Metro Green Line Meeting: 4/14/2011

Some Notes from the 4/14/2011 Green Line Extension (GLE) Meeting
William Green Elementary School, Lawndale, CA

There were four types of commenters:
1. Anti GLE in any way
2. Anti GLE in Lawndale
3. Anti GLE on Right of Way (ROW), pro GLE on Inglewood or Hawthorne (most on Hawthorne)
4. Pro GLE in current configuration

The first couple of speakers fell into camps 2 and 1 and got a lot of support from the crowd. Someone from a transportation organization (not the BRU or the Transit Coalition) got up and spoke and was booed resoundingly. Another guy who was 22 was in the #4 camp, and said some poorly worded (and offensive) things and was booed and heckled. Things calmed down somewhat after that but most of the people still were in camps 2 and 3.

People were really concerned about safety.
Some were concerned about other effects (traffic, noise).
A couple mentioned 'inevitable' cost and schedule overruns.

The people in the pro camp talked about how much it would save their personal commutes, thinking about the future (especially the younger commenters), and getting off oil.

A really interesting facet that I was surprised at was how many 'Lawndaliens' felt like this was being rammed down their throats by Redondo Beach. They were very sensitive to perceived benefits going to Redondo (via tax revenue at the South Bay Galleria) and Lawndale bearing the brunt of ill effects because of the route choice.

It also seemed like there is a lot of willful ignorance - not believing anything in Metro's presentations, dubious of studies, etc. A suggestion I wrote on a card was to present a little more data but I'm doubtful it would have swayed many of the people there - especially not at the meeting itself.

Also there were many Lawndale City Council members in attendance but none spoke and it seemed like there was someone taking notes and people's names - maybe a reporter for the Daily Breeze?

My two cents:
Lawndale city leaders could have done themselves a HUGE service but interfacing with both their community and Metro long before the meeting tonight. If the community had been more organized they could have helped influence Metro's analysis of the Hawthorne ROW. For example - if Lawndale were to put a special redevelopment district along Hawthorne BLVD to get more transit oriented development, in areas that they would like stations, and shared that information with Metro before Metro did its ridership analysis, that would have positively affected the Hawthorne corridor ROW analysis. Metro could have also done a better job of engaging the different cities - but I'm late to the process so I'm not sure of the entire history.

Another option would be for Hawthorne and Lawndale to pursue a light rail/streetcar up and down the Hawthorne ROW, independent of Metro, but involve Metro for synergistic effects. Lawndale could also look into pursuing more funding (either grants from State/Fed govt or passing a bond measure) to help Metro choose the Hawthorne route - say a public/private partnership to develop a station and TOD with the developer getting tax breaks, building a station that Metro wouldn't have to, and Lawndale getting some new development to increase the tax base. It seems like they're in reaction mode instead of being proactive.

Metro Link

Book Report: The Girl Who Played with Fire

The Girl Who Played With Fire, book two of Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy. I finished this book on a bus/train ride from San Luis Obispo to Union Station (Amtrak!). Then I took the FlyAway Shuttle from Union Station to LAX. Fun!


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I want to FlyAway

At one point I thought I had posted about a trip I took on the Metro from Pasadena to El Segundo but it's still sitting in my 'not completed' file. That trip consisted of the Gold Line, Red Line, Blue Line, to the Green. Which was cool because I got to go through Union Station, the 7th Street Metro Center, and the Rosa Parks station. The uncool part was that it took about 1.5 hours and required a separate ticket for each hop (although now I find out they have day passes). Obligatory Metro link.

Today I had a similar mission: get from downtown to the SouthBay. I could have done a similar trip but I wanted to try something I had only read about called the FlyAway bus service. It is operated by Los Angeles Regional Airports and consists of shuttles that go from all the regions airports to Union Station and other population centers. My experience was great. I asked some very nice people at Union Station where the kiosk was and after a short walk and seven dollars I had a ticket in my hand. Buses leave every half hour and although the driver told us that the trip would be longer because it was rush hour it only ended up taking about 35 minutes (and even went over my second favorite interchange: 110 south to 105 west carpool lane - booyah!). I waited longer for my friends to pick me up at the Southwest terminal.

Map of where the FlyAway kiosk is:


View Los Angeles Union Station in a larger map

Also here's are a couple of ideas: how about taking and rating all the different transportation agencies in Southern California? Or how about some enterprising young programmer puts a database together of all the timetables of said agencies along with the cost for different hops and transfers and walking times, uses a little Dijkstra magic, and figures out routes that are either cheapest or fastest (or better yet let you weight each). Kind of like the Metro Trip Planner but cool and useful. Has GoogleMaps done this yet? Actually, can I have that job? Thanks...

Stupid video link even though the stupid record company won't allow embeds

Book Report: The Undercover Economist

The 8th book I've read this year was The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford. I initially read Tim somewhere on the internet and liked his writing style enough to buy his book.

The Undercover Economist was thoroughly enjoyable although I wanted to understand it so I took my time reading it. In addition, some of it I had to take with a grain of salt. I don't know that any book will convince me that markets are inherently free and that taxes are simply inefficiencies in markets. Experience would dictate that markets are under constant flux because of both government and market participants and taxes can be ways of either correcting for inefficiencies of market structure, forcing participants to address externalities, and (yes) inefficient in and of themselves. He glosses over the example of how Singapore provides health care to its citizens but that seems to me the crux of the type of question his book can help to answer: requirements by governments that in effect create a market. How can this market be created so that consumers win and no monopoly rents can be generated?

That being said, this book was excellent at pointing out ways in which economics can be useful in explaining why prices are what they are (scarcity power driving up rents, barriers to entry, extracting information, and even auctions to name a few) and other such interesting economic phenomena (like congestion pricing - which is good!). It really gave me a lot to think about in how to think about a lot if that makes sense.

US Interstate System as London Tube Map

Awhile back Matthew Yglesias linked to this picture (from the Good Blog) of the US Interstate system made to look like the London Tube map (Wikipedia).



For those who have never been to London, go. I was only there for a bit but had a great time. Getting around on the Tube is intuitive, in no small part because of the ground breaking Tube map. Additionally you can sit back and see all sorts of slices of life because EVERYONE takes it. Whatever ethnicity or occupation that can be imagined will be on the Tube. Including jet lagged pasty American tourists.

Spring Cleaning!

Hey you crazy kids. I have a bunch of draft posts that I've been 'meaning to get around to' for awhile. Since it's now spring I'm going to clean up:

• Hearst Castle Virtual Tour: Go to Cambria! Eat at Robin's or the Sea Chest or one of a billion wonderful places! Say hi to my mom!



• Mini Models of Cities: Oh my cuteness. When are they doing version 2.0 with Legos?



• Google Maps Street Traffic: Not just for freeways anymore



• Milky Way Transit Authority: Next map: the entire universe



• Metrolink is on Google Transit: Why the MTA can't just take the plunge is beyond me. Also, Steve Hymon got laid off. He and I actually emailed back and forth a few times last year. He was really nice. That sucks.



• Interactive map of Downtown LA by Cartifact: Seriously, can I work for you guys?

Interesting Expo Line Phase II Article

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For anyone interested in transportation in LA (or Southern California), I highly recommend the Los Angeles Transportation Blog. It has daily links to all kinds of interesting stories. For instance, today I read a piece by Frank Gruber about the Exposition Light Rail Line phase II development. Phase I is currently under construction, slated to go between downtown LA and downtown Culver City. Phase II is still under review, with many potential routes being discussed. Basically it's supposed to go from downtown Culver City to the south side of Santa Monica (3rd Street/Santa Monica Place ish).

Frank's article deals with the question of whether the end line should go down Olympic or Colorado Blvd. The community is nearly unanimous for Colorado but there are practical implications to consider as well. Frank also spends a great deal of time talking about potential sites for a maintenance yard and some of the other players involved (cities of LA and Santa Monica, Santa Monica College, and Verizon to name a few). Of course, I also had to make a map to orient myself.

Google Earth pollution maps

(Image from LA Times)

Has it really been two weeks since my latest post? Fortunately a couple of interesting tidbits today caught my eye. First, I subscribe to the Google Lat Long blog, and it had a post today about a new layer in Google Earth. The new map layer shows pollution levels courtesy of The Vulcan Project at Purdue University. The LA Times also had a tidbit about it. The data isn't super duper recent (circa 2002), and from my quick perusal it seems to be only carbon dioxide (with a super sarcastic emphasis on the word 'only' - I applaud them for having so much nationwide data available in the first place).

What I found especially interesting about this article, however, was another article I read today that Obama says he will NOT tax vehicle miles traveled, instead saying that he intends to keep taxing gasoline consumption. This is a quandry: VMT more accurately tracks individual riders, which is a good for incentivizing things like paying for roads and bridges, but not necessarily good for incentivizing paying for cleaning up the environment. Essentially, auto efficiency (i.e. miles per gallon) is ignored. Taxing gasoline consumption is almost the opposite effect: it does a good job of incentivizing payment for lowering air pollution, but a poor job of incentivizing paying for projects based on mileage. I think the ultimate solution is a combination of both, but that's probably a topic for the guys over at the Freakonomics Blog at the NY Times.

(Which, by the way, is totally effing sweet).

Public transit now on Google Maps

It's been a while since I put anything up here - combination of a busy holidays, finishing a class, and lack of interesting content. But fear not because the good people at Google Maps have come up with a sweet new feature: transit routes. Now you can see the location of rails and subways for a few select cities. Alas Los Angeles is not supported (hello MTA - get your data to Google already) but our neighbor to the north, San Francisco, is represented.

Initially I saw this on the daily links at the Los Angeles Transportation Blog which linked to story at The Transport Politic Blog which linked to a story at the Google Maps/Google Earth team's blog. Phew. I'm glad it made it to my little corner of the world. Go internet.

The Brand New NYC Subway Line

I saw this awesome transit-related art today from a totally sweet design site, NotCot. I don't know if I really have anything to add except that I hope the WestSide subway doesn't end up causing too much douchebaggery.

Red Line Barhop

My friend Tannaz sent me a link to this Red Line Barhop from Thrillist. I've only been to 3 of these bars before (Gopher, Good Luck, and Pig & Whistle). So what better way to represent this than on a Google map? It's a bummer that MTA doesn't share all of its transportation info with Google yet but at least Google shows where the stations are. There area couple of strange choices, IMO, in regards to the station locations (especially around downtown). I haven't done a detailed analysis but the approximate walking distance would be like walking from LA to New York. That's not the point, though. The point is to see some cool bars, walk around a little bit, and use public transportation.



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Tour De Ballona October 25

I was reading StreetsBlog Los Angeles today and read that there has been some nefarious activity on the Ballona Creek Bike Trail. In order to raise awareness and make the trail safer, Damien Newton and other involved people organized a Tour De Ballona on October 25. As usual, I was bored at work today. And that means a google map. The google estimate of distance is 3.82 miles. Friends, this is super duper easy. It will take less than an hour even for the neophytes out there. I encourage you to go (and if you're feeling spunky make a side trip to Venice - riding through the Marina is really cool).


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25 Most Ticketed/Towed Rush Hour Streets in Los Angeles

Last week LAist posted about the 60 worst intersections in Los Angeles and I made a map. Today they posted the 25 most ticketed/towed rush hour streets in Los Angeles. There must be something about Tuesdays because I was again inspired to create another map to scratch my mapping itch.

A couple notes:
- The same stretch of Figueroa is listed twice (for AM and PM). I listed the numbers in the notes but did not include two lines.
- East 7th is broken into two lines because the it goes through the East LA Interchange and the Ramon Garcia Recreation Center.
- Some stretches of streets are really long (like in the Valley) and some are extremely short (like Gayley near UCLA).
- It looks like only 3 of the 60 worst intersections are located on the 25 worst rush hour streets. Maybe because people are going so slowly they are less capable of breaking laws? I would have figured that road rage incidences of knuckle sandwiches to trend higher.

Please let me know if there are any errors.



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60 Worst Intersections in Los Angeles

Today LAist posted about the 60 worst intersections in Los Angeles. While it would be more complete and relevant to citizens if this list also included other areas and cities (like Santa Monica or the South Bay) it is still pretty interesting. I hope to check back periodically to look at the real time traffic statistics. It would also be interesting to see which intersections were busy in an overall sense vs. busy only during rush hour. Last night, for instance, I was driving on Vermont with AKOY and we went through 4 of the 60 intersections driving from Scoops to her car in Ktown around 10pm and traffic wasn't bad (certainly not rush hour) but the town definitely wasn't dead.

But I'm a dork and wanting to view this spatially I created a Google Map:



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