The Los Angeles Times reports that L.A. bus ridership is falling, so the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) is “looking to overhaul the system.” Unfortunately, the Times didn’t make the effort to figure out the real problems, instead relying on transit agency claims that they were due to “factors beyond its control.”
In fact, in the past ten years, the number of vehicle miles of revenue bus service offered by Metro has declined by more than 21 percent, from 86.3 million miles to 67.7 million. Transit riders are probably more sensitive to frequencies than anything else, and this 21 percent decline probably did not involve the cutting of many bus routes; instead, it represents a reduction in the frequencies of most routes. That factor was completely within Metro’s control.
Metro’s bus ridership peaked at 399 million trips per year in 2007 (which buses traveled 85.4 million miles), but has since declined to 318 million trips. The 20.2 percent decline nearly matches the decline in bus miles.
Clark once observed, any sufficiently advanced technology is akin to magic, viagra discount online you could try these out and attitudes towards new technology often border on superstition. Remember that many men are very self-conscious regarding this problem and continue to lead happy and satisfied lives without the gloom of erectile dysfunction hanging over cialis cheap uk your head. In a similar story, click here for more cialis tablets uk there was another high blood pressure condition. By normalizing male sexual health and functions, Kamagra medicine gives males the viagra overnight reason of getting satisfaction back on the way. Why did bus miles decline so precipitously? Metro had previously cut service in the early 1990s to pay for new rail lines it was building. In 1996, a local Bus Riders Union represented by the NAACP sued Metro, arguing that it was discriminating against minority bus riders in order to provide expensive trains to white neighborhoods. The lawsuit resulted in the court ordering Metro to restore bus service for ten years.
Bus ridership rose 16 percent during that ten-year period. But as soon as it ended, Metro began cutting bus service and started an aggressive new rail construction program. The results are visible today. “Reimagining the routes,” as Metro proposes to do, is not likely to fix the problem. Instead, if it is serious about restoring ridership, Metro needs to stop wasting money on rail transit construction–something that is unlikely given that voters agreed last November to give Metro more than $100 billion for new rail lines.
Some transit agencies can legitimately blame drops in transit ridership on lower gas prices or other outside factors. In the case of L.A.’s Metro, however, the losses are primarily self-inflicted.
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Some transit agencies can legitimately blame drops in transit ridership on lower gas prices or other outside factors.
” ~anti-planner
If they have a robust body of evidence, it’s legit. Otherwise, they should be explicitly telling the public that they _suspect_ it’s a factor or _suspect_ it’s the primary cause.
No mention of the brutal murders on Portland’s MAX? Again, another reason to CCW on transit, especially if you’re going to confront a lunatic. Best be armed.
“…another reason to CCW on transit…
X2. And it’s perfectly legal:
If Los Angeles wants to take advantage of an emphasis of improving transit, for less money they could buy a fleet of used Mercedes and BMW’s and carry every transit rider across the city. Since Google has yet to invent an algorithm for sarcasm detection online, I’ll save those the trouble.
Los Angeles is a city with its vision so firmly pointed toward the future that traces of the past often escape its sight. Headlines proclaim new mega-developments downtown and transportation projects on the Westside. Even historical reminiscences of the city often focus on what was lost—hills, tunnels, and Victorian mansions—rather than what persists. But in fact traces of the past surround us, even in places where new construction has completely refashioned the surface of the city. Several distinct political and cultural regimes have passed through Southern California, and each has left its unique mark on the region’s built environment. The result—clashing street grids, along with errant boulevards defying the grids’ attempts at order.
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LA like many cities greatest asset is the street grid, which no matter what direction you take you can go anywhere from anywhere. I’ve said it before the downside to transit it only goes where it’s been routed, a single artery that only transports from a-b and having just one artery is not a healthy organism. Transit as they propose is monolithic, built to a specific size, specific scale, specific timeframe. Where as the automobile and the street grid are a cellular organism. Look up Dr. John von Neuman and his study of cellular automata; in comparative biology. A multicellular organism does not thrive on a fixed number of cells, instead it responds to stimuli by producing more cells to accommodate a need. The city is the organism, the cells are cars, personal demand is the stimuli. When the system encounters an effluent, it produces more cells (cars) to accomodate the stimuli (people needing to move) or produces special cells (mutli person vehicles like buses or vanpools) to accommodate specific circumstance. In nature all stimuli are confronted with the production of cells. If there’s more sunlight, more photosynthetic cells are produced, if there’s a surge in water, more water storage cells are produced. In the inspiring words of Miss Frizzle from the Magic School Bus “look to mother nature for the best of everything”
Nature has had billions of years to figure out how to manufacture, design, construct, demolish, recycle, handle waste, transport and provide energy.