2009-07-31
“[It is] … any type of mass transit which has its’ own right of way and does not compete for space with other vehicles; the most familiar examples are elevated and subterranean railways”.(1) By that definition, only the Red Line, Green Line, along with parts of the Gold Line and parts of the Blue Line qualify to be called rapid transit. Definitely, the ill-conceived Expo Line does NOT qualify as rapid transit although it may be “rancid transit”.
Which Blare Project♪?
Why the one where the P.A. system at Mariposa Station on the Green Line blares out “important information”. The last time I checked it could be clearly heard at a distance of over two blocks. And definitely heard in the alfresco dining area on the patio of the Hilton Garden Inn (HGI), pictured above, which is only an easy tennis ball toss away from the platform.
The “important information” consists of announcements like “do not stand or sit [they left out sleep] on the edge of the platform”. It must be nice to stay in an hotel such as the HGI, pay over $100 per night and have to listen to such announcements from 5AM until midnight. This, from an organization which fails to clearly mark the 750 volt third rails in subway stations with readable “Danger/Peligro” signs.
It is a wonder that the HGI has not filed a cease and desist order against the LACMTA.
Birds of a feather♪.
Month three (3) without any action by the LACMTA directed to: (i) providing a burial for the poor creatures depicted above and (ii) preventing further unnecessary deaths.
Maintenance? Maintenance?? I’m not sure but I think that I’ve heard that word before♪.
Things in the photo above may be dirtier than they appear♪. This is typical of ALL sites and vehicles of the LACMTA.
Just like the LACMTA, not via the best route♪.
Su Topo has commented on the cost INEFFECTIVENESS of the “TAP” system. By that he means that the monetary return is not in proper proportion to the expenditure. This could be the case for any organization, but when the LACMTA gets its’ hands on a marginal project, said project quickly turns into a disaster. The picture above illustrates the lack of a thoughtful approach in siting the required TAP pedestal readers. In the photo above it is located bottom center, just to the right of the orange and white cone. Riders are expected to tap the TAP pass on a pedestal as a sort of system “login”.
Viewers of “Law & Order” know that the bad guys are often given away by their toll passes which prove that their vehicle was at a given place at a given time. The TAP system could offer something along those lines: person X entered the Wilshire-Western Station at 7:09 AM and exited the 7th Metro Center Station 20 minutes later. The operative word here is “could”, whether they will actually have such a fine grained level of detail is questionable.
Anyway, the point of this discussion is to show how, instead of placing the pedestal in the direct flow of traffic, they have located it near the ticket vending machines. The pedestal should be placed on the lower level of the station between the stairway and escalator. That is in line with the most direct route to the platform. The LACMTA’s placement calls for people to alter their route in order to TAP in.
As a systems professional, in today’s technical environment, la Taupe would have implemented an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) system that offers pass readers that would read passes at a distance, i.e., no physical tap required. One example, tested in Paris in 2005, provides for RFID equipped cell phones to be used to pay fares on the RATP (Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens). See also: http://ftp.jrc.es/EURdoc/eur22770en.pdf - clicking this link will download a pdf file for your review. Or perhaps even better yet, is to do what Long Beach Transit does, print out single and FIVE day passes from the fare box. This is in reality, the most economical thing to do and is what the LACMTA should have done. TAP is partly an answer to the problems, for one, the illegal sale of day passes, by Metro employees and possible accomplices, which problems Long Beach Transit has obviated the necessity of solving by using existing equipment to sell the passes AND implement both control measures and accounting procedures. For more information on LBT see: http://www.lbtransit.com/
Further proof that traffic flow is of no concern to the LACMTA♪.
Note the placement of the signage in the photo (republished) above. The “footprint” is much larger than is necessary because the LACMTA has an imperfect understanding of traffic impediments. One can see the same problem illustrated in the lead photo of this posting, in which the 715 signage follows the poor pattern established by the BCT 109 signage, above.
Santa Monica Mirror documents the fact that Big Blue Bus is not without its’ share of dishonest employees(2). These employees were allegedly involved in thefts related to EZ passes.
Unfortunately, although the $3 billion money waster which we call the LACMTA screams to be covered by a team of beat reporters, the Los Angeles Times can only come up with their former media columnist to write an op-ed piece(3). Which piece, to this reader, is short on facts AND recommendations. A beat reporter would find out when the first rail cars were delivered three (3) tons overweight, exactly why Snoble did not act!
In what should win a fiction award, the LACMTA [Marketing Department?] publishes “Announcing Metro Service Enhancements(4)”. How they can see shortening, canceling and otherwise reducing service, in keeping with one of their mottoes “Less [transportation] for More [money]”, as “Enhancements” is bewildering to me.
The line 109 does serve Plaza El Segundo, but it does so in a very round-about manner. Su Topo knows about several years of effort by interested parties, to have the line 232 stop at the Plaza. Apparently for naught, because the 232 north bound trip still wastes time, money, fuel and tire rubber making a useless loop of Mariosa Station that is a vestige of the time when Nash Street flowed one-way, south.
Your Mole could come up with a less direct, more inefficient route but, he couldn't do it quickly as the LACMTA already has a pretty bad one. Gardena Municipal Bus Lines is also serving the El Segundo area with their Line 5 on weekdays. Unfortunately, as with many of the attempts of the various transportation agencies to communicate, the Line 5 buses do not serve what could be a mini Transportation Center located within the boundaries of Plaza El Segundo. That would be too easy, right? This service seems to be another well kept secret. For more information on GMBL see: http://www.ci.gardena.ca.us/government/Transportation/default.asp
Slate magazine, online, covers the problems created when you try to do more than one thing at once(6). Slate says, “Even with hands-free use, phones suck your brain out of the physical world, fatally distracting you from the road. Second, the effect is as bad as driving drunk. Hands-free phone use can impair driving skills more than intoxication does."
Su Topo is VERY interested in not becoming an accident victim/traffic statistic due to some bus/train driver’s fascination with text messaging and/or a cell conversation. The piece also links to Myron Levin's articles in Mother Jones and the Los Angeles Times. The New York Times also made available documentation regarding this problem that was finally forced out the hands of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration by FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) requests. Mr. Leahy, if you had a technical [read Industrial Engineering] department, they would quickly implement a solution to this all-to-frequent non-business use of cell phones by drivers, about which your Mole so frequently reports. Oh, and lots more of the items upon which la Taupe comments.
Ear to the Rail
KXLU (88.9 FM, www.kxlu.com) is nothing if not eclectic! On a Saturday evening one can hear the “Toe Tappin' Music” of Cowboy Nick. The night when I listened he played a cut from the Blues Brothers movie: “What kind of music do you usually have here?”, “Why we have both kinds –country and western”. Nick plays both kinds and even played a compendium of early Freddie Fender (Baldemar Huerta). KXLU is the home of the world famous “Alma del Barrio” and Cowboy Nick is worth a listen to see if you like his style and music.
Cosmological Corner
In thinking about time, your Mole found it interesting to read a Discover Magazine article(5), that although not recent, it gives one some tools to think about time in a different manner than as one usually does, i.e., sequentially.
The Mole Rides Again, so that you needn’t carry cotton balls soaked in after shave for your nostrils in order to block unpleasant odours
2009-07-03: A family of four was speaking in their native language which I thought might be Swedish but turned out to be Dutch.
2009-07-07: The 439 Line ride to the West Los Angeles Transportation Center was quiet this morning. I transferred to the 780 which was OK, until a woman with, how does one phrase this delicately, er..., B.O. takes the seat directly in front of me. I move to the rear of the bus but am check-mated when an obviously homeless man whose odour almost brings me to my knees and sends me far forward. I would like to read but, the man seated across from me is slapping his legs turning them into his version of a musical instrument.
2009-07-10: At about 11:50AM, I ride a 115 Line bus, #6366, driven by Operator 3176 who makes LOTS of cell phone calls.
Your Mole assists two beautiful Ukrainian ladies find the walk of fame in Hollywood. Something that is simply impossible for a visitor to do with just the information provided in the LAXCBC (LAX City Bus Center) kiosks. But considering that the information is provided by people who NEVER ride our transportation “system” it could be worse, couldn’t it?
I am near Burbank airport at a 94 Line stop. Several 794 buses, surprisingly they are lightly loaded, pass me by.
I see the same thing with LOTS of 632 line buses, this is the line which provides temporary service to the Gold Line Extension, which depart Patsauras Transit Plaza, EMPTY! This is sort of an indication of future passenger traffic on the Gold Line Extension.
Su Topo directs an Australian visitor to downtown Los Angeles recommending the faster, direct, if fractionally more expensive, 439 Line.
2009-07-13: The Culver City number 6 Line. Another never-ending cell phone conversation of the most pedestrian sort, is in process. “When I saw …, hahaha …., Who is what? Oh, … oh, Erin, don’t he still live … It was his childhood home.. we were all 12~13…”.
In juxtaposition
We are all waiting for our buses on the corner of Sepulveda and Santa Monica. La Taupe is waiting for the 704 which Mr. Leahy’s organization promises, by way of a sign at the bus stop, will show up every 14 minutes during this time period. A woman reads, a man has a red shirt and a red bandanna wrapped around his left wrist, a black woman with a blue scarf tosses her used tissue into the nearby bushes, an old man stands in the shade of a light pole, another man smokes and talks to himself, the number of people waiting fluctuates as people board the frequent Big Blue Buses and leave others, like your note-taking Mole, waiting. One woman asks, rhetorically it turns out, “Do the Blue Bus stop here?” then answers –“Yes it do”. Another cell phone user “Hey, where are ya?” more noise pollution on the streets of Los Angeles. Which starts a train of thought even our city name in English is really a misnomer or at least, a bad translation. It was/is El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula. The emphasis should be on the “Nuestra Señora” [who is] “la Reina de los Angeles”. It is all about religion, about Mary, the mother of Jesus. Perhaps, “The city of our lady the queen of the angels” or in maintaining the Spanish, “Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles”. But as the saying goes: “it is what it is”.
I know a lovely young lady named “Socorro”. Her name alone says so much about her family’s religiosity. It is derived from “Nuestra Señora del Perpetuo Socorro” [Our lady of perpetual succor], this is another variation on “Mary”.
I am waiting for a 704 bus on the corner of Bundy DR and Santa Monica BL. Even though two trash cans are provided, there is a lot of trash in the area, yet a number to call for maintenance is provided. One would think that the experiential factor would eventually trigger an automatic cleanup.
The southwestward curvature of Ohio AV together with Santa Monica BL and Bundy DR delimits a small park. It is completely fenced in and appears inaccessible; that idea is reinforced by the three men who are resting outside the fence. The grass is longish and the fence doesn’t stop the infiltration of liter.
The 704 arrives and I take a seat across from a young man wearing a Junior Life Guard T-shirt. He is gnawing on his fingernails apparently unaware of the manner in which disease spreads. The Junior Life Guard is not the only one either, su Topo sees all too many people with their fingers in their mouths or touching their lips, after touching areas of public transportation that at best could be considered filthy, unconcerned with the high probability of germ propagation.
A man in a matching, if faded, denim outfit carries on a conversation with himself. Mid-day buses late and great!
I ride a Norwalk Transit bus which is well prepared for the inevitable head-sign failures. There was a laminated sheet with a large “4” [the route number] affixed to the interior, right side of the windshield and visible from outside the bus . The glass behind the driver had another sign with a large “2” and another with a “5”, against the possibility of head-sign failure while on those routes.
That my friends, is called being pro-active. Contrast that approach with the array of different sized papers used on Metro buses as ad hoc signage and which passengers must decode in order to determine which route a particular bus is covering.
2009-07-21: On board a 439 bus, #5366, at 7:15AM. The TV screens are completely dark on this bus. The one immediately in front of me is defaces with scratches and bold line graffiti. Like many ideas which the LACMTA quickly buys into TransitTV was not conceived by LACMTA staff. Now, several years later, virtually none of the original promises of the on-board TV have been fulfilled. The beautiful route maps were poor and the dollar earnings, and this is speculation on the part of your Mole, never materialised. All this was based upon the iffy premise that bus passengers are good prospects for, even suckers for, any sort of advertising. Most everything advertised was unnecessary [fill in your own expletive here].
The LACMTA a three (3) billion dollar operation never favors us with a profit and loss statement [How about it, Mr. Leahy?] and the politicians who “manage” this combine may not even what a P & L is. Given that, we may never know just how much is flushed down the drain and lost by implementing and sticking with one fool idea or another.
Another idea whose time is past –if it ever had a time– the web site sale of Metro memorabilia in an era when many struggle just to come up with the basic fare. I grudgingly pay my fare and would not give the LACMTA another penny of my money to waste on buying Chinese coffee mugs with the “Metro" logo.
I ride one of the Grey-green gold Line trains another negative side-effect of not having standards means that no two things, however similar, at the LACMTA are really the same. The new, and I believe three ton overweight cars have P.A. system announcements are too loud. I plan to record one in the near future so that you can be the judge.
In Pasadena, work, whatever that means, is still on-going on the west side of the Lake Street overpass of the 210 Freeway. That is not completely true, no workers are visible yet the sidewalk is barricaded on that side of Lake. The west side bus stops are still located about three blocks south of the original stop(s). A sign at the relocated site indicates that the relocation occurred on “03/25/09” almost four (4) months ago. Aside from that, su Topo can find nothing that tells us who, what, when, why and for how long. This time it may not even be the LACMTA who is behind it. But it does have the feel of their work: no or very poor communication –the signature of the LACMTA.
As I look at the big orange logo affixed to a bulkhead at the front of this bus, that Snoble worked so hard to replace, I wonder what bottom-line contribution accrued because of the logo change –my guess? a negative one.
Perhaps we should look to Long Beach transit management for the solution♪?
Several Sundays ago su Topo took a nice ride on one of the new hybrid, Long Beach Transit buses. It seemed like just another bus ride, and that masked the underlying economies of the hybrid technologies. There is no doubt that Long Beach Transit more than deserves to be called “America’s Best” for its innovations in green technology and for improvements in signage and for other reasons noted below. Although, this Mole believes that the bus should be the sign, i.e., the head signs on layovers should indicate the route and ETD (Expected Time of Departure) so that riders could plan accordingly. The picture above this paragraph shows one of the buses, not the one which I rode, however.
The drivers on every Long Beach bus on which I have ridden to date, have ALL been polite and helpful.
There are trip planners, real people, available at the Transit Mall in downtown Long Beach. They too, were helpful and were able to work out an itinerary for me –one that failed on the Trip “Spoiler” [no surprise] and did not work out on http://latranstar.tann.com either. The lady who that helped me was FAST and gave me specific instructions as to how to minimize my fare along with the PRINTED itinerary which she highlighted with a green pen in order to emphasize certain aspects. Your Mole was surprised and delighted with the work and has no reason to believe that anyone else in the booth would be any less proficient. Which booth, incidentally, is called the "Transit and Information Center" and located on the Transit Mall in Long Beach.
Every aspect of the Long Beach Transit operation impressed me favourably resulting in my vote for them to be the next “America’s Best”!
2009-07-23: I take a 439 Line northbound bus, number 7595, at about 1:30PM. Mr. tape everything over the windows is driving (see: posting of 2008-06-28). The front windscreen is amazingly clear, but he has taped something opaque (about 2 feet by 1 foot in size) over his left side window in spite of the fact that the bus comes equipped with a standard shade of the same dark perforated material that is used in front of the windscreen. Seemingly, he just can't resist "improving" the design of the bus.
2009-07-25: I have always believed that the ladies were more sensitive to matters related to health –but not this one— she runs her little fingre around the inside of he mouth behind her lower lip!
Whois bumper sticker leaves Ugly Residue♪.
Bus number 6358 provides a good or is it bad example of the ugly residue (UR noted below) left when passengers and others remove as mush of a “whois ”bumper sticker as they can. This Mole estimates that with the right cleaning agents and tools it will take in the neighbourhood of two (2) hours to clean up this mess and even then, painting may be required. This can provide a lifetime job for mr “whois”, if he is ever brought to justice.
Also captured is one of the “Big Orange” logos (partially hidden by the ugly residue) which Snoble wasted money on changing.
2009-07-25: It is just after 1:00PM and I am on a 232 Line bus, number 11050, headed north. The driver, number 75045, is the worst. Not only is he the male equivalent of “Chatty Cathy” (mentioned in earlier posts) he is a rough, jerky operator who loves to sound the horn. On and on he goes, about nothing at all, in the form of a running commentary. I would like to shout out two words to him, but don't. The words? “Shut UP!”.
We'll get around to it, eventually♪.
It is very close to five (5) months since paper day passes like the one shown above were discontinued, yet this sign is still being displayed.
Poor signage? You expected something else?♪
The staff at Beach Cities Transit must have been tutored by the “Stops and Signs” guys at the LACMTA. Practically invisible, unless you click on the photo for an enlarged size, the next smaller font would have been Braille.
Here we can see so little said, so much unsaid and mapped. Note also, the raw, unpainted fencing –yet another oversight by the LACMTA “planners”.
Dedicated to the Dulcinea of my dreams
‘Meanwhile one of the carriers who were in the inn thought fit to water his team, and it was necessary to remove Don Quixote's armor as it lay on the trough; but he seeing the other approach hailed him in a loud voice, "O thou, whoever thou art, rash knight that comest to lay hands on the armour of the most valorous errant that ever girt on sword, have a care what thou dost; touch it not unless thou wouldst lay down thy life as the penalty of thy rashness." The carrier gave no heed to these words (and he would have done better to heed them if he had been heedful of his health), but seizing it by the straps flung
the armor some distance from him. Seeing this, Don Quixote raised his eyes to heaven, and fixing his thoughts, apparently, upon his lady Dulcinea, exclaimed, "Aid me, lady mine, in this the first encounter that presents itself to this breast which thou holdest in subjection; let not thy favour and protection fail me in this first jeopardy;" and, with these words and others to the same purpose, dropping his buckler he lifted his lance with both hands and with it smote such a blow on the carrier's head that he stretched him on the ground, so stunned that had he followed it up with a second there would have been
no need of a surgeon to cure him. This done, he picked up his armour and returned to his beat with the same serenity as before.’
Miguel De Cervantes (1547-1616), Don Quixote (1605), Chapter III
See: http://www.online-literature.com/cervantes/don_quixote/
Fare Box Score Box
I.D. numbers of buses with Out of Order Fare Boxes: xxxx;
Note: Few entries above do not necessarily mean more working fare boxes.
I.D. Numbers of Buses Defaced by WhoIs stickers: 7378+UR; 7169; 6366;
+UR = whois sticker and/or the ugly residue left after passengers partly remove the sticker.
I.D Numbers of Buses whose Head and Tail signs disagree: 5180—115/?08;
Bibliography/References
(1) Hood, Clifton. “22 Miles: the building of the subways and how they transformed New York”. Simon & Schuster. 1993.
(2) Lyons, Terrance. “Blue Bus Arrests”. Santa Monica Mirror. 23~29 April 2009:33.
(3) Rutten, Tim. “MTA prepares for a rail-car reality check”. Los Angeles Times. 22 Jul 2009:A25.
(4) N/A. “Announcing Metro Service Enhancements(4)” [LACMTA] 09-2136BD. 2009.
(5) Frank, Adam. “3 Theories That Might Blow Up the Big Bang”.
Discover Magazine. April 2008. http://discovermagazine.com/2008/apr/25-3-theories-that-might-blow-up-the-big-bang Accessed: 23 July 2009.
(6) Saletan, William. “Driving While Interrogated: How to stop cell-phone use behind the wheel”. Slate Magazine. 21 July 2009. http://slate.com/id/2223277/ Accessed: 23 July 2009.
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.
Mole’s Copyright Statement
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Your Mole’s Conflict of Interest Statement
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:
1) A participant, directly or indirectly, in any arrangement, agreement, investment, or other activity with any vendor, supplier, or other party doing business with any of the entities about which I have written, which has resulted or could result in personal benefit to me.
2) A recipient, directly or indirectly, of any salary payments or loans or gifts of any kind or any free service or discounts or other fees from or on behalf of any person or organization engaged in any transaction with any of the entities about which I have written.
Any exceptions to 1 or 2 above are stated below with a full description of the transactions and of the interest, whether direct or indirect, which I have (or have had during the past year) in the persons or organizations having transactions with any of the entities about which I have written.
There are no exceptions.
Date: 2009-06-24 S/ LaMetroMole
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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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Date: 2009-06-24 S/ LaMetroMole 