The LaMetroMole with LACMTA Comments

 

Vae Viator40

 

A floral tribute to Ms Gamboa

 

The photograph below 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 include this comment in every post with the above until BBB corrects the problem.

 

BBB Maxella Trash Fix??♪

 

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, we can see a Beverly Hills taxi and two other vehicles cut in front of a Metro bus.  At one point both the passing vehicles AND the bus are in motion.

La Taupe, after careful consideration, feels that it is appropriate to dedicate these videos ONLY to the CEO of the LACMTA, Mr. Art Leahy, the single person who is ultimately responsible for the safety of Metro passengers.

I know that Mr. Leahy and is staff would ultimately solve this problem.  But, not having the patience to wait six (6) generations, I have solved it for him.

Mr. Leahy, I know that you are loath to take on the politicians and other forces in Los Angeles in what would be a no-win situation.  So my solution involves only your organization.  Are you ready for it?  It is simple;  move the bus stop forward to the point where no vehicle can squeeze ahead of a stopped bus!  ¿Perfecto, es no?  Further, passengers could cross in front of the bus -and be positioned right at the crosswalk.  Oh Mr. Leahy, there is no need to thank me, it is my pleasure to assist you. :-)

Émile Zola: (1840-04-02~1902-09-29)

Merci bien à www.evene.fr ! 

[When one is a good mother, all is forgiven.]

 

The Mole reads the papers and other things, obviating the necessity of your doing so.

 

Ms Nelson of the Los Angeles Times has written an article(Nelson) that documents exactly what a beautiful person Olivia Gamboa was.  It serves a fitting tribute and emphasizes that all who knew her feel her loss.  Please read this article which is linked in the “Work Cited” section (Vide infra).

 

Another Los Angeles Times piece(Serna) announces the start of using the functionality of the “access control gates”, at least the ones at Union Station.  I will quote just one partial sentence from the piece: “ … one reason Metro officials failed to lock the gates sooner is because they were operating under the false assumption that only 3% of riders were evading fares.”  Now isn’t that just exactly what we expect from the LACMTA; over estimates of potential ridership and dramatic underestimates of financial losses!

 

Wanting to document the duration that was required before a single station had “access control” I began by looking for the project start date for the “access control system”.  I first searched the Los Angeles Times site using their less than responsive search “mechanism”.  Not much useful was obtained there.  Then I turned to the source of last resort, metro.net. 

 

I was surprised to find a screen that looked, approximately, like the one pictured below.

 

 

 

 

As I started with the oldest item and clicked on each item above it, I was presented with: (i) Item not found; (ii) Item started to load but froze or (iii) no useful information.  This experience layered on many, many like it establishes the LACMTA as a closed and opaque organization. Surprise!

 

For example, when I was finally able to access something, and tried to search for information on access control, again I experienced a system freeze.   I show the screen frozen on page 3 of 309 (pictured below) while searching.

 

 

Looking for “access control” ♪

 

As I scanned through the document, the 2010FY Budget, I found a title page which was headed, “I. Description of Metro and Strategic Plan” on the following page, which was the last on in the section, well take a look below at what I saw.

Unlike the LACMTA, I like to conserve resources so I combined the two pages into one, with the same effect.

 

 

This page is intentionally left blank ♪

 

Finally, if you thrive on disappointment, Metro.net is definitely the site for you!  I tried another search for projects and found the page below which looked promising; in much the same way a lemon looks promising until you take a bite. Although a few links did work MANY did not.  You try it yourself; just point your browser to www.metro.net/projects/.  If it works you can be sure that someone at the LACMTA can read and does read su Topo.  My intention was to compare per mile construction costs and compare them with the values cited below under "access control" below.

 

 

Thrive Away! ♪

 

KABC featured a story(Stallworth) on how bus drivers are becoming ill from years of breathing the pesticides which are used on buses —it can’t be doing passengers any good either, can it?  Follow the link in “Works Cited” and see the report.

 

The Daily News features(Scauzillo) a piece which seems to indicate that the LACMTA is promising one thing yet delivering another vis-à-vis the Gold Line extension outward from Sierra Madre Villa Station.   The agency with the learning disability, is finding that budgeting and spending are two different things with the latter demanding the former.  The article also indicates that we will be able to ride the Gold Line to Azusa by 2015 (hold back roaring laugh here).  The article has a subtitle which succinctly tells the story: “Foothill officials say Metro is going against the voter-approved Measure R”.

Oracle Corporation’s Profit magazine has a piece(Pavo) on the possibility of Austin, TX using ski lift type aerial gondolas for intra-city transportation.  Please click here to see an analysis of the system and the plans. 

One of the things that la Taupe found interesting was that surface rail costs are estimated to start at $50 million per mile, elevated rail (read rapid transit) costs will start at $140 million per mile while subway construction can be as much as $500 million per mile.

It will be interesting to compare the LACMTA’s construction costs with the figures above.  Su Topo thinks that they will, in every case, exceed the above values.  However, you can see how poorly I fared (Vide supra) when trying to find project information. :-(

¿Musica?  How about something upbeat? Here is Puro Tejano with 03-Cumbio Tex-Mix.   ¡Esta es largo, una media hora!

With Thanks To our good friends at groveshark.com!

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

One can learn more about cognitive dissonance here.  But again, I must caution LACMTA management and staff that they should not try this sort of psychological study at home and definitely not without the involvement and guidance of a trained professional.

 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 a ride from Hamamatsucho Station to the first station, Tenozu Isle, on the monorail line to Haneda Airport (Tokyo’s domestic airport).  It is a ride which your Mole has made many times, as he worked on Tenozu Isle. 

I really like this video because it give the feel of life in the big city (population: 17+ million and if you pay careful attention you can see a cross section of other Tokyo transportation like the rapid transit trains which the monorail parallels for a time in the video.  Although, this may have been very early in the morning because the train was lightly loaded; not the crowding which I usually experienced.  One can see as well how, unimpeded by other traffic with no contention for the right-of-way the train just flew along.  Not the poky light rail we have in Los Angeles.  The point being it didn’t have to be this way and is what one gets when politicians design transportation “systems”, (sigh).

 Youtube.com, thank you very much for complementing my words with videos!

Thank you too, Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon for the download!

 Cosmology

 Here is a nice diagram of part of our “home galaxy”.  It is a sort of “you are here” picture.  Please take a look at it.

 

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.)

 

2013-06-05 9:10: I am aboard a 117 Line bus when a couple boards.  She pulls what appears to be a very heavy piece of wheeled luggage.  He drags a trash bag of recyclables on board; unfortunately it is followed by a liquid train.  Mr. Leahy. PLEASE!

 

2013-06-17 10:45 Your Mole waits at ITC for a south-bound 740 Line bus; the one that arrives is going OOS (Out Of Service) at the Green Line.  Right on its’ heels a 40 Line bus arrives, but it too, is going OOS. Metro Scheduling, is that like military intelligence?  I have lots of time so I take the picture below showing, only partially, exactly how littered the Inglewood Transit Center ALWAYS appears.  Actually, most of the litter is hidden under the bushes. Metro Maintenance, is that like … ?

 

 

ITC Basura♪

2013-06-23 This is the day the schedules changed.  I thought I was ready because your Mole has gone paperless and keep the schedules which he needs on his iPhone.  The new schedules, for the most part, seemed to be ready in advance so they were downloaded and in place when the schedule did change.

But not so fast, take a look at what I saw in the photo just below.

 

 

Shakeup♪

 

The badly needed solution is to create a cover page for each PDF schedule.  So, su Topo has done exactly that and here it is!

 

 

111-311Cover♪

 

That would make schedule identification quick and simple without having to open files and examine their contents.  As an example of a professional cover, here is the way they do it in the Big Apple.  Nice job, New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, Thank You!

 

And our friends in Chicago at the Chicago Transit Authority do a good job as well.

CTA, Thank you, too! 

 It is a matter of attention to detail and taking the extra care necessary to do a profession job which is important.  The LACMTA spends countless dollars on printing all manner of brochures, most of which probably end up in landfills.  The actual paper schedules have a cover, but someone at the agency made the inexplicable decision to eliminate the cover page in the pdf schedules.

 

 

2013-06-25 12:05 9:00 Aboard a Gold Line train to Pasadena:  The onboard P.A. announces Mission Station and I look across the aisle at the map.  I doesn’t show Mission Station anymore; instead it shows “South Pasadena”.  The map is right but the P.A. is wrong!  File this under “Metro at Work” sub-rubric?, “If it works don’t fix it!”  Lots of money for name changes and other totally unnecessary tasks but NOTHING that benefits the passenger.

 2013-06-25 12:05 @ Union Station:  The P.A. announcements echo throughout the platform area making a hard-to-understand announcement near unintelligible.

 2013-06-25 13:30 Los Angeles:  Looking for a 740 Line stop:  I am searching Broadway where, as a bus driver told me, I could intercept a 740.  No luck.  Many bus stops have notices of changes to line 40, but not a hint about the 740.  I give up and ride a 40 Line bus.  Along the way I wondered why I didn’t see much in the way of brochures explaining changes, new routes and etc.  The LACMTA just likes to surprise us?

On the 40 Line bus I saw a placard which displayed a poem called "Bellas artes" (Bellas artes).  Here are the first two lines:
 

While I was in Pasadena, in the Gold Line Memorial Park Station I photographed the “helpful” sign pictured below.

 

 

Do It The Hard Way♪

 

In my 2013-03-30 posting, I took pains to describe exactly how station signs in Japan, communicate the maximum information in the minimum space.  As we see above, the LACMTA likes to spread information all over the place and in this case use the maximum material in order to affix the signs to the large columns in the station.  Would you like a second opinion, OK, they’re ugly too!

 

Another opinion that hold to is that the LACMTA is too busy spending money as fast as they can to slow down and perfect OR MAINTAIN anything. 

 

Fare Box Score Box and related Lists of Shame

 

METRO drivers Basic Technical Skills Report