What's wrong with L.A. Public Transportation?

Finally, A Subway Extension West

2010-10-29T06:47:00.000-07:00

Good day, no reason to stay buried when big news happen, by the most irresponsible 'blogger' out there;).

Things have gone in the right direction. A 10-0 decision to build the west-side subway extension along Wilshire Blvd! Plenty illogical decisions were made before by the MTA - including a green line that could be called the green 'cut off' line, ending just short before LAX. Finally the city seems to have matured enough to make sense. A quote by Genevieve Giuliano, director of USC's METRANS Transportation Center, hits it on the head:

"A subway is the single biggest item on the transit construction list, and this is the single busiest corridor in the entire region. If there should be a subway anywhere, it should be there."

Yes, yes. It shouldn't be built along Exposition blvd, or say, "Manchester blvd", for it to make sense. It should be built under Wilshire blvd for the reason mentioned above. Duh, most people and most commerce. A subway there would equal more customers plus less car traffic. Should NIMBY's win over all that? In their minds, they're all that matter. But a responsible leadership should think about the greatest good for the greatest amount of residents. A subway extension along Wilshire blvd is just that. For now, the project begins in 2013. That's better than nothing, considering just recently it appeared to have been a possibility only in the very distant future. Read the second paragraph below to see how such developments can increase Los Angeles as a city overall.

In a side note. The finally added monitors to the existing subway platforms display cartoon like train images, and don't display time information about upcoming train. Folk, only right before the train arrives, will we let you know that it's arriving. Before that, stand and wonder, will it arrive in 5 minutes or 15 minutes? At least there are now display monitors, whereas before their installations, the subway platforms felt even more deserted. But enough information is apparently too much for their riders. "Here's a half cookie, don't you eat the whole".

Ok, now, back to the west side subway extension. If L.A had an all covering, effective transit system, preferably city trains and subway lines, it would be a super-city. Instead of staying home, many more would travel around the city more, and help businesses at their destinations, as well as improving their own quality of life. Moreover, tourism, would increase to the point of being more proportional to L.A's size and amount of landmarks. The lack of efficient public transit has so far been a major obstacle to tourists' appreciation of what the city actually has to offer. They hear how it's a chore. People frown when hearing about how going to say Santa Monica from the city center or Hollywood takes over 1 hour. Hours back and forth get tiring. In NYC, all parts of the city are easily accessible, and prospective visitors know that. They know that if they visit NYC, experiencing the very city they're visiting won't be a major hassle or headache. Many tourists don't want to, or can not, rent a car. Nor is renting a car economical compared to the relatively affordable rates of public transit. Hopefully the west side subway extension is the beginning of a larger, eventually all-covering train system in L.A, that will make tourists forget about cheap fast food joints at their nearby intersections, and instead focus on where they want to go, and being able to do so efficiently. Instead of remembering the hassle of traveling around the city, they'll remember its destinations and landmarks better.
The 10-0 vote on the west side subway extension is clearly a sign in the right direction. Let not NIMBY's prevent the immense benefits of building it and/or others. If they want to be NIMBY's move to/back to the country side. L.A is a metropolis. Apology, but some facts sound condescending.

Alright, here we go. 'Beverly Hillbillyhills' - a deep rooted resentment of anything that reminds them of "urban", except their own comfortable proximity to it: NIMBYism always on time.

Late Update

2007-09-15T18:44:00.000-07:00

Hello, anybody. I'm sorry about having left 'whoever' in the dark. It's been a time of assessment and, re-assessment. After having spent close to 1 year on rants and otherwise regarding MTA, and since there's a finite thing to complain about, and when you complain about one thing, you begin to see other 'bigger' things to complain about etc. Hence, it came to a bit of a dead end regarding public transportation rants. But heck, after some reading, and reassessments, some exiting things seem to be going on in LA as far as public transportation is concerned. There seems to be a challenge in convincing skeptics. That will, or might (:) become the new focus of this blog. Just exactly when, isn't sure yet, but the blog will be back to 'complete the circle', so to speak. Not sure what approach to take yet, but we'll see. It's likely to be more from outside in rather than inside out. Exciting things seem to be going on in LA, and I'd want to be part of the change. Enjoy the bus and the train in the meantime (if possible).

MTA's Unfair Fare Hike - Update

2007-06-01T18:38:00.000-07:00

So after the public hearing on May 24, the MTA received mostly protests, expectedly, from transit riders. It seems the fight isn't over. The Bus Rider's Union keeps it up, albeit whether their charges are fair or not could be discussed, but at least someone is standing up for those riders. They claim the MTA is racist. Well, are they really? Perhaps "elitist" would be a better word for it. After all the fare hike would adversely affect the poor regardless of race. They may be a bit crazy, but at least they're fighting hard, and actually bringing real results to riders. The fight against MTA's proposed brutal fare hike seems to have succeeded in placing a limit on the hike and making it less drastic.

MTA's Latest Fare Hike:

MTA Fares
	Cash	Daily Pass	Weekly Pass	Monthly Pass	Monthly Senior Pass
Current	$1.25	$3.00	$14.00	$52.00	$12.00
As of July 1	$1.25	$5.00	$17.00	$62.00	$14.00
January 2009	$1.50	$6.00	$20.00	$75.00	$17.00

Remarkably the cash fare will stay the same until 2009, and the monthly senior will rise by only $5 until 2009. Clearly this is much more reasonable than the previous proposal. Still, the day pass will go up to $8 by that year. That's amazingly expensive if you're going through just say 2-3 transfers, and perhaps even short rides in a day. If you're traveling just a few times per week, and a weekly pass isn't feasible, then it may cost $24 plus for only a few simple routes per week. But at least it's not as expensive as the previous proposal would've been, and there's more to come in terms of a possible reversal or further changes (apparently law suits among other things), so even with this change, there may be more hope. Sure, it can't be easy for the MTA, but there's got to be better ways to close their budget gap than to place the burden on the riders, almost exclusively.

Current MTA Improvements

2007-05-22T18:25:00.000-07:00

To be fair, a few areas have improved lately with respect to public transportation in Los Angeles. On MTA's side of it.

It appears that subway connections have been symmetrized between the Purple Line and the Red Line at Wilshire/Vermont, at least since a while back, according to one fellow who confirmed that the Metro Red Line train now defers departure until transferees from the Purple Line from the upper level (or, was it lower?) have had time to board that train. That was also the case when I last tried it. Finally some common sense is seen in such basic area.
(edited on 5/24) Not. Those must have been exceptions. Too bad. Sometimes dreaming is necessary though. The second train still arrogantly departs right in front of your face as you descend down the escalator from the upper level. In other words, no, the connections don't appear to be synchronized. Oh well. It must be that they sometimes, depending on, uh, the second train waits for transferring passengers before taking off, depending on... who's operating the train frankly. However, to expect the practice to be a new policy would be foolish. This is MTA after all. The worst of them all among major cities. It's the bloody worst. (end edit)

Moreover, Metro Rapid buses appear to run on more and more major arteries, and not only Wilshire blvd anymore. They now run on many main routes, and at the same time hold about twice as many passengers as before. It clearly shows that action has been taken and at least partly replaced the blatant neglect of the past.

Another major confusion that lasted for years was that of the Metro Red Line and Purple Lines on which passengers frequently got confused as to whether the train was the North Hollywood train or not. The train operators now seem to alert passengers upon boarding them which train they're on. That's also a very basic area, as riders frequently boarded the wrong train and had to go back to catch the right one, which never was really obvious.

Well, those are a few improvements, and there are probably others. Whether they're sufficient or warrant a tripling in fare hike is another question though. Is MTA's budget gap's partial, and presumed remedy, let alone not guaranteed, worth hundreds, if not thousands, of riders not being able to afford it at all? Aren't there better ways to fix it. A partial hike would be very understandable, but not this brutal doubling; tripling in a short period of time, and as if the services were that good.

LA's Transit System Complete? Not Yet

2007-04-30T14:34:00.000-07:00

It struck me recently that with all the current issues around transportation and traffic, it's going to take decades before the LA transit system is complete or sufficient. The politics, the budget issues, the lack of funding, the wrong trends, etc; there may not be a complete subway system around in LA before I'm 90 or gone.
Should one simply accept it, and move on? It's never going to be like NYC or S.F here in our life-time, so really, why whine about it? It's a mammoth that's going to take its course regardless of how important is is, or how urgently it is needed anyway.

Public transportation ought to be a public priority. It would ease traffic, improve air quality, improve commerce, apart from providing the only means of transportation for thousands of residents.
Yet, there's this eternal quibble and NIMBYism surrounding it.

MTA's Unfair Fare Hike

2007-04-25T20:39:00.000-07:00

With MTA's recently proposed fare hikes, they'll place a huge burden on low-income riders where even a $1 difference will have a significant impact. Instead of convincing voters to vote for public transportation bills, invite advertisers on Metro stations, lobby for more funding, improve services that don't require a big budget in order to draw new riders, etc, they go for the mainly working class that make up the bulk of their ridership. That's the coward way.
The problem of transit in LA relates to the car and freeway mentality. It's Not that riders pay too low fares. A few cents increase, Ok, but several bucks in a matter of a couple years, it's unreasonable. It's not riders fault that MTA has a budget gap. It's partly their own fault. They didn't want to fix the nitty gritty details that would've enhanced the transit system. It took them until recently to provide long needed improvements. It took decades. Now riders are going to pay for it? It was those riders that long wished for basic improvements, all the while the MTA didn't care.
They ought to be lobbying for better funding, or help switch voters thinking to be in more support of public transportation fundings. There's something seriously wrong with the picture that one of the worst public transportation system among major cities also suffers a great budget deficit. It would be another thing if the system was already great, but it's either bad, or sucked overwhelmingly until just recently, with few exceptions. Riders were already the most affected by that which sucked. With a major fare hike, they will now effectively have to pay for having endured it.

MTA's Proposed New Fare Hikes:

MTA Fares
	Cash	Daily Pass	Weekly Pass	Montly Pass	Monthly Senior Pass
Current	$1.25	$3.00	$14.00	$52.00	$12.00
As of July 1	$1.25	$5.00	$20.00	$75.00	$37.50
January 2009	$2.00	$8.00	$32.00	$120.00	$60.00

MTA Still Require Riders to Carry Own Change

2007-04-12T20:22:00.000-07:00

Does the MTA not realize that it can be a real hassle for people to try to break bills in advance each time prior to riding a bus? Do they not know that there are no coin machines except inside laundromats and that they require you to be a customer before using them? Don't they already know that most businesses are not fond of breaking peoples dollar bills unless they purchase something, and that bus riders are not fond of purchasing something every time they need change for the bus?
Just wondering why this insistence on placing such a burden on riders. There are many bus systems in the world that carry change on the buses. Perhaps it's an issue of safety for the MTA. Ok, but there's got to be some alternative to the current mess. The current mess is completely unreliable, in that unless you manage to find change you may not be able to ride the bus. You can ask the driver for mercy, but if they're sour or cranky types, or simply in a bad mood, they might refuse to let you on on anything less than full fare, which means you'll have to wait for the next bus, which can wreak havoc in a person's schedule.
Wouldn't it be a good time to implement some newer system--perhaps electronic bus cards-- on the newer buses, like on the new Metro Rapid ones? Or, likely the MTA doesn't consider the current mess to be a big deal. Typically, only their customers do. If it was a good idea, it'd probably have happened already.
But the moral is that you're forced to beg for change everytime you need ride the bus, and don't find a daypass or busspass feasible. And in cases where you can't obtain coins without making a purchase, you're forced to spend more money as well. Add to that that the cheapest items cost typically at least 50 cents. That ends up as paying the fare plus 50 cents plus the extra effort.
The alternative is to keep a jar of quarters at home and keep it sufficiently loaded at all times. In a way, this is laughable, but it's the reality.

A Note on Voters & Traffic

2007-03-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

With new developments taking place everywhere from Downtown LA to the Westside & beyond, it's now coming into light how naive voters are when complaining about the prospect of increased traffic. Like someone has said on here before, voters are a big part of the reason for the inadequate PT system of LA. It's quite ironic that presumably the 'same' voters who opposed an earlier subway expansion to the Westside, and who do not want to see an increase in bus services in their areas, are now complaining about traffic when inevitable city growth takes place. What do they expect, that development should simply stop, or that LA should be managed like a small city with only minor developments being allowed? Why do people oppose public transportation, AND traffic, AND building development, combined? Perhaps it should be noted that Los Angeles is America's second largest city. It's not a 'burb' or some quiet Midwest town. It's a major city after all. In a county of about 10 million inhabitants, perhaps it's reasonable to expect that some major developments will take place every once in a while. And that the only viable solution to traffic problems is to drop the NIMBY mindset when it comes to public transportation. It's funny, how that in most other major cities, public transportation is a given element of their infrastructures. Many LA residents seem to believe that LA isn't a major city.

Frankly, the same can be said about other areas. When it comes to the gang problem, which virtually no-one goes untouched by, everyone wants to see a solution, but when it finally comes to increasing the amount of police officers, people don't want to contribute. The same thing with the homeless problem. People don't want homeless services in their own neighbourhoods, yet say they want to solve homelessness in the city. Then, perhaps we deserve all the problems that we have, after all, including the traffic.

About Redundant Bus Transfers

2007-01-28T21:56:00.000-08:00

There is another thing with the way in which the MTA operates its bus system that probably leaves many people confounded. It's that on certain routes when you catch a bus and think you're going to the default destination, that bus will in some cases stop short and have you get off the bus to catch a second bus that closes the gap. And this happens for no apparent logical reason. Sometimes the first bus stops short a mere few blocks away from the anticipated destination, and people are forced to transfer, not to a different bus line, but simply to proceed on the same line. Sometimes that last stretch is short enough to to make it seem unnecessary with a second bus transfer, but just long enough just to make it unfeasible to walk for most passengers.
Sometimes this becomes a real hassle, as there are often no indications as to which it will be. There are no hints on the buses that tell whether the bus will go all the way or if it will be the short version. It's been common that the drivers have not alerted passengers prior them entering the bus. This leads to a repeating scenario in which people end up with an unnecessary transfer. Rather than skipping the short-route bus the first time around, they think they're on the right bus, but are then sometimes abruptly told to get off, sometimes mere blocks away from their ending point.
It's hard to figure out why some buses are capable of traveling that extra mile while others aren't. It clearly causes confusion. It really appears to be an arbitrary decision. People with wheelchairs have to get off, elderly have to get off. And sometimes when the bus is crowded and passengers have managed to grab themselves a seat, they will now have to give up those seats and compete for a seat a second time, on the same route.

There are other complications stemming from this. For example sometimes people have already paid their fare, but cannot verify it to the driver of the second bus, and this has sometimes caused disputes. That alone is a stress factor. There are no bus tickets or even receipts given for one-way fares, and the drivers on the transfer buses often cannot distinguish transferees from new passengers. This undeniably leads to distress since many riders are rather poor, and paying double fare makes a difference to them economically, as well as it does when they must argue their righteousness to a driver due to a scenario no fault of their own.
You wonder what the big deal would be to modify the line-number a little bit on those buses that travel the short route, in order to distinguish them from the regular lines. It's quite astonishing that nothing has been done to alert passengers of this in advance. Rather people are being shuffled on and off the buses like cattle, and may end up becoming late, paying a second fare, etc. How about simply making all buses go all the way. Anything would be better than keeping this inane practice in place.

How to File a Complaint Against the MTA

2007-01-09T02:21:00.000-08:00

Outlined are steps for filing a complaint against the MTA, or "Metro".
Whomever needs to file a complaint against the MTA for whatever wacko behavior or circumstances encountered, look no further, simply follow these steps in order to report the incident; quote:

When you complain, give as much details as possible. This betters your case. And you should report everything you see, as complaints are a public record.

Here's what you should provide when you complain:

Badge number (the number on the driver's shirt sleeve): This is not required if you do not board the bus.

Bus number: This is always required. This is the four-digit number of the coach (five for contract lines and three for rail lines), not the line it was on.

Line number: This is always required as well. If explanation is still needed, this is the big number on the green or orange screen above the windshield that tells what street the bus works.

Time of incident: Always required.

Place of incident: What bus stop did you see the incident, and what direction was the bus traveling?

Division number: This is optional and almost never used by most riders, but greatly speeds up reporting if it is available. The division is the garage the bus operates out of. This is either found in the corner of the windshield near the door, and Metro has plastered the numbers also above the rearmost passenger window and on the back either near the bus number or the center left. The divisions are GC-1, GC-2, SGV-3, SB-5, WSC-6/10, WSC-7, SFV-8, SGV-9, SFV-15 and SB-18. Division 6 is a part-time garage in Venice (soon to be Culver City) and is administered by Division 10.

The more information you give Metro, the better it can respond to it. And, whenever you see something wrong, do not hesitate to report it.

Information originally, and generously provided by commenter Wad in a comments section earlier on this blog.

Metro Rapid Buses; Re-Painted Again?

2006-12-08T00:21:00.000-08:00

Well, at least so it seems. You can spot a couple of them on occasion. The Metro Rapid buses were just replaced with new, really good looking buses in red/silver. Yet, the schizophrenia has set in again, and they're now becoming orange and silver? Or is it just a couple of them? Anyway, there's nothing wrong with that color combination, but it'd always be nicer if the bus schedule was made more tight, and the subway system operated with a bit more of efficiency. But oh well, if the MTA likes to tinker with colors, it wouldn't be surprising in terms of where priorities lie.
Can imagine that while people on certain routes still wait for the bus for 25-30 minutes on average, the heads at the MTA sit and try to figure out what new finish the Metro Rapids should be in. And those buses are already new. The bus delays are getting old, however. Again this appears to be a sign that the MTA are working for outsiders first, residents second. They're more concerned with eye-candy, and whatever prestige that brings about to the eye of an outsider. The fact that elderly folks have to push their way onto the bus, or stand up for 1 hour, doesn't bother them the slightest. The jerks know there's no other option for many people. During the bus-strikes many people got stuck in their homes. Did that serve as a wake-up call? Hell no, they're still as of late 06 tinkering with new colors and other trivialities. It means that next time a strike occurs, some elderly or handicapped may well die in their homes. That's the urgent nature of the lack of public transportation in Los Angeles.

"Spend money on trains, subway"

2006-11-27T22:14:00.000-08:00

Nice to see I am not alone in envisioning where Los Angeles belongs in terms of having an extensive transportation network. Congestion on freeways, being the obvious no-brainer that indicates that a relief is needed; well, the other is Los Angeles as the 2nd city in the US, yet still scrambling for buses like they'd do in the Flintstones.
Here's what some other's have said relating to this topic.

The first letter in the Times addresses the thing with "busways", just right on the spot. They're indeed a short-sighted substitute for "subways". Just as well what I've thought of is that of L.A. growing, and that traffic will only increase. That along with the flat, spreadout nature of the city, makes a subway railway inevitable. There is no comparison in terms of wise investment, between more buses and more subway/trains. I'm not an "expert" in this area, but I'm a human equipped with alas, "common sense". I personally won't die if the subway-extension won't happen during my remaining life-time, but why the heck not argue for it while I'm here. I drive whenever I can get hands on a vehicle, usually through work. Apart from the subway, car is still the most convenient. I'm considering what my next car will be. While the MTA tries to "keep me", and "attract me", I can only wish them the best of luck. Metro's "excellence", relatively speaking, is still far too spot-wise. I could go on to rant about this now, but think it's already been addressed.

One obvious thing though is that you can't take the bus on a Saturday. It's just a plain pleasure breaker; same on Sundays, though Sundays are virtual busless days. You either have to spend an hour somehow organizing bus departures, transfers and arrival times, which alone makes a trip's worth questionable. But if you don't do that, you're in for frustrations in about 8 out of 10 times. The remaining option is to simply "bite" and to deal with it. But the question is why you should have to "deal" with something concerning basic mobility in a city that's infamously unwalkable? We're not in Iraq, we shouldn't have to "deal", just to cope with daily life. But indeed rather often, MTA public transportation becomes the issue rather than the facilitator.
And speaking of the subway, that would solve much of the problem. The subway runs inherently smoother and more streamlined, and doesn't depend on the driver's "mood" for consistent service, as well as has no hampering traffic.

Metro Rapid Displays Bus Arrivals at Stops

2006-11-25T22:25:00.000-08:00

Came to think of it. Metro Rapid bus stops use their electronic screen displays to display upcoming bus arrivals (on some routes). Not to inform about some upcoming road work.
So if they can do it for bus stops, why not for the subway stations? Has the Metro Rapid project gone over their heads? Perhaps they've now invested so much in them that they've forgotten about the subway. The Metro subway is the true flagship of Los Angeles' public transportation. It ought to come first in terms of 'posh' upgrades like scrolling electronic displays that display arrival times.

But the time displays at Metro Rapid stops, help ease the tedium of waiting. Because they give you feedback. On the subway stations though, there is no feedback other than a bout of air that pushes out of the tunnels prior a train's arrival. Wherever you look for feedback (information) on the stations, you're either reminded of rules and prohibitions, or of what's happening at some desolate Metro station's ecalator miles away.
There's this institutional feel to many of them, where you feel almost more like a 'number' than an actual customer. The sub-text is as though, "so you came too late...too bad.....ding dang dung...Attention all patrons: do not walk, sit or stand on the edges of the platform...".
I mean common, is this San Quentin or something? As in, "The Trains Will Come In time.....Until Then, Just Watch Your Behavior".

More on Metro Subway's Lack of Time Displays

2006-11-23T21:37:00.000-08:00

Last time I took the subway it struck me again what awkward choices MTA makes in terms of what to communicate to their customers. There were 5 announcement, first in English, then repeated in Spanish at the station, all within the span of about 15 minutes. 5 announcements, all reminders of Metro's pity rules, such as gas powered scooters not being allowed, eating, smoking or drinking not being allowed, etc, etc. And as usual, it was quite clear that virtually no-one was paying attention to them.
And then on the electronic displays, on all of them, were all these notifications, which never fail to impress in the wrong way. If you stand at for example the Universal City station, and try to make a quick assessment of where most of the passengers are likely to be heading, you must presume that most of them will not be heading to Pasadena anytime soon. Most of them will most likely head to Hollywood, Downtown/Union Station or anywhere in between. Yet on all these electronic displays are these obscure messages about some repair that's going to be made on say, the 'north bound Metro Gold Line track to Pasadena, on very specific times and dates.
The displays also drag on. So even if you're that 1 in 10,000 Metro riders that find the information meaningful, you must spend an undue amount of seconds with a tilted head just to read in those couple of sentences. So the moral is that essentially useless information is even being displayed to slowly.

What if they did the same thing at airports; imagine if LAX replaced all their arrival/departure information with rule reminders for people. That'd be ridiculous! But that's really how patronizing the MTA is.

If they weren't half asleep, they would be displaying train departure information by default, and then add in whatever else as a secondary. For example, they would be displaying the date and time, followed by the next train departure, and cycle between those two, as a default. At least if they knew what efficiency was. Then maybe once hourly they could add in those obnoxious "Attention Metro Gold Line Customers: on Friday the 25th of February between 2:2:45 pm to 3:07:PM Pacific Time, a partial repair will be performed on the Northbound track at Chinatown, north of Downtown L.A, on the way to Pasadena, but not South Pasadena, and not Long Beach. If you are traveling to Pasadena on this day of February, please be aware that trains may not be running as usual...After Friday the 25th of February trains will start running on regular schedule again........................zzzz"-messages, as deemed necessary. It just seems disturbingly awkward to waste all that screen display with information that's relevant to a miniscule amount of people. Why don't they just display train departure times?

Final Word On MTA Awards

2006-11-04T18:20:00.000-08:00

(At least, let's hope it is)
Will it be fair to say that the awards Metro has won are not for them being the "best" transit agency in the nation-- for they're not, but, as someone has said before, for investing a lot and for being proactive in terms of new builds and services? That's very different from actually being the best.

All advertisement pertaining to Metro's award-winning claim they are the best transit agency in the nation. That's simply a lie. What is true, is that they do build, add, and improve in many areas. That's not the same as actually being the best.

How about at least being candid about it, by for the MTA to state that they are Trying to improve, Trying to become the best, and that it will take time? As opposed to stating "We are the nation's best", when it's so much not true. So not true. Then why lie, especially since no-one's buying it? That's the point, Why lie? What's going to change by lying about it? Do the believe they can fool their customers into agreeing with them by simply claiming things?

Perhaps they also figured that late evening riders wouldn't pose any threat, and therefore ignore their concerns. It makes sense, because if they're OK with lying, chances are much higher that they're also OK with neglecting. And the neglect has been, despite it using to be much worse, still widespread.

MTA's Subway Station Neglects

2006-11-02T22:16:00.000-08:00

The MTA subway system has now existed for more than ten years. More than ten years, and there are still basic, easily fixable problems unresolved. One of them is, as said in the past, the lack of scheduling information. And it's not just a lack that emerges only after a longwinded cynical analysis, but it's a striking one: Not only are there no time-tables at Metro stations, but there are also no announcements telling about upcoming trains. And not just that, but there aren't even any hints!
While the subway runs more consistent than the buses, and therefore can be relied upon better in general, this is still a perplexing problem. Without even knowing where to begin. The subway announcements are there, and can be implemented and afforded, but apparently not without providing irrelevant information. While as stated previously, MTA readily announces that people shouldn't walk or stand on the platform edges, not even once, do they announce when the next train is coming. And there are nor indicators whatsoever. And this is the information that most people want to know. The majority of transit riders don't care about the rules, because the majority of people don't break the rules, and the majority of people are already aware of these rules. Simply because they're posted everywhere. Apparently that's why MTA has decided to announce them aloud as well, over and over. It just reeks with incompetence.

About 3 weeks ago, I was waiting for the North Hollywood train at the Wilshire/Vermont Metro station. So did several others. As time went by, people started leaving the station, one by one. I thought they were just getting tired of waiting ad nauseum. Not did I know that there was no more train to come in actuality! The station was unsupervised, and all the people there waited in vain for a train that would never arrive. Great! And what was the MTA announcing in the speakers? "Attention all patrons, please do not walk or stand........." It's crazy. If they can announce that, which nobody is even paying attention to, they can't explain when the last train will depart? Or put up signs near entrances, so that passengers don't have to enter the stations after the last train departure to their destinations? Would it be rocket science to purchase some crayons and school sheets from a dollar store, and jot down the following before taping it up on the station walls:

To All Metro Riders
During Weekdays: The last train to North Hollywood will leave this station at XPM. The Last Train to Union Station will leave this station at XPM. The Last Train to Wilshire/Western will leave this station at XPM."

And do the same for weekends.

This is not rocketscience? Right. You don't even need to qualify for an "award" to realize the need.

So not only are train departures not indicated anywhere in general. But not even the last train arrivals are. It means people will keep coming into the stations in good faith, ten years into MTA's subway operation, believing they're on time for the next or last train. Only 40 min to 1 hour later, do they realize how hopeless it was. This absurdity defies wordy description.

And remember, as you're waiting in vain for the last train, that:
"You may not walk, stand or sit on the edges of the platform"...What a freakshow.
My dog could do better; and remember that some people are elderly, or handicapped, but are still left to "happily" wait for the last train which has already left. A crayon and a paper sheet, from a dollar store, could remedy the problem. It's not even a budget related issue, but one of sheer neglect. Sheer neglect. Meanwhile the MTA keeps bragging about being the best transit agency in the nation.

If Los Angeles' MTA is the "best" in the nation, my awe goes out to the transit riders in other cities. How do they make it?

Watch Out for Staph Infections On Buses & Trains

2006-10-23T19:54:00.000-07:00

After stumbling on an online article at laweekly.com
about how staph infections are spreading through the Skid Row area, infecting cops, firemen, nurses, and others who work in that area......

It asserts what I've been trying to say previously. That filthy seats on buses and trains are worse than just an eye sore. While, first off, the homeless situation on Skid Row is a disgrace and a clear sign of society's indifference toward the plight of people in need, it also means something for the MTA and their seats, and consequently for their passengers. If a staph infected homeless, say, veteran, catches the subway from Downtown L.A. to say, the Valley, well, guess what may happen to the next person who sits on that seat? That's right, he or she may get a staph infection.
Anyhow, this is not to say this bacteria is MTA's fault, for it isn't. But they clearly could care more about the hygiene on their buses and trains. It's quite ugly if it gets to a point wherein regular passengers get infected with a potentially dangerous bacteria, just because the city fails to deal with the homeless problem, and the MTA fail to keep their seats disinfected. That also goes in the face of their glorified ads. It ain't so romantic in reality, yet, a bottle of disinfectant from a dollar store could make a relevant difference on an entire car of staph germs. I can imagine purchasing a bottle of disinfectant; spray all of the seats in one particular car all in a matter of 10-15 minutes. In other words, it would be easy, and could prevent staph infections.
If repelling looking seats would be unreasonable to complain about.
So, could not seats get disinfected, At Least, once a week? As opposed to never?

If you read that laweekly article you're in for some reaffirmation of the neglecting mindset I've been whining over here. It truly exists, and plagues not only the MTA. The difference is, that MTA is a public transit agency utilized by a cross section of the city's population, whereas Skid Row, may be an area that's very extreme, and therefore tough to relate for/care for (which is a disgrace btw). The same could not be said about the MTA, which encompasses everyone of every background. Yet is left to breed staph all the same.

Better do something now, before it's too late.
Either fix the homeless problem immediately, or sanitize the seats until that can get done.
I mean, you don't want to wait for a bus for 40 minutes and get infected with staph on top of it. Because if that's the case, you might as well get ignored by the bus driver.

It happened again, with Metro Rapid

2006-10-17T17:11:00.000-07:00

I was on Wilshire blvd east of La Brea on the Saturday; stood and waited... and waited. Thought I was going to Westwood for a visit. Many others waited in the same area. For darn long.

The crowd incrementally grew in size but no damn bus in sight. For 15 more minutes and no bus in sight. 10 more minutes and no bus in sight. 5 more, no bus. 4 more, no bus.

Then when it came, it was packed, so the driver passed us by to the other side of the adjacent intersection and let off his passengers there, so that he didn't have to deal with more people trying to push themselves aboard.

After that, it took probably 7 minutes for the next Metro Rapid bus to arrive. It was also quite packed, but at least good to stand on.

It was just a hideous wait that virtually killed the instinct to pleasure. And it happens all the freaking time. Don't ride the bus on a Saturday. Wherever you're going, chances are it won't feel worth it.
In this way, the MTA kills quality of life. I don't see how they 'had' to take that long. Wonder if anybody did. This is Regardless of size or budget. Their budget isn't so bad that it can't supply enough buses to avoid these absurd scenarios.

Also, viewing the ads on the bus it makes for a complete oxymoron. You don't reasonably ride MTA when going out for a dining. You just don't, unless you're forced to. For christ sake, AT LEAST LIVE UP TO YOUR ADS! Or at least take them down and stop the provocation!

More Train/ More Bus V.S More Subway

2006-10-11T19:38:00.001-07:00

It should be asked whether the current build plans of the exposition line, along with the recent Orange bus line in the Valley are more bad than good. They're obviously good since any addition to the Los Angeles transportation network is urgently needed. Yet, thinking about the future, what can beat the subway? Why not expand the redline westward instead of building the exposition rail? Why not consolidate money for a subway in place of the orange bus line? Do they even think of that? I know the mayor does, as do a few others. But there still seems to be a short-sighted priority taking place of a long-term solution to traffic congestion and efficient populous mobility in the city. The Metro Red line extension on Wilshire is an example of a loser to those priorities. What could be better for commuters, businesses, tourists, residents than a subway between downtown, through Wilshire blvd, to the beach? That's such a gold-mine being dodged in favor of lesser improvements. But why?
Is it the bus rider union that's forcing the MTA to up the ante rather than delay for something better due to often miserable conditions? Who knows, but it appears that the most frustrating misses in LA's public transit network will not get fixed anytime soon. The Green Line to LAX is already confirmed a loser because someone believed a bus from Downtown L.A was better. Now the Metro Red line's extension is apparently also becoming a loser in favor of the exposition line.
One thing is certain. Los Angeles will become even More dependent on public transportation in the future, and it would make sense to prepare for that now rather than messing around with half-baked projects. Now when there appears to be a momentum for subway expansions they seem to go for lesser alternatives.

Imagine a NYC with the subway veins going along the edges of Manhattan rather than through its center. Well, if NYC public transit was being managed by LA's public transit leaders, that's what might have happened. The damn asses in the MTA clearly never ride the bus or trains themselves. In NYC the mayor rides the subway to work. You couldn't blame him for being out of touch with NYC's transit realities. Here, the fat cats sit with their overfed bellies and smirks while letting people die in hospitals and jails. Is anything considered an urgency to them? My dog could do a better job in his sleep. He'd make sure that people at least got to and from their jobs reliably.

MTA Won an Award? Next Joke?

2006-10-04T14:01:00.000-07:00

Apparently Metro in Los Angeles has been named something like the most "outstanding" public transportation agency in the nation. Wa ha ha hah! Sure, according to whose standards?

By what measurements on earth has MTA in Los Angeles been named something that high?
This is almost as peculiar as MTA's policies and services; it simply doesn't make any sense. You ask 5 out of ten riders and I could bet they would lambast MTA for poor services (without being smug), and if not that, far from naming it the best public transportation agency in the nation. It almost hurts to read about it. What about S.F, NYC, Chicago and other cities' transit agencies? How dare anyone even suggest that L.A has the best one? If anything L.A has the worst one. Hopefully that will change in the future, but as of now, it probably is with respect to amount of people served.

I'd suggest that rather than bragging and showing off, how about putting the money where the mouths are? For example, how about fixing overcrowding, un-timeliness, asynchronous connections, un-clarities, ambiguities, and all the other things that plague MTA, BEFORE start bragging about how great you are?

Is this just another sign of how out of touch they are? Apparently the MTA can't realize when an extra bus is needed. We've talked about it before, how they fail to insure the subway connections work in symmetry. Such no-brainers that sort of make the basis for good public transit services. Yet they fail to clear those basic things before going on to brag about award winning. I couldn't joke about something that rang hollower. MTA's services sucks, ok? There are still many occasions when the bus is too packed, after a crowd of 30-40 has already waited for it for 40 minutes. That alone is a disqualifier.

Award? Best transit system in the nation? That's not even a joke. It's a lie.

A Note Regarding Metro Rapid Display Disparities

2006-10-02T09:30:00.000-07:00

Is it true that the electronic displays at Metro Rapid bus stops are more consistent the further west on Wilshire blvd you get, as opposed to further east where most of them appear dysfunctional?

Once, when I used to work in Downtown L.A, I used to sometimes take the Metro Rapid bus to work, and at least one Metro Rapid stop was displaying the same message for about two months, which was something like "Metro Rapid Display is Being Upgraded". Then I noticed that on the Westside of Wilshire blvd, the displays were working and were apparently upgraded much earlier.
I mean, does it take two months, or more, to upgrade an electronic display? I could do it faster than it took to write this blog post. It's a matter of typing a message and hit the 'enter' button. Yet it took at least two months, and frankly, they may still be 'upgrading'.

I find that to be an insult. Why do grown people have to go through this type of nonsense? Of course it sends a message that "we couldn't care less". This is one of the issues that makes it annoying to watch MTA's positive self ads, as you contrast them with the reality on the ground.
But furthermore, this particular neglect appears to affect the economically poorer East side much worse. In other words it's a statement, probably toward minorities, or toward the working class. Either MTA is afraid to miss out on something on the Westside, or, doesn't care for people on the Eastside, or both plus minus. Whichever it is, a pointer is toward the latter; MTA dug up a Chinese cemetery a few months ago while working on the East L.A rail extension. It was taken as a cultural affront. So why not the absurd delay of upgrading the Metro Rapid displays being an affront as well? It is, regardless of the circumstances behind. What is the justification for taking more than 2 months to change some stupid text displays? It's all computerized, and in reality probably takes no more than 5 minutes to complete, provided that the motivation is there, so what the heck is the delay about then?

"I Love Metro Rapid". Suuure. God bless the car!

Filthy, Unclean Seats on Buses and trains

2006-09-24T20:55:00.000-07:00

That filth wouldn't be a big deal to someone who hadn't seen where it came from.
Sometimes a homeless person will sit down, which is Ok, and fair. But what if a person has defecated, which certainly happens, and then sits down on a seat, which certainly happens, and next come you or me sitting down on that same seat, and guess what we will leave with glued behind?

So the question is if the MTA ever sanitize their seats. Nobody is expecting immaculate results, but at least clean to the point where it's hygienically safe to ride without having to ride standing out of fear of having feces smeared onto your clothes. Bad hygiene brings about disease. Disease ought to be a serious enough issue to care about.

But it appears that nobody cares. You see seats black of filth, and the next thing you see may be a homeless person who has a fecal odor. I mean, poor that dude, but how about sanitizing the seats? Isn't basic hygiene an issue to the MTA? Well, I know it is because I've seen people cleaning up in Metro stations, but as far as the seats are concerned, in which people will actually sit down and come in close contact with whatever germs live on them, there appears to be an MTA neglect at play.

If anyone knows whether the seats are being cleaned, feel free to say it. But they don't appear to be, and I guarantee that on many of those seats live a history of particles from feces, farts, pee, and you name it. If on average 300 persons who defecate on themselves sit on Metro bus and train seats per year, it means some power of that number of other people will have feces smeared onto their clothes per year. I know it sounds crude, but it's true; if the MTA don't sanitize their seats, that is what will happen. Is anyone really OK with sitting on shit? Apparently the MTA believes they are.

Is it On Purpose That Buses And Trains Don't Wait?

2006-09-18T12:47:00.000-07:00

It ought to be mandatory that a bus or train that's about to take off, waits for arriving customers before doing so. For example if there's one train arriving on the upper section in a Metro station, it's quite absurd for a train in the lower section to leave without picking the arrivals up first. Don't know if this is a purposefully neglected point, like another area of imbecile incompetence, or if it's just a co-incidence.

Clearly, as pointed out earlier, the bus drivers often don't give a dime whether passengers are hurrying in from another bus or not. They just blatantly take off without them, which is one of those fundamental points that render MTA a lousy transit service. I bet not even black market cab drivers do that. Things that are so EASY to do something about, yet aren't. The subway is much better than the bus in terms of timeliness, consistency etc, but one can never be sure when it comes to the MTA, that they actually didn't ignore something very basic about their customer service. (That's right, ignore. It doesn't take 20 years to fix something that fundamental to good service unless you ignore it.(
Sometimes it's appeared on the subway as well, that one incoming train is ignored by another one taking off, or, the operator waits to take off just before the transferees have had time to reach the train. I just find that very rude to do against all kinds of people.

Anyway, with the subway, it may be that they've fixed that, but as far as the buses go, it seems to be a literal policy of the MTA to not wait for transferees. Of course someone will say if they did they would fall behind schedule. Sure, if they waited just an extra 10 seconds or so, before taking off, it would "significantly" alter their arrival times. But what schedule, anyway? Nobody in the city knows the bus schedule. Unless you collect a bunch of pamphlets or memorize 9 dozen calls to 1800-COMMUTE or jot down schedule times from www.mta.net, there's no way in the world that you're going to know the bus schedules, so what difference would it even make in that regard to be a bit more polite?
This blatant ignoring surely can be avoided. Better fix the fundamentals first, before you go on to flash fancy narcissus ads. To be polite, is Free.

More About The Subway Announcements

2006-09-11T21:38:00.000-07:00

There is also this thing, that the more they utilize those signaling warning message, the more transit riders will grow accustomed to them, which may then undermine their efficiency once it really counts.

As it appears today, people are already growing numb to these announcements. Since virtually no-one is walking, standing or sitting near the edge of the platform, people aren't going to pay attention to a message that doesn't even pertain to them.
They might in fact get so used to it that when a real emergency occurs, they might automatically ignore the "ding doung dang dong".

It would be more common sense to apply a stripe of warning tape along a foot off the edges or so, to heed people away from them, visually. Because if they're going to start to announce all basic rules and precautions, it can quickly become a circus. There would be announcements like:

Attention All Passengers:

"Please do not sleep or walk on the train tracks".

"Please do not throw food at walls or ceilings".

"Please do not move SUV's down the escalators".

"Please do not eat your tickets".

"Please do not board the trains before they arrive".

"Please do not place your head in front of any moving trains"

"Please do not run, play or dance on top of the trains"

"Please do not walk nude near the edges of the platform"

Why not, see these are things people don't do anyway. So they'd make as much sense as the current announcements. People would just ignore them because they didn't relate to them. Moreover when there's really something to be announced, people will expect the same silly message to follow the signal, and subsequently may try to ignore it.

Announcements in the Metro Stations 2

2006-08-30T15:17:00.000-07:00

And as for the warnings "Please to not sit or stand near the edge of the platform". Did something happen 10 years into MTA's subway operation? Did passengers suddenly start falling off the platform edges, and god forbid, were ran over by the train en masse?

With reservations, I say, this is probably one of the dumbest things the MTA's come up with (It was probably supposed to be a good decision). It just reeks with an out-of-touchness.
It's obvious that no-one; none, is standing near the edge of virtually any subway platform, yet they keep spewing that message at awkward moments, like past midnight when there are two people waiting for the train, and implying some urgency.

While, if it was only about some mis-guided announcement, by itself that'd be easily acceptable. But the dumb announcements come from the same transit agency that's screwed up in about as many areas as they spew that message per day. You know that it's the MTA, the same agency that's become infamous in the world of public transportation, that'd crafted those messages. That's what makes it that painful.

Anyway, why couldn't they announce something of higher importance? Not to say that safety cautions aren't important but they're already posted on notes everywhere. So how about either to shut-up, or announce when the next train is coming?

After all, what's the percentage of transit riders who stand or walk near the platform edges? About 1 promille per day? Yet everyone has to hear that message, over and over; morning, lunch, midnight, day in an day out, and for how many years?? That damn "ding dong ding dong", Look MTA's found a new toy to play with! Jeeeze!
What's next? "Ding dong ding dong: Remember that it's illegal to drive motor bikes on Metro stations", and repeat that message 99 times or so per day?

Announcements in the Metro Stations

2006-08-26T14:48:00.000-07:00

Ding Dong Dang, blah blah blah, 12 o'clock, 12.07 o'clock, 1:PM , two days later in the morning Ding Dong Dang, blah blah, and so on. Blah blah blah, in English, then 30 second later, blah blah blah in Spanish. Or, simply, Blah blah blah, in Spanish, but no follow-up in English.

Ok, MTA, we KNOW, probably 99% of us KNOW that you're not supposed to sit on the edge of the subway platform, and we KNOW, now 5 years after 9/11 with notices everywhere, that it's advisable to report unattended packages at subway stations. Why Now? Why these arbitrary, annoying messages one of a sudden? Are you bored? Didn't you find anything better to do than spewing these headache messages over and over?

Sometimes, or oftentimes, the announcement(s) come when there are about 3 people in the station that can hear them, and in 99.9999% of the cases these people aren't even standing, sitting, or walking near the edge of the platform. If you're going to say something, say something of relevance to more than 1 out of 20000 people, as that darn announcement signal can be quite disruptive. And also, you don't need to remind everyone 2 times per hour, sometimes, that they may not stand, sit or walk near the edge of the platforms. What's all this meaningless gibberish? How about announcing when the next train is coming instead? That's indeed information that's lacking, and would be much better followed that damn Ding Dong Dang.

Update Notice

2006-08-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

This blog will be updated at a less frequency than during the first two months. Otherwise it would sound like commenting for the sake of it, but that wasn't the point with this blog. The point was that MTA is the worst transit agency in the world, save for a few exceptions here and there, and had caused real pain which was meant to be expressed here.
So now there will be updates, but probably less often as many of the issues have already been posted about.

Subway Retardness

2006-08-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

What's all these silly "Tap Here" devices in all Metro stations? For sure, they must serve a purpose but MTA is so idiotic that it leads people to believe they're supposed to tap their tickets on these devices. There's nothing, certainly not with clarity, that informs transit riders of the nature of these stationed machines. It's not a threat to our survival, but it's so unprofessional. When buildings are about to be constructed, you see signs indicating that. It's not as though people would die if they didn't, but it's just a sense of basic courtesy to inform others what's going on. MTA can't even do it for their ridiculous "tap" machines, but rather let them stand there to confuse people.

Another inane thing about the subway stations are the scrolling displays that instead of displaying the time for upcoming trains, keep displaying these security messages, and notes about some broken escalator. If an escalator doesn't work at some particular Metro station, good that they inform people about it. But just don't use the only electronic display in the entire station, where the most intuitive thing to look for is time display for the next train. But MTA and times/schedules is among the worst in the world.
For 10 years-plus now, L.A. MTA hasn't figured out that scrolling electronic displays are for reporting schedules, or, duh, just any information that is of immediate interest to the greatest amount of people. A broken escalator might be of crucial interest to about 10 people each hour, whereas most riders are able and can walk the stairs if necessary. Same with the security messages. Put up permanent posters that get time to sink in, rather than wasting the screen display estates. As good as the subway is, there's still a lot of confusion. People have no clue when the next train is arriving, or where it's going to, as colors, signs, all look the same for all destinations, and are placed in no particular order.
Most developed subway systems prioritize time and schedule for main information display. Not arbitrary, even stupid, messages like those telling parents to look out for their children at subway stations. Duh, please. For some reason the MTA thinks parents need to be reminded of their parental responsibility at the subway station, never mind that most people who are in a station at any given time aren't parents or don't have kids.
And sometimes some voice announces some highly arbitrary message over the mike, such as reminding people of not eating or drinking in the stations. Like, once a day or so. There's no consistency, and sometimes the message is in Spanish. Well, for whatever reason, MTA is the most unprofessional public transit agency in the developed world. I'd bet they are. They don't even seem to look at others for ideas, but go their own stubborn ways until things get stuck and don't work well.

MTA likes to not inform people. It's as though "be happy you've got these new tap machines, now shutup and go ride the train". Oh, also, the escalator at the west end entrance to the pershing square station might not be working. Now several thousands know it, but they don't know when the next train will arrive.

Metro's 'Self' Ad Campaign revisited

2006-08-09T19:44:00.001-07:00

MTA has invested heavily in ads on buses, bus stops, in pamphlets etc. Those ads are bizarre. The ones that glamorizes public transportation are. They likely resonate with very few people, and some of those people must be leaders and ad creators within the MTA.

It's just a sign of how out of whack they are with realities of public transportation in L.A. All issues, and more, addressed on this blog fly in the face of their idyllic little posters and pictures that imply strongly that MTA and their services are "great".
And moreover they can't be making much sense. Not until the MTA actually improves services and enhances standards will they lure new customers, since that must be what they're aiming for, partly.
They don't seem to get it. MTA's currently associated with 2 main things, probably, without being smug, to most bus riders who use their services. One is bad, unreliable and/or unpredictable services. The other one is MTA's ad-campaign. That means that on one hand there are a lot of issues that need to be addressed, on the other hand there are self-glamorizing ads promoting the service that stands for those issues.
It's almost as if dumb dumber are running the MTA. How about focusing on improving services first, then promote those services without having to lie? Eh, not the other way around. Because as long as public transportation is sluggish, inefficient, overcrowded and more, people will take notice of that, and will continue to avoid it, regardless of what the arrogant oafs within the MTA think.
It's also suggests that to flash fancy self-promoting ads to a crowd that largely hates their service, means they don't take their riders seriously. But that's nothing new.
As if a customer who waited for the bus for 30 minutes, then came the bus and it was full, so he had to wait another 20-30 minutes for the next one, and it happens on occasion after occasion. How in hell is that person going to be appealed by their ads? That's like acting like a careless jerk, then go about and expect people to dig you anyway. That's arrogance.
If they really want to increase ridership, they should focus on providing excellent services that make up for a real alternative to the car. Trying to compensate for a lousy service with paper ads just won't cut it.
And since largely the same people keep viewing these ads over and over, the ads won't have the indented effect of attracting new riders. But, frankly the MTA makes up for that. By allowing to show those money-making schemes on Metro bus ad monitors, that prey on poor and low-income people. As if scams were just what these people needed to be presented with. Most riders don't care anyway, but in cases where they do, they will be ripped off.

The largely same revolving faction of people keep viewing the largely same Metro ads. An ad that's being shown to the same group of people over and over will lose effect, if it, in this case, ever had any. Moreover, it's the riders themselves who are the true insiders, and will know whether those ads reasonate with reality or not. Not the promoters behind them who never utilize the bus themselves.
This is similar to selling a brew that monopolized on the market, and then promote that brew to the people, who purchased it not because they liked the taste of it, but because there were no other choices on the market. Reminds of Communism in a sense, where some central government promotes a government-made product to the people who have no means of choosing something different. With MTA, people in Los Angeles who use public transportation do it mostly because they can't afford to drive. It's quite crude to launch a self-promoting ad-campaign to people in such a position.

Many Things are Lacking In L.A.

2006-08-07T21:47:00.000-07:00

MTA, after all, seems to be only one aspect of a general pattern of, shall we say, sloppiness in L.A. Just think about it. It's not that any place or city is perfect, but in L.A. there are lacks in several fundamental areas. And that includes public transportation.

A partial list of areas that either lack or are in excess in L.A.:

Police officers (lack)

homelessness (excess: leader in the U.S)

Traffic light synchronization (lack: a simple thing, but a lack)

Gang violence (excess: leader in the U.S)

Green space (lack: overall)

LAX airport (lack: too low-end for the city)

Affordable housing (lack: working people are getting evicted)

Jail beds (lack: the overcrowding is one of the nation's worst)

Hospitals (lack: there's about one major hospital in the entire South L.A.)

Those were not mentioned for the sake of it. Rather it's because MTA's sloppiness seems to be part of a larger pattern here. Maybe it's that L.A. is young, sprawling; it's hot etc. Maybe it's just the weather that makes people here too lazy to care enough. It's just that when it comes to fundamental issues, like public transportation among other things, that laziness really hurts.

But when looking through the lense of that general pattern, it's not stunning to see why public transportation can be so bad, when even housing is. Many profound areas of L.A. are bad in terms of being low prioritized or under-funded. In those cases, such as under-funded jails or neglected homeless people, a negative bias could be argued to lie behind. Public transportation becomes extra weird, because it encompasses all types of people and isn't an area of crime or illness. But not even that appears to make any difference in this city. MTA doesn't care. They don't seem to distinguish between regular citizens and those with special needs.

Letters To the Times

2006-08-06T00:03:00.000-07:00

I knew that when starting this blog, it would resonate with many other transit riders in Los Angeles. And that, without talking to others, but simply by looking and observing. Transit in L.A. sucks; I didn't invent the notion.

There are at present some good forces behind Los Angeles transit. For example mayor Antonio seems quite determined to improve the system to a level, well, where blogs like these basically wouldn't make sense, and where it wouldn't be an urban embarrassment anymore.
However, here are a couple opinions from other transit, or would-be transit riders, and they confirm that there are very basic things that need to be done by the MTA to increase ridership, and subsequently expand transportation services. And as usual, they're rather no-brainers:

Ideas to get more riders on trains, buses

A Note on the Metro Green Line

2006-08-04T02:30:00.000-07:00

They've said the Metro Green Line's extension to LAX isn't needed now that the Flyaway bus is operating between that and Union Station in Downtown L.A.

Without the obvious flaw in and of itself, for a rail line to end as abruptly as the Metro Green Line does prior to its most logical final destination: LAX, another thing that's apparently being neglected is that you can't travel the Flyaway bus on a Metro day pass. That's a shortcoming that's an issue to many people on short budgets, such as economically poor residents, budget travelers, as well as residents who live in many areas of South Central L.A, and where Downtown L.A is farther away from them than LAX.
They wouldn't find it as convenient as stated by a certain LAX official, to take the Flyaway bus everytime they want to get to LAX. That would be a detour for those who must first go eastward (or northeastward; a detour at any rate) to Downtown L.A, then from there catch the Flyaway bus west.
Plus the flyaway requires a separate fare of $3. That means an extra cost of $1.25 for anyone who doesn't live within walking distance to Union Station, plus the detour.

In other words, is the stated convenience of the Union Station Flyaway really such a good excuse for not extending the Metro Green Line to LAX proper? No. Any sensible city would fix that gap without trying to argue 'why'.

It's annoying to have a half done rail system. There's no consistency in it. That alone is a frustration, besides the actual shortcomings like aformentioned.
I think, as I'm sure many others do, that a rail-line connecting LAX to the rest of the city would enhance the quality of the general airport experience, by streamlining transportation there, as well as enhancing the city's general infrastructure network.
We could do without yet another bus. Heck, otherwise why don't we just go back to horseback shuttle? Speedwise, what would be the major difference between that and bus in L.A, today? I bet a horse-ride would be even faster.

MTA's Bus Priorities Are So Stupid

2006-08-01T15:36:00.000-07:00

Frequently when crowds with riders are waiting for the bus, and it finally arrives it's so packed that there's no room for additional passengers and the damned bus therefore won't stop, leaving the crowd waiting ad nauseam for the next bus--without knowing whether it will also be too packed to let them on. That is so dumb. What does it take for the MTA to assess its lines and prioritize bus operations where the most people need them? You could ask anyone within those large nightly crowds outside shopping malls and popular destinations who're waiting for the bus home, if they knew where more buses were needed, and they'd answer "yes. Right here!". Freaking duh!

Like mentioned in an earlier post, you can often see empty buses pass by across the street from where the actual crowd is waiting for it. It'd be a no-brainer to take those empty buses and place them where the crowd actually is. Why? Well, so that dozens of riders won't have to go through the undue frustrations of waiting for extended periods of time, then when the bus they've waited for finally arrives it's either operated by a rude driver who won't stop no matter what, or the bus is simply out of room. That's just such a provocation. Everyone knows that it's not impossible or even unrealistic to add buses to routes where they're needed the most. Yet the MTA won't do so, or if they do, it'll be only after they've neglected the dignity of bus riders for several years. You see all types of people and the expressions on their faces when the bus finally comes, but is too crowded to allow them aboard, need only be witnessed once to realize that a change is needed.

It's really a freaking battle to use the bus in L.A. It's a 50/50 game between reasonable convenience and excessive frustration. Yet, all it'd take to reduce some of those frustrations would be a nod up in MTA pro-activeness. How come that doesn't happen? Are they busy fighting with the Bus Union or what? Well, who cares, it's the riders who pay the price, and thousands are sick of it, while only a few dozens of leadership figures who could make the change don't care enough.

Then again, it's a part of the same leadership that's allowed witnesses to get murdered in local jails, allowed veterans to die diseased on local streets, and allows all denizens to get dodged by the bus . This is Baghdad, dude. They're literally fine with allowing people getting murdered, and die in filthy conditions on the streets, otherwise they wouldn't be so slow about doing something about it. Where have their priorities been? To dress up for some West side party? It's bullshit and everyone pays the price, including grandmothers and the elderly who can't freaking rely on something basic as transportation in a city that vastly depends on it.

Strain on the Bus Operator

2006-07-30T19:01:00.000-07:00

Sooner or later it had to be "squeezed" in. Due to the overcrowding on buses, it's inevitable that this will put a hard strain on the bus driver. Without excusing some's erratic behavior, they probably do feel much stress. Sometimes, not to say very frequently, they must deal with MTA's mismanagement's consequences. They must manage excessive overcrowding, and those who are polite and don't wish to offend customers, probably find it difficult to balance the need to please the customers with drawing a line somewhere.

Sometimes the driver is already operating a packed bus, but still tries to let more people in as if trying to assist as many people as possible. That causes a tremendous stress. The bus is frequently so full that it's a test for the driver's nerves to deal with it, and some drivers do it very well.

More on this later, as there are some good examples to draw from actual scenarios.

The Bus is Too Slow

2006-07-28T10:55:00.000-07:00

I enjoy driving. When I do, I can take short-cuts through residential surface streets if the congestion on the main streets is too heavy.

On the bus, it's not possible, for on the bus you may be glad if you simply got onboard smoothly.
Metro buses are typically terribly slow. Even the Metro Rapid bus, which is supposed to have traffic-light censors to keep the green lights on as they approach them-- don't seem to be working. The Metro Rapid is probably infamously slow now. Somewhere near 8 miles per hour, and traffic lights seem to be slowing them down like with any other vehicle.
In L.A. with traffic getting ridiculous (it's almost faster to walk on the freeway than to drive nowadays), the bus can become torture. To sit in a packed, stinky, dirty bus that's slogging like a snail through traffic for 1 hour-plus, can be a bizarre experience. And even if it's to pick up only one single rider, the bus must halt with all its passengers, to pick that one up, and that happens at every other block. There's this sense of lingering apathy on the bus, including for the driver. People just have to swallow their frustrations and be patient. This is what pisses me off: The bus is an element of public transportation. Public transportation is a public service, not some damn boot camp. People are put to test by simply using public transportation in L.A. That's wrong!

Yet they keep investing mostly in more buses. Does the MTA board really believe that bus in L.A. is convenient? Otherwise, why would they keep behaving as if more buses, as opposed to primarily more trains and extended subways, will make life easier for residents? I believe that the leaders of the MTA suffer from delusion. Granted most of them are not in touch with reality.
You keep seeing signs that say "I Love Metro Rapid". It's absurd.

Cops On the Bus

2006-07-27T17:54:00.000-07:00

Like indicated in previous posts, there are a few areas in which the MTA shines (spot-wise). Meaning they've prioritized sensibly with respect to real as opposed to imaginary problems.

One of them is employing undercover cops on the subway trains and Metro buses. That's a real plus, because a mass-transit vehicle without effective supervision would leave passengers highly vulnerable to assault, attack, theft, and so on.

There are notes attached on some buses and trains that suggest that some of the passengers aboard them are actually undercover police officers. (How that can be verified is another game, but we'll take MTA for their word here).
As many know L.A. has many violent criminals, drug addicts, and without generalizing them, some of them wouldn't hesitate to rob or assault citizens if they could get a way with it, and trains and buses would be perfect arenas for that. That is, if they weren't supervised. But they apparently are. That's a sign that somebody, somewhere, cares about the transit riders' safety, despite the other inadequacies elsewhere suggesting otherwise.
As for how many transit riders are aware of the undercover police presence is another thing. It may be that some riders feel unsafe riding the bus or train because they don't know of it, but at least if something were to happen, there might be an undercover in the immediate vicinity at that very moment to intervene.

But in fairness, violence is utterly rare on Metro buses and trains. The closest thing I've seen to assault have been rougue bus drivers' attitudes toward passengers. Transit riders tend to be overwhelmingly very docile. Typically it is the driver who's the rough bastard, and the passengers who show fear (depending on time of day and what route, riders may be the whackos). Yet, you never know, and fortunately, there are cops there to guard their safety. (Or so the MTA claims; but who knows how often they're actually onboard, with the officer shortage and budget issues and so on. But at least it's a possibility.)

More Example of ignoring

2006-07-26T02:31:00.000-07:00

Quite often, you see a woman running next to or behind a bus. The inside riders can see her (in the case it's a woman, sometimes it's a guy, but they are both prospective customers) through the bus windows. In much likelihood, the driver can very often spot her too, and sometimes with certainty, does. It often starts with the bus standing at a stop, and a person comes just seconds late, and begins to run hoping that if the driver spots them, they will wait. Clearly, any decent human being would. And some bus drivers do, to prove that. But quite often, the customer is rather blatantly ignored, even if it's a woman in her 50s. You can see people sometimes running along, or after, the bus anticipating that the driver will wait for them to catch up. Well, they anticipate it because that's what most would do out of common courtesy.

Sometimes it's reeeally close, yet the driver just plain ignores the person, even if it's not technically necessary. It'd take three seconds to let that customer on the bus. That's a worthy price to pay for respecting a fellow person.

example
One time a woman was running up just next to the bus when the driver hit the gas pedal. And that woman knew that the driver had already spotted her, but chose to take off without letting her on. The woman actually jogged to the next stop, and from there managed to enter the bus. Where she started sermonizing the driver, rightly, for having blatantly ignored her (and who knows where the woman was heading, if it was something very important). She was in a position where you'd be if someone deliberately ignored you. And what happened was that the driver told the woman to get off the bus (which is outrageous), but the woman was sharp and refused to take that order from a driver who had behaved like an egg. That's when the driver stopped the bus and got outside, and told how she wouldn't go anywhere until the woman in question had exited. It ended up with a bus in stand still. First a humiliated woman, who is told to get off the bus for having questioned an idiotic driver's conduct (what is this, Mussolini's Italy?), which ends up with the whole crowd waiting extra.

This is not a question of policy, but of human character. Some drivers readily wait for a customer that's closing in, especially if they're close enough.
Others ignore them. Which is so immature. I hate to see how it's being done to respectable people. Like folks who are probably good family people, not dumb at all, being dodged like they didn't exist. That kind of anti-social behavior has consequenses. If public employees behave like asses, they'll validify that behavior to others. Employees set examples, whether they like it or not.

Not Only Drivers are Bad

2006-07-25T00:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, the MTA buses can be similar to the county sheriff department's jail buses within (no offense). It's really a no good place for kids or women to be. Particularly those of certain lines at certain times, typically late.

Some bus riders, eh, typically male and apparently single, make for a low-class ride because they'd stare any woman to death.
It's to note, that the buses of the MTA can be hostile irrespective of the driver.

It's notable for the reason that, everything that's bad or unpleasant about the MTA will discourage new ridership. It means that the traffic will keep getting worse. Now, as the MTA buses can be filthy or stinky (or both, indeed), they may also be relatively hostile for some riders, either because of the driver, or because of some of the riders aboard them.
It's a bad reminder that the bus is still the core of Los Angeles public transportation. A subway would be more anonymous, provide more choices for seating, etc. On the bus, people get stuck with whomever they're forced to share it with (no offense) all in a very limited space. If a bad odor is oozing persistently, you can't just switch car, like you could on a train, but you're doomed to smell it for regardless how long it takes to get to where you're going because you're not going to get off and walk. And sometimes, the type of ridership adds to the pressure.
Granted, many people avoid the bus on certain routes, or at certain times (which is quite common for transit) due to the type of ridership that mostly occupy it.

Bus Drivers Ignore People About to Transfer

2006-07-23T16:09:00.000-07:00

Another thing, believe it or not, but it is, another thing that sucks about the current MTA.
There is no concurrence between buses that stop versus buses that take off; they're all left to chance.

Wow, We Made the First Boxing Round, And Here Comes Another:
There's a whole long list of issues about the Los Angeles transit system that bus riders may have to go through, before they get to this, yet another issue that adds to them: Once you get off a bus (after having had to maybe wait for it long, maybe rub elbows with a packed crowd on it for 40-plus minutes, and so forth), and when it's time to transfer to a second bus, even though the drivers (and MTA certainly has had plenty of time to figure it out) know that a bus with prospective transferrers is dropping them off, just across the street from these drivers, they don't wait for these customers, but ignore them and head off, so that the transferrers will have to wait another unpredictable period of time for the next bus.

This is arrogance. It's a slap in the face, yet another one, of bus riders. What the hell is the issue with them that they can't stop for a few extra seconds to let the new customers on? They rather ignore people and let them wait for the next bus, even if that means a 15-30 minute extra wait. This is on top of all the other issues. A bus rider may have had to ride standing for 30-60 minutes--regardless of their age-- some women are even pregnant or are holding their babies/infants, but have to stand up in a packed crowd in unsafe conditions for sometimes close to an hour, only to be freaking ignored by the next bus driver and thus must wait for another wasted period of time before they can get to their freaking home, or wherever it is, in a city that is too large to expect people to navigate it on foot.

What is the big deal about synchronizing the buses so that when one bus lets riders off, the next bus waits for them before taking off? It is this stinging arrogance that makes it possible to devote a daily blog to an issue as fundamental to the public as the grocery store, because it's so bad.

And the drivers, seemingly anything between 30-50% of them, are lazy bastards who don't deserve the salary they receive. They don't do their job. Some people work for less than $7 an hour and don't even complain. Yet these idiots can't even live up to common decency and basic human respect, let alone do the job they're supposed to. They keep giving the finger to bus riders, over and over, and the MTA doesn't care. Yet they expect to convince people to abandon their cars in favor of their overall lousy service.
Clearly, the MTA can't even take care of even basic, easy things, such as not being an ass when it's avoidable. It's not even an issue of doing a basic service; it's about not being an ass in cases like these. Between being polite and a jerk, MTA chooses, apparently deliberately, to be the jerk. They choose to not hold the door for the person behind them even it doesn't save them any money.

The Metro Red Line's deferment

2006-07-21T15:12:00.000-07:00

The Metro Red Line was such a master work. Timely, artsy and well connecting. But the question arises, will the Metro Red Line have time to decay before the line is extended?
Again, more, more, and more money is being invested into additional buses, and another rail line: the Exposition Light Rail Transit Project. Wow, that's sure better than the dreaded bus, but that line won't run along Wilshire blvd. It seems that other costly projects are being invested into all to defer what will be inevitable in the future, which is the westward extension of the Metro Red Line.

If they could score on that one, MTA's stature would rise right away.
But how's that going to happen anytime soon if another rail line is being built parallel to where the Red Line's extension would go? That's probably going to steal momentum from the Red Line's possible extension. As eating a dessert would defer appetite for the main course.

What's so hard about extending the Metro Red Line to its natural final destination? If a subway can run under Manhattan in NYC or atop buildings in Osaka Japan, why can't the Metro Red Line run simply to the beach? Why keep investing in other, half-baked, projects? Transit in L.A. is urgent. It's a vast city with hundreds of thousands of people who depend on it to get to and from jobs, hospitals, errands, schools and more. In actuality, a decent public transportation system in L.A isn't something that can be defered, because it's urgently needed. But the dodging of the Red Line extension's completion suggests the MTA believes it can.

And then again, why not, if they're fine with letting all types of people share the bus with the stench of feces, sheeez, get real, a subway line to the beach would be almost too good to be true in L.A.

The Homeless on the Bus

2006-07-19T17:57:00.000-07:00

This is an ambivalent issue. Nevertheless it's hard not to hate MTA for the myriad of customer dissing they stand for, that's topped off by the issue of this post.

When you board a bus, the bus is often packed with people, particularly during commute hours. Packed, as in packed to the point of almost literally tipping over. That, being a common scenario during rush hours, which are already higher in stress levels than normal hours, is already bad enough, as people who are old and young (the freaking MTA doesn't care), have to squeeze further back into the bus as more people are let on and sometimes the driver shouts at them, and orders them to move towards the back of the bus. But sometimes there's really no more room in the back, and the driver sometimes keep yelling; elbows, pushing and shoving, human breaths in your neck. Like bootcamp, for transit riders. All this could be mitigated, by an extra bus or two, but hell are they slow at that.

Ok, there's a reason why MTA sucks. Now, this issue is further compounded when sometimes a homeless person enters the bus, and sometimes the stench begins to ooze all over the place, and people are unable to escape the smell, because they're stuck, because the bus is so packed with people. It really is the frustrating scenario of the movie "Falling Down", with Michael Douglas. It's hot, it's crowded beyond belief, the traffic is insane and the bus moves annoyingly slowly. What's just needed, is stench on the bus on top of an already sometimes mighty frustrating situation (well, to some it certainly is). It's awful. I cannot believe how the MTA (They're mothers and fathers right, have families and so on...) can be so callously indifferent toward such conditions for their customers. They probably wouldn't react if there were feces on the seats.

The homeless problem is a chapter by itself. You can probably say that the homelessness is a result of the "MTA" of general society. Nevertheless, to have to endure a 50 minute ride surrounded by the smell of, say, feces, is just awful. I hate the MTA for this. It's just clear that they don't care.

The point is not for them to refuse the homeless on the busses. But, common, relieve the over crowding, at least. To be standing up, in heat, and with a constant moving, pushing, stopping, accelerating, and also be surrounded by the stench of feces, is just disgraceful. The military is arguably more sanitary and humane than the MTA buses sometimes are. This is supposed to be public transportation right? Not public provocation.

The Metro Blue Line

2006-07-17T19:15:00.000-07:00

is almost like a quite hero in the local transit network. The Metro Blue Line runs from Downtown L.A to Long Beach, and isn't as "fancy" as a Metro Red Line from Downtown L.A to the coastline might've been, but nevertheless, doesn't the Blue Line provide a crucial service to commuters and residents in the areas between its two ending points? It does.

It struck me how good the Metro Blue Line is in terms of consistency and its priority compared to other MTA network lines. Notably the hyped Gold Line, while surely being a nice addition to the L.A subway/train system, runs mostly via more affluent areas, compared to the Blue Line's route through Vernon, Watts, Compton and much of Long Beach, and all the areas in between, where more people truly depend on public transportation.

All in all, the Metro Blue Line is probably the absolutely best route in L.A. It even appears to be managed by somebody other than MTA. Despite running through many economically poorer areas it shows a reliability and consistency that few other MTA projects do, particularly buses.
In other words, it shows that public transportation is possible in L.A too, even without lacking significantly in one area or another. And of course, it's better than the bus at all times. One rail-line, strategically sensibly placed, will do such a big difference. Yet they keep investing in more and more buses. Sooner or later there will be so many buses that they virtually outnumber the cars. Those money could've been invested in more "Blue Lines": rail-lines that are strategically well placed instead.

Yea, the Buses Come In Clusters

2006-07-16T16:29:00.000-07:00

Even when they sometimes go in the "right" direction. Sometimes that makes sense, but at other times, up to 3 buses arrive in a cluster and only 1-2 of them fill up with passengers, while the remaining one(s) leave half empty.
It seems weird that rather than distributing the buses so they arrive in even, more convenient intervals, they arrive in bunches even when it doesn't make sense.

(More could be said about this, in terms of the frustrations it creates for people who've already waited for extended periods, only to see a clause of buses arrive at the same time.)

Rather than sending 3 buses to transport very few passengers in relation to available seats, how about distributing them over each hour so that the schedules level better? Basically, how about not sending more buses than actually are needed? Likewise, how about sending more buses to where they Are actually needed? Duh...

Nobody would pay more for a product than its actual price. Only the MTA would.

But we'll see. When the MTA shows a solid switch in persona, I'll stop whining about them here. Right now there seems to be a plethora of inconsistencies, though.

There We Go Again: 3 Empty Buses

2006-07-15T16:05:00.000-07:00

Why is it that many times when you wait for the bus, on the occasions when they don't seem to be on time (whatever "on time" is...there are no time tables), one of sudden you see 2-3 buses across the street going in the other direction, each of which are are almost totally empty....

It goes like this: At the stop on one side of a blvd stand say, up to two dozen people waiting for a bus that never seems to arrive. And when a bus finally does arrive, it is for the opposite direction and looks almost empty. Not only that, but sometimes 2-3 buses arrive simultaneously, going in the wrong direction (since they look empty), whereas on the side where the crowd is actually waiting, the bus doesn't come until way later. Sometimes there are 2-3 buses going in the opposite direction, often looking surprisingly empty, for each bus that stops where the actual crowds are waiting. That ratio seems out of whack.
Often it happens during evenings. For instance, after 7pm, a time of the day when very few people are heading toward the beach, but all the more people are heading away from the beach, from jobs on the Westside, and from from shopping areas along these routes, there seem to many more buses going toward the beach.
Most transit riders live away from the Westside of the city, consequently buses ought to be heading overwhelmingly in directions that reflected it.
Otherwise, what a waste of resources and people's times this is. And no, it isn't a myth, somtimes there really are 2-3 empty buses going in the opposite direction from where the bulk of the people are waiting for them, and comes across as a slap in the face, or a provocation at a moment when many people have already lost much of their patience from waiting.

Moral of the story: How about placing buses in directions where the most people need them?

MTA board's Changed?

2006-07-14T19:58:00.000-07:00

Is that the case, and if so, explains current transit improvements? If so, it would confirm all the cynicism about MTA's arrogance on this blog: that they indeed, have been arrogant and almost callous at times, and that a personnel change in its leadership was required for significant changes on the ground. It seems to be the case.
Gee, as soon as rogue leaders are replaced by more customer-sympathetic ones, transit riders can feel it.

Same thing happened/happens with the LAPD.

After hearing Tom LaBonge on local TV, as well as Villaraigosa, it seems clear that the current leadership is more in sync with the community. And so, maybe the new buses on Wilshire blvd weren't a co-incidence.

Wow, Buses Have Been Added on Wilshire

2006-07-12T16:33:00.000-07:00

They've done it, MTA, wow. Orange Line-style buses have been added to the Wilshire blvd Metro Rapid fleet. It means, they care. Or, some care. Someone has done something about a problem.

But every time they invest in more buses, it cannot not give an ambivalent feeling. They ought to invest everything in the subway system. But at the same time the overcrowding is so urgent that it can't wait another 10 years for a subway expansion to remedy it. Seems to be a vicious circle stemming from poor planning and wacky priorities earlier on.
L.A's public transportation has been that of a redneck (no offense) town. When thinking about it, it's pathetic that a city that's so expansive, and so dependent upon vehicle mobility would dodge the issue for so long. And it's hard not to think of arrogance when you see the effects on others. Who. Didn't know that you can't walk from Hollywood to Santa Monica? And who never knew that a heck lot of a people in L.A. can't afford to drive cars? They must have known, but obviously didn't give a rat's damn about it. Snobbery and social politics have clearly come first. Or, a bunch of chicken-littles living in the world's 9th largest city who are afraid of the subway. That's pathetic. Haven't seen it in any other major city of the world, with maybe the exception of very poor cities that simply couldn't afford better economically. L.A. is rich, however.

Frankly, in many ways, with the exception of the mayor and some few others, this city still seems to think "bus". As the general traffic situation worsens, it would make sense to assume that the buses will run all the more inefficently as the traffic keeps getting worse and worse. Seems that a subway will be inevitable in the long run.

No Green Light For the Green Line's Extension

2006-07-08T23:20:00.000-07:00

The Metro Green Line is a hallmark of MTA illogic. A rail-line that teases you to use it by going "almost" to LAX. A current LA Weekly article sheds some light on how the current thinking as pertains to that rail line goes. Below is an excerpt from that article, and frankly, it's not entirely difficult to see why the forces behind it reason the way they do, but, in my deep opinion, the Metro Green Line should've been extending to the airport from the beginning, so that now this type of debate would be reduntant. While the Union Station Flyaway bus does close a gap of missing airport connections, the question is why it became a success, and granted, one reason is that the Metro Greenline ends abrubtly before LAX (which renders it less than an obvious choice for LAX heading riders). Besides, while the Flyaway is a good thing, it apparently requires a separate fare of $3. For many budget travelers, it'd be convenient to get to LAX on a regular Metro day pass. Now, if they choose the Flyaway, the price is upped $1.25, at least.
Not to say, a train that went all the way to LAX would much more intuitive to use, and be a more modern infrastructure choice.
Perhaps, well, MTA and LAX are siblings in terms of (sorry, excuse the term, cheap as it is) retardness. LAX is lax, just like the MTA is. Both do not represent Los Angeles as a world-class city (whatever that is, but just compare with other major cities' transportation systems and airports), and people deserve better. But here's how some of the current thinking goes, anyway:

SHOOTING DOWN THE TRAINS

From LA Weekly's current issue

Standing before a room full of lobbyists, lawyers and airport contractors last week, the woman hired by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to run Los Angeles International Airport put her cards on the table regarding the Metro Green Line, the light-rail system that stops just shy of LAX.

In her usual no-nonsense fashion, Lydia Kennard bluntly warned her lunchtime audience that extending the Green Line to LAX could be a colossal waste of money. For one thing, she said, the project would cost at least a half billion dollars. For another, only one-third of 1 percent of the airport’s passengers use the Green Line.

“There are a lot of other, better things we can do with our money in terms of getting people to the airport,” she said...
(click on the LA Weekly link for the full story)

Didn't the Metro Rapid--color--And then again....

2006-07-06T18:18:00.000-07:00

Metro Rapid buses used to be red and white. Which looked sort of nice and crisp. But it seems that pretty soon after they were installed on Wilshire blvd they changed colors again--to red and silver, which is also nice, just wondering why.

That's like buying a new red car, and then have it repainted to white after only 3-4 years of usage.

How much time did it take to figure out what colors to re-paint the buses in, and what colors to paint the Metro Rapid in, so that they could "match" the colors that took time to come up with for the first buses? They seem to have perspirated over that.

Bet the exterior color scheme changes are probably just gimmicks to save face. That way at least the buses look neat to an outsider.

Still, it's not as if though the new colors are bad, it's just that there are so many other ugent issues that beg for attention. And the Metro Rapids were already fairly new. Did someone complain about the red/white combination?

Backdoors Won't Open.

2006-07-04T17:46:00.000-07:00

When people signal a stop, very often the backdoor of the bus which is meant for passengers to exit through, is not opened by the driver. Plenty of times you hear people yelling "backdoor, backdoor!", and on some occasions the driver couldn't hear it and the passenger(s) had to wait until the next stop to get off the bus. Sometimes these passengers were elderly, maybe didn't speak English well, and well, it looks like they were pressed into a rather humiliating situation by being prompted to yell in front of people, and for no apparent good reason, other than something very basic in the system didn't work as it's supposed to.

Just like bus-drivers are meant to stop at bus stops and pick up riders, aren't they Also meant to open the rear exit door when riders signal a stop?

These are perplexing issues. Nobody seems to know why they happen, what their motivator is, why they're allowed to continue, and why no-one seems to care.

However, it can be of a quite big issue when people aren't let off the bus when they expect it. First off, it ought to be mandatory as part of a crucial, public service, to let people off the bus they've paid to ride. But moreover this causes unnecessary frustrations in people because of its disruptive impact in their daily lives.
Elderly who had to walk an extra couple of blocks on foot because the driver didn't let them off, is unacceptable. Because it's unconscionable. And I have no clue why it happens. For sure, sometimes the driver just misses the signal by accident. But when the same behavior becomes a pattern, one has to start wondering.
It's unconscionable to let elderly people or mothers, for instance, desperately try to utter "backdoor, backdoor, puleaaase", just to get out of the bus. It's unconscionable. Yet they allow it to happen, year, after year, after year.

Sometimes the driver appeared to not hear the signal. Other times it appeared they did, but didn't care. Compounding that issue is the sheer over-crowding of the bus which often makes it impossible for people to navigate to the other door, by which time, if they managed to, would've already been too late as the bus would already be rolling. Thus, many people know that once the driver misses a signal, it's time for panic, because it means they know they might have to walk an extra mile (literally).

So Time Tables Cannot be Provided?

2006-07-02T18:30:00.000-07:00

Said a commenter on this blog, because it would be tedious or impractical for the MTA to update time tables at thousand-plus bus stops.

Well, is it really? Or is it just MTA laziness, or MTA sloppiness? Of course it is. A matter of organization which is lacking, does not continue to lack unless the leadership is lazy or sloppy, or incompetent or amateurish.

As if time tables in large cities was something utopian. Here we go again MTA screw-up mentality, that "we can't do even the most basic things because it would be unrealistic to expect us to".
Well, doesn't New York have time tables? Doesn't London? Tokyo? Moscow? Many cities do, but L.A. "can't" because it's transportation leaders are like babies and amateurs.

Is it not possible to craft a schedule that fits the city at large, and stick with it? What, are Los Angeles transit riders unique in that they move too often, change jobs too often, or stop riding the buses too often? If not, what's the big deal about providing a consistent bus schedule that time-tables, let alone bus riders, could get used to? At least for a while at a time.

Localized neighborhood units could take on the responsibility to update time tables if necessary. Such as neighborhood council MTA workers. Alternatively electronic time tables could be used that were unbreakable and resistant to attempts at vandalism, and that wouldn't require workers to physically go and update every time table. Or, for crying out loud; Look at how other cities do it and emulate it.

The point is, that the MTA doesn't hold its customers that high. They're not exactly eager to make it "extra" convenient for bus riders. They're not precisely itching for providing such "luxury items" like up-to-date bus schedules at bus stops.
The better alternative has been to let men, women, students, children, workers, patients, wait ad nauseum for buses that may or may not stop to pick them up. Great job MTA. The hell no wonder why people choose to drive and/or stick with driving. It's evident from within one's car that something is awkward with the MTA when you see 30 people gawking in one direction, over and over, obviously waiting for the bus to arrive.

And to mitigate that awful service, not even basic amenities could be provided? That's either of arrogance or incompetence, and is amazing what those traits are doing at L.A.'s public transportation system. This is not Kabul. We're not a city of Talibans where education level is near non-existent. So what's the great excuse for all this incompetence and blatant disrespect toward customers?

Buses are So Loud.

2006-07-01T02:42:00.000-07:00

Picking another issue from the smorgasbord of issues about MTA, this one may be trivial, but along with all the others, obviously still adds up to what is a systemic issue of neglect and lack of judgment within L.A. county (yes, that pattern can be found in a combination of jails, hospitals, Skid Row, the MTA, LAPD, and other local institutions that sort of sometimes reek with a sense of sociopathy.).

Bus Noise
Why do MTA choose to purchase bus "a" over bus "b"? Is there something other than price alone that influences their decisions when purchasing buses?
Some of their buses are very loud. If anyone remembers the time during any MTA employee strike, and how quiet and peaceful the streets were then, despite car traffic hardly being a small thing in L.A., and just notice the difference in noise level as soon as the strikes were over. The MTA buses, or "monsters" (a loud bus, that's rarely on time, with a rogue driver, makes for the monster), once again roamed the city streets and seemed to clearly account for maybe 30%-25% of the outdoor noise levels. They seem louder than some 18-wheelers. Like, really loud sometimes almost screamingly loud.

Frankly, I do not know if the issue of noise has been addressed by the MTA, but doubt it. It's clearly an issue that affects the general quality of life for people who live near where the buses operate. What would've been the big deal in choosing more quiet buses? Now, the entire city is stuck with the noise for years to come.

It's just clear how loud buses haven't been of a concern to the MTA, or they'd prevented it, or at least changed something.
It's the same reason for why the MTA lets people wait ad nauseum for buses on holidays, weekends and evenings without giving them any hint whatsoever of when the bus will arrive (let alone that the 1-800-COMMUTE info-line closes at about six pm or so). If they can be conscionable about letting people of all ages and backgrounds wait for the bus for sometimes close to 1 hour in uncertainty, why the heck would they mind their buses being terribly noisy? Hum, almost makes this post redundant.

The MTA--granted one of the worst, if not the worst, public transit system of any developed nation's major city--have years of experience on their hands in how to disrespect customers. Loud buses are probably just part of the game.

*They did one good thing in expanding the clean-air fleet. It's an exception though, not a rule, for the MTA to make really sensible decisions.

An Inverse Renovation of MTA's buses.

2006-06-28T23:28:00.000-07:00

With a smorgasbord of inconsistencies to pick from regarding the topic of Los Angeles MTA, here is another thing.

MTA buses have quite recently undergone a re-modeling phase. What happened wasn't that overcrowding was significantly relieved, such as would be if buses were added to heavily traveled routes, or that seats on the buses were sanitized, or that rogue bus-drivers were replaced or reprimanded or simply told to do better. But the buses were re-painted. This seems to be part of the illogical aspect of MTA's improvement agenda, where much of the resources and energy seem to be spent on areas that only give an illusion of quality, rather than actually improving quality itself.
Who knows what it cost to change colors of the buses. Couldn't that money have been spent on adding, say, at least two or three (or god knows how many) additional buses to the Metro Rapid fleet on Wilshire blvd where crowding is still beyond belief during rush hours and holidays?
While it's nice to add some new colors to what may or may not look boring or old; in terms of priorities, when all these other ills exist, wouldn't it be of a higher priority to relieve over-crowding, sanitize seats that are sometimes black with filth, focus energies on expanding the subway, placing time tables and trash cans at bus-stops, or something else that would have a tangible effect on riders, and the city as a whole?
Why focus on make-up when the service itself sucks? Wouldn't it be crazy to spend money and sweat on painting the exterior of a house if its interior was falling apart from mold and termite infestations?
Nobody would do such a thing, right?
But the MTA would. They're content about everyone from kids to the elderly riding in unsafe, and often filthy conditions. They're just fine with that and have been so for decades.
Wonder how often the leaders of the MTA use the Metro bus. It's just hypocrisy. Their service sucks. They know that mostly poor residents utilize these buses. After all, the Los Angeles city leadership (while in no way suggesting that all of them are bad or vile) is the same organ that's been standing idly by as people have gotten killed in local jails and hospitals. So much for their community competence. They should've worked for Saddam Hussein.

*I know the MTA have been adding buses, and replacing old models with newer ones. That doesn't equal great service, however.

A Note Despite the Ranting

2006-06-27T21:03:00.000-07:00

I want to make sure, to readers here that I know how, and that, MTA has been improving.

Apparently it's hard to convey that realization amidst the rants, but it's true. And it's quite obvious that credit goes where its due in terms of these improvements. While the purpose of this blog may be explained repetetively, one thing which is not the purpose of it, is to blast MTA for the sake of it.

Again, it's the MTA as a 'system creature', that I'm mostly getting at here, not its individual components per se. The purpose of this blog is obviously not to pat MTA on its head, but to get at the cores of the rot that has bothered so many people. Why I'm ranting is because no-one seem to speak out. People get frustrated, do have issues with the conduct of certain bus drivers, find many MTA lines and services inconvenient or insufficient, but most people go home in silence. While some surely complain to MTA most don't, as many are poor, hapless, old, ill, you name it. Screw that, if there's a problem somebody needs to voice out.

With due respect to you, the reader.

And the good drivers

2006-06-25T19:35:00.000-07:00

Some MTA bus drivers have been so good. To me, and to others. They'd let you ride short on change. They'd tell people when to get off. They were patient, courteous and did a great job. If MTA focused (at least) focused, on hiring drivers of this kind, it would be easer to forget, or forgive at least some of the other woes, and certainly for some time. Indeed.

It's still perplexing why they don't. It appears that MTA hires anyone who meets the technical requirements of driving, holding a license to drive the vehicle, and is within age limit. It ends up with a 50/50 situation of both great and awful drivers. Don't all decent companies and organizations make sure they hire qualified people, in terms of attitudes as Well as meeting technical requirements? Where do you find job ads that ask for employees to have a certain bachelor degree or whatever, but don't care if the employee is enthusiastic, outgoing, customer service oriented, etc? Well, at MTA they don't care, because apparently customers aren't worth that much to them (ironically, still they want to increase ridership.)

Some drivers are incredibly rude

2006-06-23T20:26:00.000-07:00

I've seen them patronizing homeless, elderly, and general people.

This is something that can be ranted about everyday, because few things are worse than
rude employees of a company that has effective monopoly on a service crucial to a huge amount of people. You have to put up with it (and all the other issues) since there is no alternative other than municipal bus lines of incorporated cities, but they don't cover most of L.A.
MTA is like a big, bad, mean monster in a city of people and children. I hate it. Hate what they're deliberately doing to people in terms of arrogance and attitudes.

One sucker of a driver ignored the waiting bus riders at a stop right across the MTA customer center on Wilshire/La Brea, and the bus was almost empty. It just tells it all, doesn't it. People had to wait about an additional 30-40 minutes for the next bus to arrive, because it was on a weekend.

And the MTA Subway...

2006-06-21T20:27:00.000-07:00

Who can dispute that the subway's been a great, if badly overdue, addition to the L.A. public transportation system? When it opened, the trains were nice, and the subway stations artsy, and tasty, and it looked more professional than the bus.
But even here, the missing points seem to strike in the typical manner. One is the Red Line which westbound direction from Downtown ends abruptly at Wilshire/Western. Hideous forces must've prevented that line from extending all the way to the coast line (was it politics more so than budget issues?). The other one is the Green line train which is supposed to link the rail network to LAX. Which, funnily, it almost does, but for some very obscure reason, doesn't. It ends abruptly a couple miles short of the actual airport. And not just so, but the reason for why it ends there is hard to make sense of. What would've been the big deal about extending the Green line all the way to LAX? Just hard to figure out, but the consequences are irritating. You must now transfer to a shuttle bus, which isn't obviously free (adding to the perplexity), which then proceeds to the airport proper.
In NYC, Paris, London, Tokyo, and countless of other cities, including in much poorer countries, the subway covers all, if not most, logical routes, and doesn't stop halfway toward intended destinations.
It's not as if those additional two miles or so that would've closed the gap could've been prohibitively expensive to build compared to the rest of the rail system. So, then what is it? Is it that the MTA doesn't feel its riders worthy of such a luxury?
The Redline on the other hand, is obviously terribly expensive to build, since it must be dug underground. But, instead of extending the line all the way through an immensely trafficked business and resident corridor (the Wilshire corridor), the Metro Gold line to Pasadena was built instead, suggesting that MTA's priorities are indeed out of whack. Personally, I think regardless of any NIMBY politics that may have stood in much of the way of the red line's logical extension, are given overdue importance. Los Angeles isn't primarily some suburban idyll where traffic and people can be wished away. It seems people go to the Westside and the beach anyway, only they now have to slog through traffic via car or bus. And the traffic problem remains as bad as ever, and is getting worse. All this because some people confuse Los Angeles with some Santa Barbara community and are afraid of subway trains? When is Los Angeles going to wake up the fact that it's the second largest city in the United States, not some damn gated community in the desert. Please. To those who are afraid of subways, there are places, even within California, where they could move if the Red line turned out to be the scary monster they seem to perceive it as. Anyway, it's not viable to ignore reality forever.
Seriously, the Metro Red Line extension would be a superb addition for 99% of the people. From office workers to janitors, to shoppers and commuters, basically, there are so many people and such a diverse crowd that travel the Wilshire corridor anyway, that extending the Red Line would only relieve traffic congestion, inconvenience, be good for the environment, and possibly even increase sales for businesses along the line. What could've been better from MTA's point of view? Not doing it, or doing something lesser if possible?

MTA's resources; limitations? Hum, Bus drivers...

2006-06-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

So might be, and actually is the case, that MTA's budget is very limited. They've added buses, have done well meaning things in terms of certain improvements. Such as expanded the Metro Rapid routes. Great, that something has actually been done to try to improve the service.
But despite the budget limitations, it's the very mentality of MTA that seems out of whack.
What about hiring standards? Who in their right mind would hire many incompetent drivers for such and incredibly vital organ like the MTA is for a city like Los Angeles? How can they hire drivers who frequently refuse to stop and pick up the customers? That's amazing. The very fundamental pillar of a well functioning organization is the morale and competence of its employees. But MTA has hired so many bad drivers, who are so arrogant than many people don't know what to do, or what to say. People just shake their heads, and go "what the hell is going on?".Wonder what the MTA board's members would say if they tried to fetch a cab and and were deliberately being ignored time and time again. It's sort of, how can this even be possible? How can drivers be allowed to dodge customers of the company they work for? And it's been for years. There seems to be nothing that addresses this. Is it that hard to make sure that employees actually do the job they're supposed to? Meaning that they stop and pick up customers, not when they want to, but when they're supposed to!! This is ridiculous. I haven't seen any other public transportation system that reeks so much with arrogance and incompetence. It's sometimes unbelievable. L.A. is vast and hundreds of thousands of people depend upon public transportation on a fundamental level. What more needs to be said? Hard not to rant, when you consider that people need the bus to get to and from hospitals, jobs, appointments, visits, shopping and more. Knowing that bus drivers obviously, deliberately ignore bus riders who're waiting for the bus, it's hard not to see how this can be unconscionable.

Metro Ad Campaign Part 2.

2006-06-19T04:02:00.000-07:00

It should've been noted in the last post, that in particular what makes MTA's self-ad campaign a provocation is that it so obviously doesn't reflect the reality of MTA's services or buses (save for subway). It so very much isn't about neat and clean buses, nor are they even safe as suggested in some of these ads. People frequently rub shoulders on the bus, it's so smack full of people that it's like a wonder how they're all even onboard. The buses are often packed beyond limit.
That's not safe, but detrimental to safety.
Actually, the reality with MTA is so poor that launching a self-promoting ad campaign that states the opposite must be either meant as a middle-finger to the passengers, or is simply another sign of how incredibly out of touch the MTA board and leadership must be with reality. Can be hard to fathom, I believe the mayor sits on much common sense, but other rulers may not be the same.
But of course by and large these people never ride the bus themselves. All they do is proclaiming how great the buses are, sure, like they even knew what the heck they're talking about, and then make ads about their beliefs. Great, no wonder the service sucks.

Metro Ad Campaign.

2006-06-17T04:23:00.000-07:00

Yeehahh! It stinks on the bus, if you're more unlucky than usual. What else? The bus stops don't have trash cans, many of the times, and well, what's more see below posts.
But what's being done to "remedy" this is the launch of an in-your-face, everyday ad-campaign, which frankly, can be an insult to many riders. You wait for 40 minutes on a holiday, and when the bus finally arrives it's so over-packed that there's no room for more. And so people have to wait another 20-40 minutes (unless they're lucky, and MTA is courteous:)), and once they finally get on a bus they're met with ads on screens, on posters, on stickers on the exteriors, along the ails near the ceiling, to a provoking degree. But so not for the sake of the ads themselves, but it's that they often market themselves, which can be an insult to its ridership. Who knows Metro service and the lack thereof better than the bus riders themselves? Well, to put out ads that say "I love Metro Rapid", when that probably isn't even true to most people, is an insult to people. Why should riders be faced with narcissistic ads when they're already sick of the services in question. They do not "love" Metro Rapid. Metro Rapid is only an improvement compared to an already incredibly low standard, not enough to "love", unless their esteem of riders is terribly low.
After a while people get sick of that, as they still get ignored by bus-drivers, have to stand up whether young or old or with babies in arms, deal with filth etc. Great Job Metro. That you tell people to love your service without even seriously assessing whether it makes sense, is just another sign of the general MTA incompetence.

Metro's nobles.

2006-06-16T00:43:00.000-07:00

Excuse the ranting tone of this blog, but it is a reflection of valid woes, not just for me, but for thousands. I do still, occasionally drive, but many do not but rely on MTA entirely for mobility.
Be sure that this isn't about individuals within Metro. Metro as a public transportation entity has many noble, regular, non-arrogant people working within it. It is indeed about MTA (or, Metro) itself, and consequently then some of its people, although I've got no names (as of yet), and the purpose isn't as much to name names as it is to point out a systemic ill within Los Angeles' public transportation system.
Just wanted to make that clear.

The Mysterious drivers.

2006-06-14T04:03:00.000-07:00

"Ghosts". The bus is empty, the driver's anonymous, the crowd is eager, but the driver doesn't stop by. For no good reason. It's a mystery that probably only Los Angeles residents experience when it gets to public transportation. At least in the so called first world.
The waiting riders shake heads, and wait on, hoping that the next driver will not be one of those ghosts that no-one will ever know who is, or why they didn't do their job.
It's a trauma though, to wait in heat and/or for extended times only to be dodged by the driver when the bus finally comes.
Adding to the frustration is the lack of means to forward complaints. No phone numbers are displayed inside buses or at bus-stops (why would they be anyway, since there aren't even time-tables) that people could call to reach some type of customer service. This frustration is then channeled elsewhere, perhaps at jobs, in families, and so on. Everyone doesn't write a blog to express emotions. That means other's frustrations end up elsewhere. That's an issue for the entire city.
Actually, if there was a customer service for bus riders in the first place, there would already have been improvements in services that reflected riders concerns.
But not only is it the bad service, but the damn drivers don't stop half of the times, Even if the bus itself is on time. It means that whatever improvements are made in schedules and timeliness would be undermined by bus-drivers who don't stop to pick up the riders.

A few details on what it can be like.

2006-06-12T22:28:00.000-07:00

So if L.A public transportation is so poor, let's go into some details about it.

Commonly excessively long times before buses arrive.
Commonly excessively filthy seats.
Commonly excessively neglectful, arrogant bus drivers.
Commonly excessively missing basic services.
Commonly excessively overcrowded buses.

For example. In NYC the subway trains are excessively packed with people during rush hours. But not combined with their buses also being excessively over-crowded and/or combined with excessively poor service in general. NYC's subway runs on time, and with frequency, to the extent that all people can rely on it, not just the overwhelmingly poor with no other choices of transportation. One would think that an efficient public transportation system ought to be a high-priority in L.A considering the traffic problem. Apparently the priority of L.A's public transportation leadership has been to launch an advertising campaign, which ironically targets a largely frustrated ridership who would much more like to see essential services being upgraded or lived up to like would be expected from an industrialized nation's second city. More on this (Metro ad campaigns) later on.

Over-crowding, filth, long wait times, for instance, could have mitigating effects on ridership if they were isolated problems. But in L.A's p.t system, all these problems abound. The defects run from top to bottom, but not just that, they also continue for years upon years, often causing serious issues of distrust among riders, particularily after a while. Frustrations from these problems consequently spread and affects others parts of the city, particularly when the problems are being repeated. Moreover the neglect of basic services, as well as arrogance, do not discriminate. I've seen old ladies being dodged by bus drivers even though the buses in question had plenty of empty seats avialable. That can either be 1) arrogance, 1) incompetence, & which is worse of these is hard to say.

This is an outrageous issue. Everyone is affected by the neglect by Metro. It's like a Baghdad bus service in the sense of chaos, disorganization, illogic, poor service, and neglect. The question is how it can go that bad here.

Enough is enough

2006-06-12T06:38:00.001-07:00

Years of arrogance, neglect, even downright provocation is what the hell to expect from a developed nation's second big city's public transportation service? It's simply too much to swallow for anyone who uses MTA (AKA "Metro", or whatever priority vanity may have over names, and between naming and service itself) regularly, or depend upon it.
The big question is simply what the hell is going on? Why is L.A public transportation so bad that it by and large doesn't not, just "not even", but far from, measure up to the standards of the city it's based in, and meant to serve? Why is it so dirty, nonchalant, arrogant, inefficient, that despite whatever improvements it's gone through over the past decade, it still sucks?
Well, blogging about it is one way to voice the frustrations that question creates, as well as the frustrations over a service that people use to get to and from jobs, necessary appointments, leisure activities and everything in between. It's too much to expect acceptance of arrogance and neglect in such an area (in a rich city and nation), and MTA you bastard are going to get what you deserve. Granted there's an accumulation of bitter customers over the years, and we are STILL NOT IN BAGHDAD, THIS IS L.A!
Are you incompetent are what? Because the arrogance that runs through your meant to be services or the lack thereof, as well as the "psychos" you hire to drive the vehicles, is beyond an acceptable level of indecency. Or are you just plain lazy? Incompetent, or both or all three; whichever it is, frustrations abound and they need an outlet, and so happens that if you argue them out to an MTA (or "Metro") bus driver (because the driver happened to be rude or arrogant) it means you're in luck as it means you're actually inside of the bus, not still waiting for it. That's why writing about it is a good choice.
Waiting? Sometimes people wait, young and old, men and women, for maybe 30-40 minutes, or more, but then, when the bus finally arrives, it doesn't stop by, either because the bus was so filled with riders that the driver responsibly decided that it was unsafe to let anyone else on, or just that the driver was simply a jackass who didn't do his or her job by simply ignoring the job- duty of a bus-driver to pick up the bus riders (duh!). Either way that happens way too often, like it's almost a 50/50 thing. It's gotten to a point were people feel fortunate to just get on the damn bus.

Better change that name from "Metro" to "Waitro" or something like "L.A bus-disservice", (no pun intended).