2013-05-31
Vae Viator39
BBB Maxella Trash Fix??♪
The
photograph above documents the situation at the Maxella AV and Lincoln BL stop
on their number 3 Line. It is the sort
of “work” one would
expect from the LACMTA. They taped or
caused to be taped shut the aperture in the plastic pipes associated with power
poles. These pipes were used as
improvised trash cans. BBB N.B. The stop still needs a trash can!
Su Topo
will lead every post with the above until BBB corrects the problem. How about it Mr. Edward King?
White Line Incursion Series
Su Topo
uses video to highlight the problem of scofflaw drivers endangering Metro bus
passengers yet, no authority seems to want to take ownership of the
problem. The issue is not unique to the
particular site which this Mole documents, but is illustrative of a general
problem. Your Mole encourages you to
report similar problems to the appropriate agencies in your area(s) and hope
that you will have better luck than he.
In the youtube.com videos linked below one can see exactly what happens
when the policing agencies fail to enforce traffic laws.
The videos
linked below document that, and this is important, a never ending stream of
vehicles fail to use the lane as required by law.
Neither are
the policing agencies active when it comes to protecting us by bringing these
obvious and frequent traffic law violations to an immediate halt. The LACMTA is derelict as well, in that they
fail to use the near hourly proof of the violations captured by the on board
cameras, mentioned here and discussed at length in the posting of
2012-05-31.
In the
following video, which is not my best, the sun was providing a too bright
background and two of the three vehicles are best described as almost
subliminal blurs. However, we can see a
Super Shuttle van after it has crossed the white line and cut ahead of a
stopped bus and is more visible as it heads west.
This has not been a good month for video, so you
will have to take my word for it that, early on Friday morning, May 24, 2013,
four vehicles cut in front of the 111 bus that was taking me to the LAXCBC so
that I could catch a Delta flight. I
have no video but one is obtainable almost every trip. This time a large rent-a-car bus, two regular
cars and a limo convoyed past us!
La Taupe
feels that it is appropriate to dedicate each videos to ALL the agencies who
should be protecting us. So, they are
dedicated to (1): Airport (LAWA) Police,
the L.A.P.D., the L. A. County Sheriff’s
Department and Mr. A. Leahy who is CEO of the
LACMTA.
<<Dans les démocraties, chaque génération est un peuple nouveau.>>
Alexis de Tocqueville: (1805-07-29~1859-04-16)
[In the democracies, each
generation is a new people.]
The Mole
reads the papers and other things, obviating the necessity of your doing so.
It has
already started; the vocal opposition to what I believe is a transportation
idea without an intellectual foundation, viz., the “Downtown Corrector Connector”. It should
be called the “Corrector” because it really an attempt to band aid over the
poor planning which went into the transportation “system” in Los Angeles.
The LACMTA
is discovering rather late in the process that, when lines don’t cross there is no way for passengers to transfer
from one to another. The main example of
this blunder is the Gold Line, had they connected the Gold Line to the Red Line
at, say, Civic Center there would not be that much of a problem. The Gold Line already has more twists and
turns than the single bullet theory, so straightening it out would have
probably reduced its cost and perhaps even shortened the travel time.
But no, the
LACMTA rather than turning such an important design to professionals, they,
uuhh, voted on it. The “Corrector” is another instance of votes over minds. A
letter to the Los Angeles Times refers
to the “Corrector” as a subway which it is; a subway to nowhere. Which subway according to the Metro website (
http://www.metro.net/projects/connector/ ) has a price tag of 1.366 billion dollars and will
be completed in 2020! That means the streets
of Los Angeles will be ripped up for years and for what? For a link that is
more than adequately provided by Dash service!
You can see a “Live” map of exactly where Dash will take you in the
downtown area here and view the LADOT home page aqui.
Dash Gets It Done♪
Will the “Corrector” replace Dash? Ahhhh, no, because
Dash covers more than the downtown area.
So, in all likelihood the “Corrector” will replace only a small portion of the Dash system, therefore, under
the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it rubric, the LACMTA should quit this ill conceived project while
it is ahead.
Additionally, a number of bus routes which subsumes the path between and
the Gold Line Red Line presently exist.
I have created a subset of the Metro Downtown System Map (available
here) below, so that you can see for yourself.
N.B. a short, healthy walk will make other lines available to you.
One can be fairly certain that at least some of those lines will exist
after the “Corrector” is implemented and monies
that could help to further the subway to the VA Hospital have been flushed.
Gold Line Red Line Links♪
I checked the Next Bus web site and found neither LADOT nor Dash listed
as a customer. Does this mean that the
LADOT group did this nice real-time tracking system themselves and found a less
than $10,000 per bus plus annual fees plus way of doing the project? Anyway, according to Syncromatics who according to their website “…
is a provider of transit ITS solutions, specializing in bus tracking, automated
passenger counting, passenger information systems and route analytics.”
Here is interesting calculation based upon the LACMTA’s own estimate of ridership; the daily rosy ridership estimates of 88,444 daily trips annualizes to 321936160 riders. Developing a cost per rider over the 10 years after the thing is completed, that is amortization of the development costs over a ten year period means that each rider would have to pay $4.23; a 20 year amortization should yield a $2.11 per passenger. Based upon past “guesstimates” by the LACMTA, I am confident that the daily trips estimate which translates to 44.22, two thousand person Army Divisions pouring through the “Corrector” is a serious distortion of the actual ridership.
Really? Has the LACMTA never heard of a cost benefit
analysis? As someone intimately familiar
with Tokyo’s
massive transportation system and its history, I can assure you that the
Yamanote loop line was built first (1895~1925); it is the wheel from which the
spokes of the modern Japanese transportation system radiate. The Yamanote Loop circumscribes a distance of
34 Km or 21 miles, which is ten times the distance of the pitiful little Downtown
Connecter. The Yamanote loop is the foundation
upon which the Japanese have carefully, professionally, planned and built their
system. Not as we in Los Angeles with
our special burden of political “design” are being forced to accept. Something that, I have termed a “band aid”, doesn’t
even rise to that level. It is a problem
created by those who lack the technical skills necessary to understand the
unique problems of transportation but who do not let that lack stop them from
cobbling together “solutions”.
Who
even knows what role that downtown Los Angeles will have in the scheme of
things? Rather than advancing a true need, the subway to the VA Hospital
sea. Santa Monica and Los Angeles will
both be transportation sources and sinks.
When one looks at the history of Downtown Los Angeles over the past
forty years is has been one of shrinking retail with the loss of the several
large department stores due to consolidation.
My mother talks of trips with her mother downtown to shop the month-end
sales. Such talks left me with the impression of crowded stores
and an occasional after shopping lunch in one or another of the in-store
cafeterias.
It’s a Los Angeles which no longer
exists. America’s present economic difficulties make
accurate projections for anything problematic, much less a ridership based
upon, what? Making accurate ridership
estimates is something at which the LACMTA has proved to be especially
inept.
Our
Los Angeles Times is enamored with reporting the potential noise levels in the
Disney Hall rather than the pipe dreams of the LACMTA.
Wired magazine has a piece (Glave) on bullet trains in the
U.S. which features the “progress” made by California. Well, the “progress” up to February 2010 at least. But no matter, the article is still operative
since there has not been much accomplished since that date, IF one ignores the bid
rigging, oh!, I’m
sorry that is incorrect, I should say adjustments to the bidding process. It is just when I used a Google search with
the following search argument ‘California
High speed rail +"bid rigging"’, I was presented with cerca
de 845 results –for those who care– Bing returned only 31 items. So one
can understand how that term became wrongly imprinted in my memory. I apologise for the error. Nevertheless, it would seem that the CHSRA wants
to select a bidder who would not have been acceptable under the prior, more
stringent, rules.
The article opens with: “After decades of false starts, planners are finally
beginning to make headway on what could become the most complicated
infrastructure project ever attempted in the US.” In order to update
the article it would first be necessary to insert ‘plus three years and three months’ after the word decades, above. I am not sure what else could be written,
other than, when politicians are involved in transportation projects, citizens
should expect little and they will never be disappointed.
Please read the informative article. Just follow the link
which I have included in the “Works
Cited”
line for the piece (vide infra).
The Los Angeles Times has a story (Nelson) which once again demonstrates to this Mole that in spite of all
the “feedback” meetings held by the LACMTA so that they can rubber-stamp bad policy,
when faced with real ridership pushback, they, uhhh, cave. In this case it is the reversal on the decision
against a Crenshaw Line Station at Leimert Park.
This piece is the first of
Ms Nelson’s work su Topo has quoted. And
nice work it is!
I just wish that we could
get the Times to get behind the idea of effectuating MASS RAPID TRANSIT instead
of street level light rail which is only mass transit –and accident prone mass transit, at that.
The Los Angeles Daily News reports (Scauzillo; May 18) that Foothill Transit is severing its contract with their management company, Chicago based Veolia Transportation Services. ‘"At this time we believe it is important to control our own destiny and costs by bringing that management team in-house," read a report to the Foothill Transit Executive Board dated May 24.’
Speaking of contractors, MV Transit seems to be developing a
group of drivers who lack basic skills, notably many drivers can’t maintain an equidistant space
between the front and rear exits and allow for a bus to curb space which allows
debussing passengers to take a normal
step from the bus to the curb. Further,
some drivers are as rude as or ruder than those who work for Metro. Not a good sign, is it Mr. Carter Pate?
I don’t
praise the LACMTA I have said that they excel at spending money but they also
keep their eyes peeled for new sources of funds. The Los Angeles Daily News informs (Scauzillo;
May 28) us that the LACMTA wants to charge a “Congestion Fee” for “every new
home, store or office building.” The
fees for an new home were planned to be just under $2000, while a new store
might cost $30,000. “After more than 50 businesses signed
a letter opposing the measure, the program suddenly was withdrawn from
Wednesday's Metro Planning and Programming Committee and placed on hold.” One of the mottos of the LACMTA should be do,
then plan.
Another Los Angeles Daily News piece covers (Marquez )
the Gold Line out to Montclair. Please
read these local reporters’
work products. I found them all
interesting and informative. Nice work
ladies and gentlemen!
¿Musica?
Ms Lydia Mendoza, the “First Lady of Tejano Music”, will be honoured with a United States
postage stamp (Please see
)
Although we lost her in
2007, we can still listen to her beautiful music!
Ear (and Eye) to the Rail
Cautionary
Note: Those employed by the LACMTA should NOT view the following videos. The speed
of the trains in the videos, because they are truly rapid transit, their
quietness, the clarity and sound level of the onboard announcements will likely
make you dizzy, nauseous and frighten you.
Additionally, the concept of having a DIRECT LINK to the airport
should place you in a state of “cognitive
dissonance”, which occurs when two
cognitions complete. Cognitive
dissonance results in the case where Cognition 1, “It is impossible to directly link a city to its
airport” and cognition 2, “many cities are directly linked to their airports”. The Los
Angeles Times
What people headed to the airport want
to hear is “one
seat, one ride”
not what we are forced to say here in Los Angeles, viz., “at minimum, three seats three rides.”
Here is a
link to a video of trains arriving at the Lindbergh Station inside Minneapolis-Saint Paul
International Airport.
I especially selected this video because (1) it shows something that the LACMTA believes can’t be done, viz., building a transportation terminal right on the airport and under the terminals. The video shows (2) that a station can be colorful and brightly lighted; for comparison purposes, when I ride say, the LACMTA’s Red Line, I half expect to see vendors selling “Soylent Green”. Finally one can also clearly see (3) that station stairways can and should have both an up and a down escalator in a train/subway station.
Thank you too, “traindad95” for the download!
Youtube.com, thank you very much for complementing my words with videos!
Su Topo has discussed quantum computing in the past and it “seems” that a Canadian company is producing and selling “quantum computers”. I will provide some links and you, my readers, may come to your own conclusions.
Here is a link to the D-wave’s website. There are lots of things to read there.
Then, here is a Forbes® Magazine article about a consortium of D-wave’s customers.
Finally,
please listen to this short NPR audio report and then, perhaps after further
research, draw your own conclusions.
Cosmology
Are we
alone in the universe? This is a
difficult question with no simple answers, but the bottom line answer is, based
upon the enormous size of the universe, NO we are not alone! You can read through this linked material of ten years ago and see if you agree. Most of it is fairly understandable.
The Mole rides again, so you will know that finding
the least noisy seat will involve moving around the train.
(All times
are expressed in the 24 hour system.)
2013-05-07 I ride down Florence AV on a 111 Line
bus with other passengers who also have a free ride because the Fare box on bus
number 14893 is broken.
¿Mantenimiento?♪
Pictured above, from an unusual perspective, is a
section of track in the Mariposa Station.
You know the station, the one with unrepaired cracked glass up above
peoples’ heads. The track and roadbed is never cleaned
because the LACMTA doesn’t know what
maintenance, in any language, means.
Anyway, the LACMTA is incapable of parallel processing, i.e., building
more “stuff” —I can’t in good conscience say, “building a transportation system”— while at the same time maintaining what has been
already build. Or for that matter fully
implementing the “TAP” process or
the “access control gates”, need I continue?
2013-05-24 @ 9:15 Your Mole rides the Blue Line to “Long Beach”. The LACMTA has no “best practices” for on-board PA use, and the one aboard my train like those at most LACMTA facilities is cheap, tinny sounding and LOUD! The volume on this particular train is set just a hair below the level of pain. The blaring announcement informs me that the train will only go as far as the Willow Station before we are forced off, cheated out of a one seat trip to Long Beach. To make matters worse, a big man starts a far ranging conversation with a young woman, when it turns to religion, I move away. A different seat in a different car means only that I traded a soliloquy for a medium-loud cell phone conversation. Plus we are treated with a few more shrieks about terminating at Willow Station from the “operators cabin”. The LACMTA working for you, but as could be expected, not very well. I don’t understand how stranding us at Willow Station improves service. It would seem that a “service oriented organization”, which the LACMTA is not, could schedule thing so that we could have a deterministic (Please, Mr. Lehey, look it up) trip length.
Recycle Cart♪
2013-05-26 at Mariposa Station: On this Green Line trip I noted that a “recycler” had made
his work easier, as pictured above. He
used a large cart to haul large, fully stuffed garbage bags, which cart is
shown waiting on the platform for its owner.
We can see the cart, below, on board the train.
Recyclables Onboard♪
I would expect to see something like this in rural
China, not in Los Angeles County, right, Mr. Leahy? People which handle these items, some of
which come to them partially filled with an unidentified liquid, soil their
hands and proceed to touch parts of the train, bus, station and etc. throughout
the day. This allows them to become a
disease vector which, in these days of H7N9 is something
Perhaps someone should contact the Los Angeles
County Board of Health because you, Mr. Leahy, seem powerless to correct these
situations, which you Mole thoughtfully points out to you.
Fare Box Score Box and
related Lists of Shame
I.D. Numbers of buses with Out of Order Fare Boxes: 14893; 8430;
Note: No or few entries above do not necessarily mean all fare boxes are in operation.
I.D.Numbers of Distracted Drivers: xxxxx (i);
None included here, but observations of a minor nature may be included in the main posting;
Codes: (i) Extended conversation(s) with passenger(s) or (ii) cell phone call(s). Frequently, details can be found in the text above, (ii*) cell phone call(s) which are aggravated by some other action, (iii) Self-distracted. Codes (ii*) and (iii) will ALWAYS be explained in the posting.
I.D. Numbers of Buses Defaced by WhoIs stickers: xxxx;
~UR or +UR = (+UR) whois sticker and the ugly residue left after passengers partly remove the sticker. (~UR) = Only the ugly residue left after passengers almost completely remove the sticker. +L = an old (legacy) sticker black letters on a plain white background –these are the original form of the defacement.
* Another reason for displaying the operator's ID on the internal display and the headsign.
ID numbers of Buses whose Head and Tailsigns disagree: xxxx xxx/xx;
Format is Bus number followed by Headsign number/Tailsign number.
ID numbers of Buses without Braille signs: XXXX;
METRO
drivers Basic Technical Skills Report
The format is Driver number F[{Y/-n/+n} C[{Y/N+/-}]. Meaning of F if Y the driver stopped with the Bus stop “flag pole” somewhere between the bus front door frames. A negative number, e.g., -3 is the approximate distance in metres (think yards dear readers) between the nearest bus door vertical frame member and the flag pole signifying that the bus stopped short of the flag. A positive number, e.g., +3 (metres) is the approximate distance between the nearest bus door vertical frame member and the flag pole signifying that the bus stopped past the flag. The value for C[{Y/N}], “Y” tells us that the driver stopped within an easy step from the curb to the bus, “N” means it was NOT an easy step from the curb to the bus. It is this Mole's belief that an average experienced good driver should be able to control his bus so as to position in near the curb and with the flag pole slightly to the front of the bus.
Xxxxx F[Y] C[Y]; xxxxx F[Y], C[Y]; xxxxx F[Y], C[Y]; xxxxx F[Y], C[Y]; N.B. distances are in metres, think yards.
nnnnn* = Contract Driver
I.D. numbers of drivers who are almost guaranteed to give you a Rough and Jerky (R & J) ride. xxxxx;
I.D. numbers of drivers who will give you a potentially life-threatening ride. XXXXX(-); XXXXX(-);
Codes: S = not wearing seat belts; J = bad judgment (unsafe driving practices).
La Taupe's Abréviations
ADADO = Automatic Destination Announcement (on) Door Opening. This feature is installed on many buses and operates on extremely few. Another “money down the toilet” LACMTA investment. La Taupe that this is intended for the visually impaired because people who can see can read the “head signs”.
ASAS = Automatic Stop Announcement System the GPS (Global Positioning System) driven mechanism for generating audio for the upcoming stops. N.B. Because of the low power (read weak) processors used in the on-board stops may be too close to identify stops separately. This is known as a granularity problem. Then too, if the driver operates the bus at speed above the speed limit you will find the system “back announcing” stops which you have already passed. I find that this will NOT keep some drivers from complaining “that you didn’t signal (ring) in time. They don’t understand their relationship to the system and how, by driving faster than the GPS computer, they can bias it.
BBB = Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus
CHSRA = California High-Speed Rail Authority, which is the equivalent, in more ways than one, of the LACMTA.
CC or CCMBL = Culver City (Municipal) Bus (Lines)
CCTC = Culver City Transportation Center this is the place formerly known as FHMTC = the Fox Hills Mall Transportation Center (Sepulveda & Slauson)
FFE = Full Fare Equivalent (presently $1.50)
GMBL = Gardena Municipal Bus lines
ITC = Inglewood Transit Center
LAXCBC = the LAX City Bus Center.
OCTA = Orange County Transportation Authority.
Rapid Transit = does not compete for right of way, that is, it will not run at grade unless it has EXCLUSIVE DEDICATED USE of the right of way).
R & J = Rough and Jerky [ride].
TT = Torrance Transit.
T1 = the normal type of driver/staff.
T2 = is the non-stop talker type of driver/staff, on the phone or to passengers,
T3 = the uncommunicative type of driver/staff, sometimes surly.
WLATC = the West Los Angeles Transportation Center (Fairfax & Apple)
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 someday 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 © 2007~2013 by LAmetroMole. ♪Clicking a photo will often* present you with an enlargement (sometimes successive clicks will further enlarge the photo). *This feature is dependent upon the Internet browser which you use and possibly other factors.
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site contains or provides links to 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, public disclosure, corporate accountability, and etc. We have often included relatively brief quotes from articles and etc., sometimes in addition to 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 and to those who access the site via any and all other channels. 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. Music or other recorded material on this site, or referred to by this site are copyrighted by their respective artists and are made available here for evaluation purposes only. Please support the artists you like by buying their commercial CDs, MP3s and downloads.
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
Works Cited
Glave, James. and Swaby, Rachel. Jessica. “American Express”. Wired. Feb. 2010:75-81. Print. Web. 26 May 2013. http://www.wired.com/images/press/pdf/fasttrack.pdf
Marquez, Lizet. "SanBag reaffirms support for extending Gold Line to Montclair". www.dailynews.com. May 21, 2013. Web. http://www.dailynews.com/ci_23286673/sanbag-reaffirms-support-extending-gold-line-montclair?IADID=Search-www.dailynews.com-www.dailynews.com
Nelson, Laura J. “Leimert Park Village hails victory on Crenshaw Line station”. www.latimes.com. May 24, 2013. Web. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-leimert-park-celebrates-20130524,0,4345022.story
Scauzillo,
Steve. "Metro
considers adding fees to every new home, store or office building to fight
congestion". www.dailynews.com.
May 18, 2013. Web. http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_23274608/metro-considers-adding-fees-every-new-home-store?IADID=Search-www.dailynews.com-www.dailynews.com
Scauzillo, Steve. "Foothill Transit sheds management contract with outside firm". www.dailynews.com.
May 25, 2013. Web. http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_23325116/foothill-transit-sheds-management-contract-outside-firm?IADID=Search-www.dailynews.com-www.dailynews.com
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