2006-07-08
The Mole reads the papers (and other things) so you don't have to
A Daily News piece(1) is indicative of the fact that the paper has no spell checker (“tripping” had only two ps not 3). However, if true - “Remember: your Metrolink ticket is the only ticket you will need on any bus or metro train in Los Angeles. The Red Line is free for Metrolink ticket holders.”(1) - a Metrolink ticket will allow one to travel all over Los Angeles.
The Times has a brief piece(2) on a proposed Green Line extension to LAX. It appears that “The head of the [City Airports] agency said last week that she opposed the extension.(2) She is unnamed in the article but, based upon my web search,
The papers, which seems to have stopped all serious coverage of the LACMTA, that is, assuming that you considered their prior coverage serious, do not supply me with a whole lot of raw material these days. So I will devote a little of this space to a big shout out to someone, who backlinks my Blog. “Rip Track”, who covers the broader area of transportation with lots of detail, both technical and financial. Give him a read, please.
The Mole Rides Again - so that you will know which bus stops to avoid
The covered bus stop on the north east corner of Arbor Vitae and Aviation is inhabited by a homeless man. The stop, like him, is filthy, the area is littered with his garbage. He often lies down on the bench denying its use to others who wait for the bus. The stop needs a good scrubbing and students who attend the school nearby should not have to share a bus stop with such a person.
The same is true of the stop on Airport Bl just east of 96th Street. There is less litter in that area but the man who lives there, apparently, urinates in bottles and then leaves them standing near the bus stop bench. Although there is space to do so, no sane person would attempt to wait in that covered bus stop.
Global Warming and Air Pollution
At some Layover points, signs direct Metro bus driver to shut off their engines. Not so at the LAX City Bus Center. On the day (Sunday, 9 July 2006 at 10:05AM) of my limited survey, two of the three buses whose drivers were on breaks of fifteen minutes or more, left there buses idling with air conditioners on. The buses were Route 117, Bus Number 6572; Route 232, Bus Number 11031. Only Bus Number 6496 was stopped and since it was it did not display its route number.
Vanity Fair(3) says “4.5 trillion cigarette butts are littered worldwide each year”. Many of these are tossed by Metro riders who seem to have as the idea that, “The world is my garbage can”, as a philosophy. Now, both of the above actions contribute to both air pollution, global warming and in the case of cigarette butts, ground pollution and likely water pollution.
Any steps which can be taken to reduce these forms of pollution, and most definitely the root cause of cigarette butt litter, smoking, will result in delaying the point at which our earth becomes uninhabitable.
One series of actions which the highly paid head of LACMTA (Snoble) could take is to ensure that idling is kept to an absolute minimum, then, he should undertake a route by route analysis of the bus system to ensure that ridiculous time, money, fuel and tire wasting loops such as the one around the Mariposa Green Line Station, which the Line 232 (Long Beach <-> LAX City Bus Center) bus takes are eliminated.
(1) Sholley, Diana “All aboard for day-trippping [sic] Get a glow going with a stop at the Museum of Neon Art” 26 May 2006 Daily News:
(2) Times Staff and Wire Reports "Councilmen Seek Rail Line Extension to LAX” Los Angeles Times 6 July 2006:
(3) staff, “Fifty Ways to Help Save the Planet” Vanity Fair (booklet) Attached to May 2006 issue and web.
