better, although this is partly because I do understand which of their “features” do the most damage to me and consequently do not use them. Communicating these problems to them, for me, is something like having teeth extracted without the benefit of anesthetic, actually it is less fun than that. By their design, there is no simple e-mailing them with "Please look at my posting of 2009-02-28, it is weird!” I am hoping that one of their developers will some day read this, copy my code and improve their text to html engine. Until then, lo siento.
Mole’s Copyright Statement
All photographs and original written materials are copyrighted © 2007 by LAmetroMole. ♪Clicking a photo will often present you with an enlargement.
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2009-03-28
Snoble doing the work of four men? Well, six if you count Joe and Curley Joe♪.
The Mole reads the papers (and other things) so you don't have to
Foreign Policy has an article(1) on some side-effects of the financial crisis. They list 13. I merged their list into mine and added a 14th item: The LACMTA will, in keeping with their history, add projects that maximize cost while having little of no positive effects upon mass transit in this area.
The Washington Monthly has a piece(2) which discusses the problems caused by too many 18 wheelers on the nation’s roads. The writer, Phillip Longman, discusses the approach taken by the state of Virginia, viz., the shifting of freight from long-haul trucks to intermodal transport involving the rails. But is this an effective approach? It seems so: “… a study sponsored by the Virginia DOT finds that a cumulative investment over ten to twelve years of less than $8 billion would divert 30 percent of the growing truck traffic on I-81 to rail. That would be far more bang for the state’s buck than the $11 billion it would take to add more lanes to the highway, especially since it would bring many other public benefits, from reduced highway accidents and lower repair costs to enormous improvements in fuel efficiency and pollution reduction. Today, a single train can move as many containers as 280 trucks while using one-third as much energy—and that’s before any improvements to rail infrastructure.”(Ibidem)
If you have the slightest interest in any aspect of our country’s current dilemma, please read this article. It also addresses a number of other aspects: stimulus spending, reducing our carbon footprint and etc. Mr. Longman continues “The choice of infrastructure projects is de facto industrial policy; it’s also de facto energy, land use, housing, and environmental policy, with implications for nearly every aspect of American life going far into the future”.(Ibidem) ¡There is much to commend this fine example of writing! In su Topo’s mind we could also use the same infrastructure for passenger traffic.
See Mr. Longman’s bio at: http://www.newamerica.net/people/phillip_longman
Speaking of railroading, how has Solow been able to keep his job given his atrocious safety record? Perhaps, identifying scapegoats and firing them is the answer–one might draw that conclusion after reading this Press-Enterprise story(3). This detailed report also includes a PDF ([Adobe} Portable Data Format] file containing a copy of Solow’s [CYA, la Taupe’s term] letter firing the managers mentioned in the story. How long will the power structure allow Solow to maintain a low profile and keep his job? The way I see it, he sat on his fat asiento on the 26th floor of 700 Flower St, collected a fat salary for a decade and left us with the Metrolink safety mess we still have today.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) Mr. Paine’s quote(4) (below) equally
applies to the many still held in Guantanamo as well as to those who legally received bonuses, for which they had contracted, with AIG[1].
"An avidity [eagerness] to punish is always dangerous to
liberty.
It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and
to misapply even the best of laws.
He that would make his own liberty secure
must guard even his enemy from oppression;
for if he violates his duty
he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
Two Times articles focus on the inattentiveness of the Metrolink engineer and his desire to allow young men to become train engineers for some periods of his working day. In late February(5) a pair of reporters -who I believe should handle the entire transportation beat- find that the engineer at the time of the Chatsworth crash, allowed teenagers ride in the locomotive's cab. The same article documents that the engineer “received and sent 57 text messages while on duty the day of the crash.” Then in a related piece(6) details an occasion when one of these teens controlled the throttle!
Now only god knows what else when on during Mr. Sanchez' work shifts and certainly Solow didn't, at least until the NTSB began its' investigation. Then he jumped on the band wagon and firmly planted both feet blaming contractors and firing these two. The questions for Solow are: “Why was nothing done prior to the accident? Why not even a dime was spent on safety in Los Angeles County? And further, why were no oversight mechanisms in place to ensure that engineers and others strictly obeyed ALL safety related regulations?
Rolling Stone featured an article(7) that really drills down into AIG and the issues which surround it, touching on many of the topics which dominate our news media. N.B. This is not an article for children! Although serious, it does have some naughty words and is disrespectful of the pope in an oblique way by use of the conditional tense. That said, it is also a well written piece that allows a person of average intelligence to develop an understanding of the background which led up to the current financial situation. Listen to Amy Goodman’s 25 March 2009 interview with Mr. Taibbi (Ta ib bi) on Democracy NOW. Link to the podcast via: http://media.libsyn.com/media/democracynow/dn2009-0325-1.mp3 I quote only this from this important piece: “There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. In the age of the CDS [Credit Default Swaps] and CDO [Collateralized Debt Obligations], most of us are financial illiterates. By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a[n] historic, revolutionary change in our political system — transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below.” Bravo Mr. Taibbi!
A back issue of Forbes included nice coverage(8) of “traffic signal preemption”. Remember that? It was supposed to be part of the 720 Line Rapid buses on Wilshire BL. Another example of something that was touted on Snoble’s watch yet, to the best of this Mole’s knowledge, has yet to work. In fact, many, probably most, 720 Line buses don’t even have ASA! Again, it is our neighbours to the north in Canada, specifically Calgary, that has “seamlessly integrated the technology”[2]. I won’t quote the article extensively other than to repeat Calgary’s cost savings which accrue due to the use of signal preemption: Each transmitter-equipped bus saves 2,000 gallons of fuel and 50,000 of carbon dioxide emissions each year! American cities, viz., Bellingham, WA, Eugene, OR, Boise City, ID and Syracuse, NY all have the system installed at 90% (at the time of writing) of their intersections. I am not sure that comparable emission reductions are possible for Los Angeles since LPG fuels most of Metro’s fleet. However, there should be some fuel savings were the LACMTA to install signal-preemption hardware and software. Of course our money-pit LACMTA is known as an agency where many projects are started and few come to fruition. For anyone interested in the some of the other benefits of using signal-preemption this brief fact-packed article is a must read.
Ear to the Rail
Everyone is ahead of the U.S. vis-à-vis rail travel. Spain has only been building high speed rail since 1992 and is moving fast with its smooth, fast, profitable, modern and environmentally sound system. Listen to the NPR report here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101408073
Listen and hen think about where España will be in 2015 and how far our own clunky LACMTA will be on the “subway to the sea”.
Then relax and ride on AVE (Alta Velocidad Española) between Ciudad Real and Madrid at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDNzxVm1wuA (Part 1)and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3wilreWY_Q (Part 2)
Then see trains at the Ciudad Real Station:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuVyCetsDEk&NR=1 Oh, renfe means “Red Nacional de Ferrocarriles Españoles” [National network of Spanish Railroads]
Cosmological Corner
According to http://spaceweather.com/ there are currently 1035 known PHAs (Potentially Hazardous Asteroids). Take a look at the table which only lists 11 of these guys which could easily spoil your weekend plans, on the page whose link appears above. You can see that on March 2nd, 2009 DD45 came as near as 0.2 LD (Lunar Distance). This means that it was only 1/5th the distance to the moon.
It is Saturday, 28 February and I am on a street-corner waiting for a 115 bus. The schedule shows that the bus should leave Manchester and Market at 9:55, so I am in position at 9:45. The time for its arrival at Manchester and Sepulveda (10:08), comes and goes –no bus arrives! I wait longer and finally, the next bus on the schedule does arrive. It appears that none of the 10 new supervisors, who were to improve on-time performance, work in this sector.
I am at the Inglewood Transportation Center. A man cuts his nails and allows the trimmings to drop to the sidewalk, which sidewalk is strewn with dried vegetation. He is about a foot and a half from the trash can. I board a 40 Line bus, the operator, #25606, has loud music playing and he is on his cell, too.
I transfer to the Green Line. Five Chinese men share the mid-train longitudinal seats with me. They all look, well, kind of scruffy, with luggage that seems to be too stained for its age. Four disembark at the Aviation Station. The one who stays has a Whole Foods paper bag stuffed with newspapers. He holds a paper as he works a sudoku puzzle. He may well be the holder of the world's record for wearing the greatest number of mismatched colours. His hair like that of many Oriental men, is dry and badly styled.
2009-03-02 I ride the 439 to Union Station and transfer to the Gold Line. It is one of the new trains, it is NOT gold but Grey? I am in car number 713 on a cloudy cool morning around 9:15 AM –it is cold inside and I am freezing. This is Los Angeles and we need the air conditioner, right? The signs which display the station names at which we will stop are, in keeping with LACMTA policy are smallish almost inconspicuous.
As I wait for a bus on Lake St. I notice that the trash can which was so needed on the east side of the street, I am on the west side, is gone. There is a can at my location but there is lots of litter scattered around, too. It is the 98% that give the rest a bad name.
I continue my ride on a 485 Line bus.
Riding a 439 Line bus on 2009-03-03: Although apparently not reported in the subscriber copies of the Los Angeles Times, TransitTV, the purveyor of annoying advertisements to the captive public, had died. I noticed that there were no broadcasts on several early March buses, the drivers, when queried, said that they didn’t know anything.
I say good riddance and hope that the Board of Supervisors and the LACMTA Board (there is overlap) both post large signs which say “Remember TransitTV” so that they are able to overcome their desires to approve nonsense.
Anyway, on this 439 bus, number 6459, I can read –for a while, anyway. Soon the driver (number 73679) begins what turns into a series of long, fairly loud conversations with virtually everyone. Her loud clear voice covers the entire bus as we hear about “the high humidity in New Orleans”. She has a personal radio; it's on, as she talks about a book that she is recommending and the exhumation of bodies and etc., etc. My mind starts to devise a sound proof driver’s compartment, more as protection for the passengers rather than the driver, or at least something that would trigger an alarm when the driver talked too much. “... my father prepared my Cream of Wheat every morning ... butter and sugar...”, “... I had this dress of red leather and silk ...” and on and on. The ASA (Automatic Stop Announcement) says “La Cienega” in one voice and “Park entrance” in another. I still have a long ride ahead of me.
The TransitTV screen (shown above♪) is blank. How blank is it M. Taupe? It is as blank as a LACMTA transportation planner’s mind!
I have often wondered why the BRU (Bus Riders Union) didn’t use some of their under-employed lawyers to file a FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) request for a cost-benefit analysis, income-expense statement and ROI (Return On Investment) statement for TransitTV and/or many other documents which bear on the money wasting agency's operations. Remember when TransitTV was announced? It was going to have all kinds of benefits associated with its’ installation and use. Perhaps it funded Snoble’s $1,000,000 brochure on Measure M?, not that such a funding would make his action a better use of public funds!
I am aboard a 232 where a woman with an Australian or English accent is producing 250 words per minute[La Taupe's estimate] for her husband who replies in monosyllables.
March 15th is the day on which the system sill stop issuing paper day passes. Su Topo is writing this on March 4th as a prediction, he will write about his success as a prognosticator in the next paragraph. One of the reasons for replacing paper day passes with Tap cards is to prevent a recurrence of the flap several months ago, in which a driver and his henchman were selling paper day passes, out-of-system, so to speak.
Although I couldn’t easily find anything about the Tap card day passes on Metro.net, I did pickup a tiny flyer, number 09-11148JL, on a bus. It turns out that they will give you a Tap card for you to reuse and if you also read the footnote, as long as you ask before 11 April –this is less than a month’s duration.
What this means, and this fact likely doesn’t exist in LACMTA’s corporate memory –is that like military intelligence??. Which fact is: lots of day pass users are visitors to Los Angeles who use the Metro “system” to get around town. After 11 April these people will have to pay full fare, this may not be so bad, BUT, there is a class of user who mainly stay in the neighbourhood but occasionally groups their errands and buys a day pass in order to criss-cross the city. What will happen to them when they are denied a day pass? I don’t know and it comes as no surprise that the LACMTA probably does not either.
The LACMTA suffers from, among many other things, a lack of consistency and poecilonymic tendencies. I observe two 232 Line buses separated by some interval. The head sign of one says “LAX Terminal” (seems like it would enter LAX proper doesn't it? No, like the other one whose head sign says “LAX City Bus Center” they are both bound for the LAXCBC (LAX City Bus Center).
March 15th will be the start of riders imposing a “stress tests” the TAP reader. It brings to mind the first day, several years ago, when Foothill Transit installed new fare boxes on board all its’ buses. Then, they found out that the magnetic stripe recorded on some of the transfers and etc. produced by the old fare boxes and other machines could not be read by the new fare boxes. Read what your Mole found on Day 1, here: it seemed fairly smooth, but my sample size was small. Also, I believe that it is NOT cost effective. The media costs are greater than paper and there is certainly less flexibility. By that I mean I certainly would not use a card that stored a cash dollar balance which was then reduced as you rode. We will see what happens the first time that there is a system failure and everyone's pass is rejected or set to MINUS $9999.99. The LACMTA, an agency which has at best, a tenuous grasp of the meaning of fiduciary responsibility, must make payments of an unknown size -but likely big bucks- to the computer system operators, Cubic Transportation Systems [I believe]. To see how big, review this document:
http://www.metro.net/board/Items/2008/01_January/20080116EMACItem30.pdf
Note also tha that Booz Allen Hamilton (http://www.boozallen.com/) is the consulting firm in the driver's seat on lots of LACMTA projects. Su Topo wonders if they were low bidder or it was a sole source deal??
Your Mole also can't help but wonder where Mr. Snoble will end up next? Ms Wendy Greuel could assign a batallion of auditors to the LACMTA and la Taupe will bet that they could recoup their salaries and a big bundle for the city in addition to leaving behind a more transparent transportation agency.
Another Saturday afternoon waiting for the 115 Line bus which was supposed to leave Inglewood at 13:28. It doesn't show. I think that the 10 supervisors hired to improve on-time service should be placed behind the wheels of buses. Finally the bus that left Inglewood at 14:28 shows up about late. My total wait was well over an hour!
I am on a 79 Line bus where the ASA says (in one voice) “Huntington and” and then in a badly patched other voice, “Centennial”.
Aboard a 115 Line bus. In a short period the ASA says (in one voice) “Manchester and” (in another voice) “Inglewood Cemetery”. Then a little later it tells us that we are at Manchester and Manchester”. Is that like a mobius intersection? I believe that they mean “Manchester BL and Manchester Drive”. This is an example of the usual “care” which goes into any and all LACMTA projects. “Care” in this context can be replaced with “sloppiness”.
It is laughable that they would spend all the money, actually an unknown amount (kept secret, like most of the dysfunctional agency’s information) and not spend a few dollars more to update the system in a manner NOT reminiscent of a third world country.
Today, 2009-03-15, is the first day of issuing TAP cards for use as “Day Passes”. The driver is having some kind of problem with an early passenger’s card. The passenger is studying a paper explaining how to use the car and seems somewhat confused. The driver seems a little unsure as well. Nothing has been said about what happens after April 11th, the day on which the TAP "Day Pass" cards will no longer be free. Sorry folks, just based upon past experience with the LACMTA, your Mole is betting against them on anything that has to do with computer systems. Oh, you want proof? Vide infra, PST vs "daylight savings time".
Seasoned public transportation users know where to eat. La Taupe is no exception, so while in Pasadena near the Centennial Park Gold Line Station, he took a lunch break at King Taco®. (www.kingtaco.com) This Pasadena location is one of 15 in Southern California, all of which have their pictures on the wall of the restaurant in a 5 X 3 array. Their motto is “¡Exquisitamente...a la Mexicana!®". I had a man-size bean and cheese burrito for $3.52 at this clean, neat and friendly location! It was GOOD!!
TransitTV is not dark on my 439 Line bus this morning. They went bankrupt, it is a Chapter 7 case, i.e., a liquidation of all assets. But there is a screen full of, mostly GPS related, data –like most things related to the LACMTA, upon closer examination you will find something wrong. I examine the screen and find that although we are in the third week of daylight savings time, the LACMTA system is still on PST. That was the first thing wrong. The second? This “debugging screen” replaced the real-time route map. That may go away for good when we find out how the bankruptcy court will allocate TransitTV's assets. Our driver today is busy. She is playing a CD, briefly answers her cell phone and is carrying on a conversation, in a loud and clear voice, with a male passenger who is seated on the right side of the bus, on the lateral seat as far forward as possible. If it's not TransitTV, the passenger cell phones, their conversations then it is the drivers. The conversation turns to her last church and religion in general. The torrent of information on the relative merits of preachers and etc. soon exceed the capacity of su Topo's brain to absorb how the Life-of-the-World church relates to its' congregation. They are discussing a complex relationship of members, pastors and churches. I find it impossible to escape this unsolicited and unwanted gush of facts. It goes on and on and on. I know that voice, yes it is operator number 73679! She is now talking about her favorite author, Myra Hollis. I have a serious case of information overload and am unable to handle the volume so I may be losing letter or entire words! Anyway she wants to pass on a copy of a book to a passenger to whom she has promised a copy.
Second opinion? Her driving is not that great. She accelerates too fast in order to close up gaps, misjudges the distance and has to break, hard. Now, in addition to a developing headache I'm getting seasick. More attention to driving an less jawboning, that's my prescription.
As the trip progresses,I consider asking the passengers to join me in a prayer to keep buses a religion free zone.
Molette and I discuss TV presenters. She knows that I like Ms Antoine on France24.com
(www.France24.com/fr/) and Palmira Pérez on KWHY-TV (http://www.canal22.tv).
She finally gets me to admit that in Los Angeles, it is KNBC's (http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/)
Ms Kim Baldonado, that I really like.
Molette responds with an almost imperceptible facial tic –or at least I thought so.
I have often felt that certain lady news readers, especially when they speak French or Spanish, sound musical to me.
Now, I freely admit that English, when spoken by Ms Baldonado,
IS musical! She has the face and the voice of an angel.
I wonder if she would be receptive to being interviewed by su Topo? The venue?, Home Girl Café! http://www.homeboy-industries.org/homegirl-cafe.php
Molette offers that that would not be the right atmospheric level. I respond that the food and service and ambiance are all are great, so Kim would like it. Anyway, it would be business, NOT a date. Now for a date ... hmmm.
Next month: A Welcome Message to Mr.Art Leahy, along with some suggestions – one longish one right now: Mr. Leahy, please freeze all changes scheduled for June 2009 AND institute a two pronged program, one to collect first hand usage statistics and comments rather than depending on the time wasting, ineffective, poorly sited and scheduled “feedback meetings”, the other: to get your “marketing department” off their FAT chairs to sell services, BEFORE cancelling or reducing service. They should form a flying team and get out to neighborhoods, libraries and etc., in order to make presentations on what service(s) is/are available and take comments. The typical passenger works and finds it impossible to attend the “feedback meetings”, others do not really understand how things linkup and in other cases they don’t linkup at all. Oh, and no private car transportation reembursement for them either. If they get paid by the LACMTA let them ride it, free, of course. Above all, start having all staff think TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM, not buses and trains. Although the Rapid buses [above as modified by su Topo♪] may look good, "Moving Fewer Faster" is not the answer! Neither is severing bus-train links (like the 439, 125 and other lines), of which still too few exist to qualify as a REAL system, ! (To be continued)
Fare Box Score Box
Bus numbers of buses with Out of Order Fare Boxes: 5170, 2009-03-01; 6444, 2009-03-13; 6370, 2009-03-15; 11017,2009-03-21;
Note: Few entries above do not necessarily mean more working fare boxes.
Numbers of Buses Defaced by WhoIs stickers: 6348; 6346; 5184+UR;
5221; 6380+UR; 6343+UR; 5100+UR; 6353; 5099; 5173+UR; 5124+UR; 5140; 6370; 5140;
UR = Ugly Residue of a former, likely whois sticker. +UR = whois sticker and the ugly residue left after
passengers partly remove the sticker.
Numbers of Buses whose Head and Tail signs disagree: 6411—42/447; 6580-111/1A; 5089-110/blank; 5172-110/M15;
Bibliography
(1) Drezner, Daniel W. “The Long Legs of the Crash: 13 Unexpected Consequences of the Financial Crisis”. Foreign Policy March/April 2009 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4689 Accessed 2009-03-04
(2) Longman, Phillip. “Back on Tracks”. Washington Monthly
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0901.longman.html January/February 2009, accessed 2009-03-20
(3) Begley, Dug [sic]. “Company's managers dismissed from Metrolink positions” The Press-Enterprise 5 Mar. 2009 See: http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_S_metrolink06.3f2c064.html January/February 2009, accessed 2009-03-20
With an nod to Linux Magazine
(5) Lopez, Robert J. and Connell, Rich. “Metrolink engineer let teens ride in cab”. The Los Angeles Times. 28 Feb 2009:B1
(6) Lopez, Robert J. and Connell, Rich. “Metrolink engineer let teen take throttle”. The Los Angeles Times. 4 Mar 2009:A1
(7) Taibbi, Matt. “The Big Takeover”. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/1 Accessed: 25 Mar 2009.
(8) Bruner, John. “Greening the Traffic Lights.” Forbes (Volume 181 Number 9). 5 May 2008:p64~68. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0505/064.html Accessed 25 March 2009.
Su Topo’s Disclaimer and apologia
I try to write an easy-on-the-eyes page using text input. Blogger.com, however, has other ideas and will often not stay with a single font type or point size, produces extraneous spacing and etc. I wish I had time to debug the html which is produced, it is NOT the straight text which I pasted into the form, but I don’t. Therefore, I apologize on behalf of Blogger.com for the changes which they make, of which I do not approve. Sometimes, what I see, thankfully you don’t, is 24 point type –it is giant and other times they swallow my text, although it still seems to be there. In fairness to them, things seem better, although this is partly because I do understand which of their “features” do the most damage to me and consequently do not use them. Communicating these problems to them, for me, is something like having teeth extracted without the benefit of anesthetic, actually it is less fun than that. By their design, there is no simple e-mailing them with "Please look at my posting of 2009-02-28, it is weird!” I am hoping that one of their developers will some day read this, copy my code and improve their text to html engine. Until then, lo siento.
Mole’s Copyright Statement
All photographs and original written materials are copyrighted © 2005~2009 by LAmetroMole. ♪Clicking a photo will often present you with an enlargement.
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, sustainable development, environmental, community and worker health, democracy, public disclosure, corporate accountability, and etc. We have included relatively brief quotes from articles and etc. rather than a simple link because we have found that links frequently go "bad" or change over time. We believe this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without fee or payment of any kind to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
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[1] Su Topo may change his mind on the bonuses after reading the Rolling Stone piece(8). For now, he feels that it is important to honour contracts.
[2] This is a favourite catch phrase of the LACMTA and one of the reasons they gave for “winning” Americas Best in 2007.
2009-02-27
The work of three men? Well, four if you count Shemp.
The Mole reads the papers (and other things) so you don't have to
Portfolio, in a brief article(1) discusses the possibility of constructing a maglev (magnetic levitation) train, partly financed by Disney, between Anaheim and Las Vegas. The total cost of an environmental impact report (EIR) will be $45 million or $162.910 per mile for the 268 mile route. Contrast that with the cost of the EIR for the red line extension, the so called “subway to the sea” which I reported on earlier (2009-01-31). Here, given a 12.5 mile route and a total cost of $17.2 million, the per mile cost of the EIR is $1,376,000 or eight (8) times the cost of the Las Vegas plan. Wow, someone is getting rich on this! Especially when one considers that the EIR was already done once. So the prudent man or woman would expect that the cost to refresh the existing report would be a lot less!!
The Atlantic (on-line)(2) discusses a light rail project in Charlotte, NC which is being favorably received by those who have seen it.
There is an excellent article in the January/February 2009 issue of Mother Jones. From the lengthy piece I quote a single paragraph about studential costs. “Profiteering off students is not just an obscenity; it ultimately weakens the economy. The abuses at Sallie Mae and other student lenders deserve exposure via congressional hearings. Then perhaps lawmakers will find the spine to make the rules fairer. Indenturing the brightest young minds in an information society is the equivalent of eating your seed corn in an agrarian one. In the long run, you're doomed.”
Patrick Smith writes the “Ask the pilot” column for salon.com. In a recent edition(4), speaking about airlines, but equally applicable to other forms of transportation, he says: “We fail at aesthetics, we fail at amenities, and we fail at the relatively simple task of moving people efficiently from A to B”.
The Times, never critical of one of their advertisers, the LACMTA, carries a piece(5) out of which the facts can be “teased”. Here is a quote from Richard Thorpe chief executive of construction for the bad idea which the LACMTA calls the “Expo Line”. “We’re supposed to open in another year, and until today we didn’t know what we were building.” The approval in the headline resulted from a four to one vote by the Public Utilities Commission. Commissioner Timothy Simon, who cast the lone dissenting vote, wanted a detailed safety plan from the Expo Line officials, for the route crossing at Foshay Learning Center (3751 South Harvard Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90018). There is an appeals process and su Topo can only hope that this waste of taxpayer monies will be brought to a halt and the dug up portions filled in.
Too, the state of the economy could bring this transportation plan by politicians to a screeching halt.
Your Mole has always thought that a true proof of concept would take the form of rapid buses, running on the planned route and only stopping at the points where stations are planned, and that such a proof was not only necessary, but logical to the point of irrefutability.
Although the Expo Line if far from being finished the Argonaut dreams(6) about an extra station for Santa Monica in Phase Two of this gormless plan.
The web site at: http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/transportation.html begins with “Transportation is the backbone of smart growth. The structure of the transportation network is the skeleton which supports smart growth or sprawling development. Learn about the problem, and potential solutions, below …”. I eventually linked to an article by Henry Cisneros(7), the former HUD Director, which I found interesting.
Ear to the Rail
Here is a fun video about a 460 Line bus from YouTube, along with a running commentary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFjIGRXnuF0
Which commentary demonstrates that contacting the LACMTA is NOT the way to go. Nice job, AyeCarrumba, for documenting this waste of fuel and impact on our atmosphere! N.B. This video is over a year old, BUT, su Topo has recently seen other drivers running in idle for long periods. All contrary to the LACMTA's "Rule 2-15"!
Cosmological Corner
With an estimated 100 BILLION Earth-like planets in our galaxy, we are definitely NOT alone. See this BBC report at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7891132.stm
The Mole Rides Again so that you don't have to wonder why you must wait for an hour when the schedule says otherwise
It is Sunday, 22 February and I am on a street-corner waiting for an 111 bus. The schedule (after six page downs) http://www.metro.net/riding_metro/bus_overview/images/111.pdf , shows that the bus should leave Florence and Crenshaw at 7:10 A. M.
I am positioned at my stop –which is after the Florence and Crenshaw time point— well before that time. I wait and wait. Finally, at past 8:00 AM a bus, which I suspect is the bus that leaves Florence and Crenshaw at 7:50, shows up.
As I wait I think about what an exceedingly poor job the LACMTA does in the area of scheduling. Some time ago I wrote about their “solution” to the problem, viz., hiring TEN more supervisors (2008-11-29).
Your Mole takes the position that they should work smarter, not harder. One example would be to use the data which are available on actual travel times from the expensive and under utilized on-board GPS hardware/software can provide.
A review of the literature finds that such applications have already been piloted, some as long ago as six years
Now, reading about such systems is more difficult than reading fiction by Steven King, therefore Snoble will have trouble finding anyone in his organization who can understand it, much less implement it. But not to worry, su Topo suggests just a simple statistical system to begin with. Let’s start out by taking a look at a “normal” distribution as shown here http://www.tsatkin.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/normal-distribution.jpg
The line at zero on the bottom (the x axis) is the mean (average) median (middle value) and mode (the most common value). Now let’s assume that we are gathering data about the TIME it takes to get to a given bus stop from the beginning of the route. For example using the 111 schedule, we can see that, on Sunday, after leaving Norwalk at 6:16 AM the bus is scheduled to be at Florence and Crenshaw at 7:10 A.M. or 54 minutes after leaving Norwalk. Let’s then assume that each Sunday for 10 weeks we record the time in minutes required for this bus to travel from Norwalk to F&C with the following results: 57, 59, 58, 54, 54, 66, 63, 60, 54, and 61 minutes. Sum these times for a total of 586, divide that by 10 and we have 58.6 minutes, which is the mean (average) time it take a bus to make the run from Norwalk to F&C. Immediately we see that, on average, the 111 is 4.6 minutes behind schedule when it arrives at F&C.
The 58.6 is at the zero point on the normal distribution. We will only be concerned with time on the right side of zero because a bus, as a matter of policy, can only be late or on-time. If it is early it will wait at the bus stop until it is back in sync i.e., on-time.
When we calculate the standard deviation(1) for these data (4.06065), let’s call it 4 minutes for the purpose of simplicity. Now, we will be able to provide values for the 1, 2 and 3 points on the X axis. At the 1 point we can write 62.6, at 2 we will write 66.6 and at the 3 position (unlabeled on the right half of the distribution and just to the right of the 2, 70.6. What these X axis points mean is that 84% of all trips will be completed within 4 minutes of the mean value, 62.6 minutes or less. Ninety seven percent of bus runs will arrive at F&C within 66.6 minutes or less and finally 99.8 % of bus trips would arrive at F&C within 70.6 minutes or less.
The data collection and analysis could and should be and can be automated and used to benefit the rider by providing schedules that more accurately represent real world conditions. Further these schedules could and should include something like σ = 4.0 which tells us that one standard deviation, that’s the Greek letter sigma as shown, is 4 minutes. The standard deviation tells us how the data are dispersed from the mean (average). A large number says the data points are relatively far from the mean and a small one, the 4 minutes in my hypothetical case, say that the data points are not so far from the mean. Knowing the standard deviation, we can predict that 99.8% of the time our bus will arrive within the time shown (if the time shown is an average value) plus 12 minutes (three standard deviations). For purposes of this discussion I am ignoring values to the left of the mean –mainly to avoid the problem of “early arrival”(9) which is not permitted by LACMTA policy.
The question for the LACMTA: Why is your Mole performing these calculations and not LACMTA staff?
I am at the LAX City Bus Center thinking about things that the LACMTA does right. That didn’t take long so I review the situation at the center. It seems cleaner that ususal and I soon see that there is a woman hard at work on the task, not the usual Vor with his hummingbird like approach to cleaning.
As I see a blind man attempting to navigate this poorly designed area, I come to understand that the ill conceived placement of the scheduling pylons serve as an impediment to the sighted as well. See the photo below♪
My bus is late so I turn to an analysis of why lots of stuff doesn’t work on buses: the automatic announcement on door open seems to fail 95% (a guesstimate) of the time. Then too, tail signs, the light matrix located on the rear, usually left side, of the bus seems to be complexly broken on third of the time, incorrect one third of the time and operating as designed one third of the time or, as your Mole likes to say, not yet broken.
Take a look at the picture below that is the back of a line 42 bus which is showing 115 as a tail sign.
Another bus, #6580, with a 117 head sign is showing line 216 on its’ tail sign.
The June 2009 schedule shake-up: even less service for more money. Time constrains along with insufficient knowledge about the affects of schedule changes in areas other the “Metro Westside” and “Metro South Bay” service sectors prevents me, but not you, from being critical of these changes. I will take on the two specific sectors here, first, Metro Westside. The 220 line is to die. This death started several years ago when the LACMTA ended service between the LAX City Bus Center and Culver City via Marina del Rey. This was a nice ride near the coast and could have been a money maker if the LACMTA had the slightest interest in servicing its’ public. It was supposed to be “replaced” by the Culver City Line 7, which only runs between Culver City and the Marina, BUT never on Sunday. So people who need the bus to work at Airport South, airline caterers, Fedex, and Playa del Rey South were just out of luck!
The 704 line which really “Moves Fewer Faster” will have some kind of terminal built at Sepulveda and Santa Monica BLs rather than giving us daytime service, on the 4 Line, to Santa Monica. This is a complete waste of money and should be given the silver bad idea award.
The 920 line will have "service levels adjusted". This is definitely a line that should die today. La Taupe has seen the 920s running non-stop between Santa Monica and Westwood with only a handful of passengers on board, numerous times.
The South Bay Sector: The 111 line will have a shortline shuttle on weekdays??? See what I have to say about the always late and often missing in action buses above.
The 124, 125 and 126 Lines are slated to die subject to “identification of another provider for either a segment of the line or the entire route”(8). The way I read this if they can find another bus company to run over a block or so (a segment) of the route the LACMTA can bail! This, in part at least, is the implementation of the idea that the beach cities don’t need bus service. Nothing better demonstrates the LACMTA’s poverty of ideas vis-à-vis providing neighbourhood and especially rail (Green Line) linkage.
The 439 is slowly being killed, several years ago service to the Beach Cities South area was abandoned, then much service, except for rush hours, to the Green Line Aviation Station was severed, now it looks like the line will shrink further and become mostly a Union Station to West Los Angeles Transportation Center service.
The 444 will end too! It will be “replaced” by the new 910 line which likely move a lot fewer people somewhat faster.
The 711, which offered weekend service, will have that portion excised. The line 111 is offered as an alternative – the line 111 already offers what amounts to infrequent weekend service about which I comment above. In fact, I don't believe that the two line have much in common, route wise.
Oh, they must think that the lightly loaded, expensive to run 715 Rapid service is Great, because nothing is said about it. Take it from someone who knows the system, the old 315 service was better for riders!
According to a bilingual sign on most buses, paper day passes will no longer be issued after March 15, 2009. The sign also tells us to see http://www.metro.net/ for details, of course the metro home page tells us nothing about it. Oh, it did remind us to attend meetings between February 4th and 12th, both dates long past when I checked the site on February 25th! Here is an excellent example of some of my main complaints about the LACMTA: (i) poor maintenance (they did not remove the meeting announcement) (ii) equally poor communication skills (they did not give us an exact link to the information on their web site) and (iii) the wasted money on printing nice signs with incomplete information.
La Taupe has finally got around to solving the problem of not deploying trash bags on buses. All that is needed is a bungee cord or Velcro strap around the fare box, so that the trash bags can be attached to which ever securing method the dysfunctional LACMTA chooses. If they start work today we can expect trash bags on most buses within eighteen (18) months. See the photo below and see how quickly you can find a locus and mode of attachment. What ever time you take the LACMTA will take a lot longer!!
Here is a schedule for the 626 Line (LAXCBC <-> Green Line Aviation Station): http://www.metro.net/riding_metro/bus_overview/images/626.pdf **
The schedule has a heading called, inexplicably, “Clockwise”. It is not truly a shuttle service because every other run starts from Aviation Station rather than at the LAXCBC –another mystery from the LACMTA. Which agency’s motto regarding scheduling should be: “We always think about the people who we serve, unless we can find something else to think about”. N. B. There are no schedules posted at the LAXCBC, the schedule DOES NOT LIST the bus bay for departure, either and the “shuttle”, in my experience, seems to fly through the LAXCBC at about 40MPH.
There is also a 625 “shuttle” that serves World Way West (which su Topo often calls Airport South). That route completely ignores the LAXCBC and originates at the Green Line Aviation Station. So in order to travel to World Way West, one needs to go to Aviation Station first. Someone arriving at the LAXCBC aboard say, the 715 (“Moving Fewer somewhat Faster”) would first transfer to some bus to go to the Green Line Aviation Station then ride the 625 –measurably lengthening the trip and headed relatively far away from the destination before returning to it. Three transfers in about a mile radius. What would one call such a plan? May I suggest “unsophisticated”? Although the airport is basically a 24 X 7 operation, neither of these “shuttles” offers weekend service.
Goodnight Solow, no matter which undisclosed location is your present 10-20!
** This may or may not “link”, this is yet another example of the LACMTA and their impossible to use web site being a barrier for riders. Plan B: Set your browser’s URL area to http://www.metro.net/ , then click on “Rider’s Guide”, then click on “Timetables” and select the appropriate timetable.
Fare Box Score Box
Bus numbers of buses with Out of Order Fare Boxes: 6348 2009-02-15;
Numbers of Buses Defaced by WhoIs stickers: 6348; 6346; 5184+UR;
5221; 6380+UR; 6343+UR;
UR = Ugly Residue of a former, likely whois sticker.
+UR = whois sticker and the ugly residue left after passengers partly remove the sticker.
Bibliography
(1) Samelera, Paul. “Disney’s Magnetic Attraction”. Portfolio October 2009
(2) Dellinger. Matt. “Road Worriers”. Atlantic Magazine
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200901/new-urbanists January/February 2009, accessed 2009-02-23
(3) Johnston, David Cay. “Fiscal Therapy”
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2009/01/fiscal-therapy.html January/February 2009, accessed 2009-02-23
(4) Smith, Patrick. “How to build the perfect airline terminal? Here are 15 steps in the right direction”. http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2009/02/13/askthepilot309/index.html Feb. 13, 2009. Accessed 2009-02-23
(5) Hymon, Steve. “Expo Line OKd [sic] next to schools”. The Los Angeles Times. 21 Feb 2009:B3
(6) Walker. Gary. “Santa Monica to get an additional station in Expo Phase Two”. The Argonaut. 12 Feb 2009.
(7) Cisneros, Henry. “A Fence Can’t Stop the Future”. http://www.urbanhabitat.org/node/3002 (Original Source-Newsweek) 17 Jan 2009. Accessed: 24 Feb 2009.
(8) N/A. “Proposed Changes to Metro Bus Service.” LACMTA Publication 09-1050BD. Date – N/A
(9) La Taupe will leave it to the reader to explore this subject in greater depth and offers a link to the R Language so that you can download the software, perform statistical calculations and plot graphs, like the normal distribution. See: http://www.cran.r-project.org/
I try to write an easy-on-the-eyes page using text input. Blogger.com, however, has other ideas and will often not stay with a single font type or point size. I wish I had time to debug the html which they produce, it is NOT the straight text which I pasted into the form, but I don’t. Therefore, I apologize on behalf of Blogger.com for the changes which they make, of which I do not approve, extraneous spacing and etc. Sometimes, what I see, thankfully you don’t, is 24 point type –it is giant and other times they swallow my text, although it still seems to be there. In fairness to them, things seem better although this is partly because I do understand which of their “features” do the most damage to me and consequently do not use them. Communicating these problems to them is, for me, something like having teeth extracted without the benefit of anesthetic, actually it is less fun than that. By their design, there is no simple e-mailing them with "please look at my posting of 2009-02-28, it is weird!". I am hoping that one of their developers will some day read this, copy my code and improve their text to html engine. Until then, lo siento.
Mole’s Copyright Statement
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This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, sustainable development, environmental, community and worker health, democracy, public disclosure, corporate accountability, and etc. We have included relatively brief quotes from articles and etc. rather than a simple link because we have found that links frequently go "bad" or change over time. We believe this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without fee or payment of any kind to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
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2009-01-31
Wow, that was fast, Snoble will leave the LACMTA! Was it su Topo’s nagging OR his fear of prosecution for using public funds to propagandize us in favor of Measure R or would the charge be simple malfeasance? See Progressive Railroading.com at http://www.progressiverailroading.com/news/article.asp?id=19101
I have often wondered why the BRU (Bus Riders Union) did not seize on this opportunity to pursue the issue. Likely, they were too busy licking their wounds after their last legal loss in court.
In response to the total inability of those in Snoble's administration to be able to take timely action, and as a farewell present to him and a welcome present to his successor, I lead with an edited picture♪ showing how the “America's Best” signage must be modified so as to conform with truth in advertising concepts. The unearned, IMHO, honorific “America's Best” was an award for ONE YEAR ONLY, not an award in perpetuity! But everything about the LACMTA under Snoble screamed style over substance he, undoubtedly, still has his chest puffed out three years after the presentation of the title and more than one year after its' expiration.
Just below, I show a rapid bus which, with the help of Gnu's Gimp2, I have modified to show, and this is based on counting the passengers on these sparsely populated vehicles, exactly what the slogan for this malformed transportation concept should be, i.e., “Moving Fewer Faster” –-more expensively too.
Anyone who doubts my accuracy, should simply check the load factors and estimate the losses incurred by a 920 Line bus with only six (6) passengers moving between Westwood and Santa Monica in either direction, or a 720 bus off peak-hours or a 715 bus between Inglewood and the LAXCBC (LAX City Bus Center) at almost anytime.
In spite Snoble being praised by politicians after announcing his retirement, su Topo has another idea of how to commemorate his time in office. That is, to erect a memorial to him, a fountain which incorporates a cameo is what I feel is appropriate.
Executed by a sculptor who has a Picassoesque style and sited at the present downtown terminus of the 33 line, you know, 6th and Main Streets, the cameo would be face up in a basin that drains to the sewer system, that way rain and other liquids, e.g., coffee and etc., would have egress. All in all, this could prove to be a functional addition to the area.
Although this photo to which I link (below) shows a basin three times as high and four~five times the diameter of what your Mole envisions, it will give you an idea of the approximate scale. The cameo would be positioned face up at the bottom of the basin. See: http://photos.igougo.com/images/p83078-Naples-The_basin.jpg
The link which follows will display, in the lower right of the image, what I believe is a fitting style for the cameo: http://claybuttons.com/ButtonPages/FF.html
The plaque affixed to the basin should read:
"LACMTA Head - Roger Snoble 2001~2007
We have this man to thank for the current condition of mass transit in Los Angeles County.
He did the work of three men: Larry, Moe and Curley!"
I suggest that specifications be prepared and that a bidding process begun which will yield an outcome which is almost never possible for the LACMTA, viz., something which can be characterized as both functional and economical.
Now, when will the other shoe drop, the one called Solow?
The Mole reads the papers (and other things) so you don't have to
In contemplating group-think, which is prevalent at the LACMTA, Consider A&P Supermarkets which, at one time, was America's largest operator(1) [link in bibliography]. Today the much reduced organization has just 444 stores. Contrast it with Kroger which has 2477 stores. A&P is currently just under 18% of Kroger's size. Details at
http://www.aptea.com/stores.asp
Here is another analysis of how Zell convinced the Times employees to finance his takeover of the paper, before he fired them, that is(2).
Which paper is now, like the LACMTA charging us more and giving us less. Just one example and it is brief(3). Another $17.2 million is to be spent in “planning” for the subway to the sea. This time it will be collected by an engineering firm for an environmental impact report. Your Mole wonders why the original EIR could not simply be used as is or updated for a LOT LESS MONEY. Your Mole also wonders where Snoble will work post-LACMTA? The piece also says: “Officials doubt that that ground will be broken before 2013”. Talk about paralysis by analysis!
On page B5(ibidem) we find a paid Metro advertisement. Part of the ad announces a “Public Hearing On Bus Service” take place on February 11 [it is a Wednesday] at 5P.M. In Beverly Hills. If you want to find other locations and times, “Check http://www.metro.net/”.
This is in keeping with a long standing, if unwritten, LACMTA policy to schedule these hearing at times and venues that are inaccessible to the typical public transit user. BRU, wake up!
Note that check meto.net really means that one must navigate that mess to find the proper page. N.B. There was lots of space to provide details of ALL the meetings, accessible or not. The length of the ad was 27cm5mm (I know, I know) of which 3cm was white space at the end and 6cm was wasted at the top for a picture of a smiling woman holding a TAP (Transit Access Pass) [sic] pass , no doubt, happy to be paid several hundred full fares for posing. So 9/26.5, which is –percentage wise, one third of the space as calculated by scilab 5(4), was actually available had they foregone picture and used the white space to inform us. Anyway, here is the complete list complements of su Topo:
4 Feb. [Wed] 18:30 6262 Van Nuys BL, Van Nuys
9 Feb. [Mon] 18:00 3449 Santa Anita AV 3rd FL, El Monde
9 Feb. [Mon] 18:00 801 Carson St., Carson
11 Feb. [Wed] 17:00 325 S La Cienaga BL, Beverly Hills
11 Feb. [Wed] 17:30 9240 Firestone BL, Downey
I estimate that the five lines above would easily fit in about 1cm, i.e., one third of the white space which they wasted.
Lots of things appeared but NOT the February 2009 series of meetings. I added 2009 to my query which became “Public Meeting 2009” (without quotes). The first ten (10) returns did not contain anything relevant. I can see that they were aiming for the riders who had a surfeit of patience, this requirement was beginning to exclude me. Remember, all they had to do (if they really wanted attendees) was to publish the full path to the list! Finally, I added February to the search argument, which now read “Public Meeting 2009 February“ and viola, I found the link: http://www.metro.net/riding_metro/special_services/proposed_changes.htm With the LACMTA, expect little, you will never be disappointed!
I want to make a suggestion to the LACMTA. As the cigar makers had someone read to them, the agency should hire someone who can read to read about transportation during coffee breaks and lunch. The the staff could learn things like: “Bus services, ... were made slower and more unattractive by traffic congestion, and this pushed an even greater number of people into using their cars.”(5)
Ear to the Rail
Louis Braille's birthday: In the first link below, we can read about M. Braille's school, the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris which was the world's first school for the blind(1). Then, please, read about the difficulty of becoming literate, in Braille, as explained by a former member of the British government(2). Then, take a look at the Braille alphabet at (3)
(1) http://www.afb.org/braillebug/louis_braille_bio.asp
(2) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/magazine/7807217.stm
(3) http://www.afb.org/braillebug/braille_print.asp
La Taupe does have political opinions, which he won't detail here. However he will recommend that you read the following Glen Greenwald opinion pieces at salon.com, and then form your own opinion about our country's role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It seems many in the U.S. have their opinions ignored.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/30/democracy/
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/02/israel/index.html
There are times when one must focus on the really important things in life. One writer, at Salon.com, knows this. http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/12/20/pie_love/
However, try as we might, we cannot escape the realities imposed by the state of our economy. Listen to Now's “Credit and Credibility” report at http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/446/index.html
Also, Marketplace simplifies CDOs ( Colateralized Debt Obligations) at http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/10/03/cdo/
Cosmological Corner
Here is an artist’s depiction of our home galaxy. One can interpret “Sun” to mean you are here.
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/files/imagecache/news/files/news/20090106_milkyway.jpg
And here: http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2455/milky-way-spins-faster-has-more-mass-thought is a piece that tells why we are bigger and maybe better than our neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, shown here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080124.html Which galaxy is quoted as being 200,000 light years in diameter, as opposed to the Milky Way which was previously thought to be half the size (100,000 LY in diameter) of Andromeda.
The page, (link below), has more information, but make no mistake we are still number 2 to Andromeda, although dimensions are not clearly stated. So, my guess is that we are, based upon the 50% more mass point, now 150,000 LY in diameter.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39709/title/This_just_in_Milky_Way_as_massive_as_3_trillion_suns
However, the BBC says “roughly the same size as Andromeda …”. Please read: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7813635.stm
Captured here in a YouTube video, is the kind of Metro driver which we see all too often these days. This driver is someone that shouldn’t be in the service industry because of his aggressive personality some of his actions are not documented only reffered to in the video. The passenger has plenty of nerve,confronting an angry driver and filming the whole thing.
Oh, and on the left side panel, under the TransitTV screen, one can see one of the infamous “whois” bumper stickers, one which is pretty well defaced. This video is NOT for CHILDREN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuypO_ZcRoM
The Mole Rides Again so that you don't have to wonder if the last voice you hear will be that of your seatbeltless bus driver as he is ejected through the windshield
Montreal is a city with great transportation: Société de transport de Montréal (So-sea-a-tay) Click www.stm.info/ Click Entrez, then, if you wish, select English on the top right of the page. Please consider taking a look at the system map, it may take a few minutes “fetch” time, but interesting, you can see a larger view by clicking on the Adobe pdf viewer’s (su Topo uses Adobe Reader 9) plus (+) sign. Too, LACMTA staff who are able to read, take special note of this, click on the “Metro Map” to see how it is properly done. Montreal’s population is 1,583,590 about 41% of the population of the City of Los Angeles –3,849,378. Bigger doesn’t mean better, does it?
The “System Map” is interactive , e.g., click on a Centre-ville (downtown) staion such as Sherbrooke, provides a wealth of information which tourists AND residents need to navigate any city.
For an overview of the city, see: http://wiki.worldflicks.org/montreal.html and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q3OUftxNHA
Then see Habitat for Humanity at http://wiki.worldflicks.org/habitat_67.html , architecture which matches my affinity for René Descartes,
http://www.groups.dcs.stand.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Descartes.html
Descartes is well known for:
“Cogito Ergo Sum”. [I think, therefore I am.]
Discours de la Méthode (1637)
Then let’s ride the Metro (which to much of the world means subway). Note the better Transit TV and the bus reference mentioned, for a smoother trip. Also, the stations have brighter lights. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzENIIB4rSU
It is just past one PM, two women wait nearby me at the LAX CBC (City Bus Center). They are mixed in among men who sell bus tokens for a dollar and sometimes transfers –also a dollar. They each have laminated pages in looseleaf binders and are discussing their day's earnings. I as I learn more I substitute “take”for “earnings”. It seems the laminated sheets document a “Save the Children” appeal. One talks about a good day in which she received more than $400! They work the airport areas where all have access. We ride the same bus and when a passenger needs change for $10, they jump at the chance to reduce some of the $1 bills. Your Mole recommends that you organize your contributions by sending, even a small, check to recognized charities. When people handle money without supervision there will be. ah..., loses.
2009-01-22: I am aboard bus number 5168 being driven by operator 25019. He is NOT wearing his seatbelt and has the steering wheel cocked at, what to me is a strange, angle. That is, one that offers little mechanical advantage. He talks on his cell phone: “I just wanted to hear your voice”. Then, he takes both hands off the wheel in order to rummage though his lunch box.
I envision him flying through the windshield, followed by a number of passengers, still fumbling for his lunch.
Mixed signals. Why would there be benches, shown above♪, at the place where there is no longer a bus stop? Duh, they only told us to take down the sign. The benches signal that there is a "reason" for
them to be there, such as, sitting down to wait for buses which stopped at this location for years.
Pictured below is the “new” Mariposa Green Line Station line 232 bus stop. It is quite a distance from the old one which was located on the corner of Mariposa and Nash in El Segundo. Starting from the old location, Lance Armstrong might be able to bike to the new stop quickly enough to catch a bus, but few of us on foot could do it. Note that in the picture a bus is at the stop.
Fare Box Score Box
Bus numbers of buses with Out of Order Fare Boxes:
Numbers of Buses Defaced by WhoIs stickers: 9287; 6327; 6386; 5170; 9544; 6356; 5170; 1294: 9280UR;
UR = Ugly Residue of a former, likely whois sticker.
+UR = whois sticker and the ugly residue left after passengers? partly remove the sticker.
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♪Clicking a photo will often, well, … sometimes, present you with an enlargement.
Bibliography
(1) Gonzales, Laurence. “Mob Mentality”. National Geographic Adventure. Oct. 2008:p28
(3) Hymon, Steve. “California Briefing”. Los Angeles Times 23 Jan. 2009:B2
(4) The open source platform for numerical computation - scilab http://www.scilab.org/
(5) Inwood. Stephen. A History of London. MacMillan, 1998.
2008-12-22
“When I use a word, [like best] it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less”. Red Queen(1)
The Mole reads the papers (and other things) so you don't have to
An on-line piece in Slate(2) raises some interesting questions regarding the “greenness” of using public transportation. I commend this work to anyone at the LACMTA who can read! They might reconsider their shibboleth which I consider to be “Moving fewer people faster”.
The Japanese are VERY energy conscious, in this case using people power to generate electricity to power equipment. Read all about it at inhabit.com (3). Having lived in Japan Like us, they import oil too! Unlike us, I can attest that Japan is always on the lookout for energy saving techniques. LACMTA add this to your “we will read someday” list.
Yes, su Topo is an eclectic reader. http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/ :sent him to The Columbia Journalism Review http://www.cjr.org/ which directed him to an MIT site; http://senseable.mit.edu/realtimerome/ and, in parallel, sort of, to; http://senseable.mit.edu/ which described the raison d'être of the project and provided a number of examples. It is always interesting to investigate new ways of communicating, presenting data graphically and etc. It was lots of fun, too bad I have to work :-). N.B. “RealTime Rome” shows people, buses and taxis as a flow. Hmmm, a progressive transportation organisation could use those ideas, the LACMTA? I don’t think so. LACMTA add this to your list, too.
The Los Angeles Times covers one form of litter(5), which taken together with the other forms of detritus, blankets our city. The reporter tackles the problem of cigarette butts. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Works estimates that 600,000 butts are littered monthly. I challenge that figure as being too low. It only represents 30,000 packs per month. In any event the transportation related issue is not only litter caused when bus drivers and passengers carelessly dispose of their cigarette butts –but also the affect on people of the ETS (Environmental Tobacco Smoke) emanating from these very same smokers and the few others who opt for proper disposal.
A piece which I think of as weak, in the Times(6), belies the headline in that is seems to document another Times reporter’s preference for one food market, which was mentioned several times, rather than one which was unmentioned in the article, but has been given lots of negative ink by Zell's sheet. Here is su Topo's brief summary, but please, read the article for yourself and arrive at your own conclusion. The gist of the article seems to be a lament for the status quo in East L.A. and a distaste for increased property values which often accompany better transportation.
The Times presents more detail about the Chatsworth crash(7). Especially noteworthy is the excellent graphic by Matt Moody on page A18 which also can be seen in both static and animated form on the web: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/traffic/la-me-metrolink3-2008dec03-f,0,1182051.flash . In either mode, one can clearly see that not one, but three lights were run. This picture or at least early version of it should have been available soon after the crash. But the Times had an overly simplistic view of rail operations, as I did, at least until I interviewed some experienced railroad people.
Solow: the long goodbye
The Los Angeles Times covers(8) Solow, the Metrolink CEO who for a long time operated under the radar. Earning $220,000 annually along with undisclosed perks, the quotes in the article paint a picture of a less-than-effective executive. “I think he did an abysmal job the weekend of the incident [the Chatsworth crash].” The piece also contains this “But in the last five years, he had to deal with two major accidents before the Chatsworth crash, although neither was the fault of Metrolink.” I take exception with that statement, since had Metrolink taken appropriate action to improve safety, then the Chatsworth crash might never had happened. Instead, apparently, Metrolink executives lead by Solow sat on their, well, ... hands. The piece also says: “His biggest fault, they [people who knew SoLow] said, is that he failed to communicate well.” I’d say that turned out to be a fatal flaw!
In what I call a case of the inept praising the incompetent, he is defended by Snoble, who says of Solow: “He is one of the industry’s top professionals.” Snoble is also the guy who thinks that the LACMTA is now and will forever be "America's Best". When we are at last rid of both these guys, who share a commom initial letter in their surnames , we will all be better off! Let me think --what other words begin with that letter?
At a meeting with Los Angeles Times reporter(s) Solow apparently eschewed an opportunity to express condolences to families of the victims of the Chatsworth crash or to make the kind of statement which any other human being would. Here are his opening remarks as quoted in the Times. ‘Solow gruffly began the session, “Got the ground rules? I’m not going to talk about the incident or any actions after.”’ What a sweetheart, huh?
The Times continues with another article(9) sub-headed: Decades-old decisions by Metrolink gambled on passenger safety, according to experts and documents.” These decisions were obviously bought-into and perpetuated by Solow and ultimately lead to passenger deaths. The reporter delivers a, rare for the recent Times, hard-hitting factual article, and your Mole believes that exposé is the correct descriptive noun for it. The reporter, Tim Rohrlich teams with a superb graphic artist, Raoul Rañoa, to show on page A22, the progression, old to new, of active train controls available today. If you haven’t read the article please do so. If any of Solow’s superiors can and do read this indictment Mr. Solow will be a job hunter in early 2009 or before.
If this piece is not enough to send Solow into retirement, then the one which follows(10) and has “Experts’ report targets all levels of Metrolink operations.” I am happy to see that the Zell’s Times has finally decided to do some real original reporting, as opposed to the cheaper (I know, I do it) blogging.
A Daily News piece(11) imbeds this “Damien Goodman, coordinator of the Citizens Campaign to Fix the Expo Rail, said Metrolink has 433 grade crossings along 631 miles of track. That compares with 161 grade crossings on more than 800 miles of track on the Metro-North Railroad in New York City, one of the nation's largest commuter-rail systems.” This work out to a grade crossing about every mile and a half for Metrolink and one grade crossing every five miles in New York. Based upon these values, for every five miles traveled on Metrolink one faces a risk exposure of slightly more than 3:1 when compared to travel on the New York system. In truth, based upon the present Metrolink “management” and their policies the risk exposure is greater than the “slightly more than 3:1” stated above.
Now, if only the papers would profile Snoble’s tenure with the LACMTA he would soon be on his way as well.
Ear to the Rail
After my trip to HomeGirl café, I became more attentive to materials available about Fr. Boyle so, please, check out the links below.
You can hear one discussion which is available at the Los Angeles Public Library “Aloud” podcast series <http://events.lapl.org/podcasts/Index.aspx> .
Things French on the Net
Youtube video by a maker of ATC (Automatic Train Control) which is engineered into France’s TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse ) i.e., high speed train, the Eurostar, among others.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9Ox0X3V_Nc
In terms of rail transport, France is light years ahead of the U.S. --ahead of Japan too in terms of really high speed.
If you are a Francophone, keep up with the world’s economic news usually moderated by Ms Stéphanie Antoine. Here is a sample broadcast: http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=0GRDKoGw9ic . You can find the regular weekday broadcast, en Français at: www.france24.com/fr/ Select “DERNIER JOURNAL ECONOMIE”. There is also an English version but, sadly, without Ms Antoine, at www.france24.com/en/ Select “Latest business bulletin”.
You can hear Madeleine Peyroux sing Josephine Baker’s J’ai Deux amours (I have two loves) at http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=ciGz2zgR3nE This is a great song by a wonderful singer, which is presented here in a karaoke (carah ok, not carry okie) format. So sing along, if you can.
Cosmological corner
In a nice, short, colorful paper some interesting ideas are discussed. For example, a folded brane universe, whose light we cannot see, but whose gravity makes it through to us, exists a very short distance away.
See: http://randall.physics.harvard.edu/RandallCV/Nature.pdf
I wanted to travel along Venice Bl to Wade ST in Culver City. I know that the 33/333 both pass the intersection but I didn’t know if either stopped at Wade or what the neatest stop would be. So I used what they call the “Trip Planner” and I call the “Trip Spoiler”. So I entered the intersection information, along with a reasonable time of arrival and saw the confirmation screen (vide supra). When I clicked continue, I saw a WSOD (White Screen of Death) and nothing happened. What could be simpler? This was a trip from one point to another, both on Venice BL, yet it failed. This is typical behaviour from the Trip Spoiler. Note that although rules of software design ask that ALL data be presented for confirmation, yet they don’t display the timing information. You are not surprised, are you? Well, I may as well fix this for them: (1) show everything that was input on this page, assign each query a number which represents canonical order, then (2) allow for reports which reference that number to be submitted. (3) add some sort of progress indicator to be shown and definitely (4) add some bugging code. My guess that they contract out much work to India, so don't expect an overnight fix.
Click above for a larger view.
As I walk South on the East side of Wade ST. I see imprints in the concrete which capture Los Angeles history. In letters about 3 inches high is says “Griffith Company 1931”. Underneath that, in about one inch high letters is inscribed: “R J Walker Inspector”. My estimate is that Mr. Walker would be on one side or another of 100, by now. He did a great job because several of these artifacts with his indicia remain.
A woman with a voice which could cut ship plates delivers an outside voice that causes blood from my ears to trickle down my neck. She is accompanied by foreground provided by the loud TransitTV. The ASA (Automatic Stop Announcement is loud, too. No reading on this trip! The driver, no doubt to the disappointment of passengers waiting a their usual stops, thinks the 439 line is still on construction detour and avoids Sepulveda in favour of a run south on 96th ST and a turn north on Jenny followed by a turn west onto Westchester Parkway, etc.. If the LACMTA really was any good at all as an integrator of technology, they would have integrating the routing into their GPS scheme J along with an off-route alarm. This bus is poorly maintained too, the front scroll is in operation but the other one, at about mid-bus flickers uselessly. Another “bottom of the class” rating for Metro.
I am aboard a 232 line bus #11017, southbound at about 9:20 on 2008-12-11. The operator, number 72543, is busy texting. Another southbound 232 line ride, on 2008-12-14 at 11:10, bus number 11018 – again the operator is texting, I don’t know if it is the same one as above, because today’s driver is wearing a non-uniform jacket which conceals her ID patch. Didn’t they learn anything from the Chatsworth MetroLink crash?
Mixed signals from our beloved LACMTA. I am at the south-west corner of Nash and Mariposa, just steps away from the Green Line station escalator. The 232 line–you know, the one that travels further than it should to get where it is going– bus stop on this corner has been “abandoned”, moved to a less convenient location away from the escalator and the ticket machines and away from the stairway to the platform and well away from the escalator. The LACMTA will say that they renationalized the stop which now shares a site which was in use, for quite a while, by the Torrance Transit #8 and the Metro 626 shuttle.
But, as a further validation of your Mole’s Metro Theorem, viz., “The LACMTA absolutely cannot do it right the first time”, they left the bus benches positioned in situ. People who don’t know the bus stop has been moved, those who don’t notice that there is no longer a Metro “flag” there, or those who missed the short life span (about a week) of the “Stop Abandoned” notice, now stand helplessly as the bus zips by and unless they can run a 3 minute mile, are unable to run to the new bus stop after they figure it out.
Onboard a 33 bus, number 3008, Friday, 2008-12-05 at about 13:00. The bus is quiet with few passengers and I am slightly inattentive, enjoying a respite from the usual cacophony experienced on a Metro bus. Suddenly, the driver announces to all on board which are several, “End of line, everybody out”.
We are not at Main and Sunset the planned and expected end of line, where we can transfer to a bus which continues on to Santa Monica which is the destination of most riders, but he has executed a left turn from Main onto Rose and stops in front of the Long’s Drugs store. This means he has forced us to make two street crossings and has caused us to miss the 333 which is just stopping on the south-east corner of the intersection and will pull away as we cross Rose. Bus drivers will refuse to pick us up if they deem that we are not positioned properly at a bus stop, but seem to feel free to dump us off anywhere they think appropriate. I would report this driver's I.D. here, but he was wearing a dark blue, non-regulation shirt, anyway, one without an ID patch.
This scheduling of buses to terminate at Main/Sunset intersection is irrational. As I have stated above, it is the destination for almost no one. It is convenient for Metro because that location is very near their operational area parking lot.
If you jump on a 33 bus downtown at Spring and 7th Streets, and want to go to Santa Monica it will cost you and additional fare one way or another. Irrational, yes, but even more irrational is ending the 33 Line at 6th and Main downtown. The Google map here: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=map:+6th+and+Main,++Los+Angeles,+CA&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=28.058077,56.601563&ie=UTF8&t=h&g=6th+and+Main,+Los+Angeles,+CA&ll=34.049566,-118.249927&spn=0.014294,0.027637&z=15&iwloc=addr
will show you the situation on the ground the way it is today.
Let’s envision how the downtown terminus of Line 33 route should be reworked. First, if you work for the LACMTA, try to think that you are not a Metro employee, this will prevent you from experiencing the “brain freeze” which seems to afflict them. Then, think like a passenger, someone that has a destination –one that is unlikely to be 6th and Main Streets and who is really, really unhappy about being dumped into any area rife with panhandlers and unpleasant odors, too. And then be faced with a long walk or having to pay an additional fare to get to your destination. Finally, and this may be difficult for some while impossible for Snoble and staff, picture the number 33 bus line as part of a transportation system and try to fit it in.
Eureka! The Line 33 bus should end its’ run at 7th Street Metro Center which is clearly shown on the map Just follow Main just one block southwest to 7th Street, then follow 7th Street eight blocks northwest to the Red Line Station at 7th Street Metro Center. After all, isn’t that why it’s called Metro Center, because it’s supposed to be in the center of things? Also, there are lots of buses, Metro, Dash and Muni lines, all within a few blocks radius centered on "Metro Center".