Recently the LA MTA debuted their new blog The Source. It covers general events with the LA Metro system, like the upcoming Gold Line Eastside Extension, long range plan topics and other related topics. Yesterday, however, was I believe the first that it was used to provide semi-real time updates on delay problems. The particular problem was that an umbrella blew onto the power lines of the Gold Line, preventing trains from running either to Union Station or to Pasadena. This was of particular interest to me as I ride the Gold Line as part of my regular commute.
So I watched the posts to keep an eye out for my evening commute plans, but luckily at 4:40pm the trains were up and running again in both directions. I left work at my normal time only to start crossing the train tracks as the train approached. It was a few minutes earlier than normal. I hopped on and ended up at Union Station in time to catch the Red Line train I normally miss by 2 minutes! As a result of service delays on the Gold Line I ended up getting home EARLY!
On one hand, I guess I can't complain because hey, it's nice to shorten your commute and get home early, if only for a day. On the other hand, it's somewhat frustrating to see that simply by increasing service frequency or altering schedules slightly, I and many others that scramble to transfer from one train to another at Union Station every day could gain a decent amount of free time in our lives. Kinda sad, isn't it?
That's not to say I don't use my time on the train. I'm a huge fan of the Pasadena Library, which is less than a mile from my work, making it super easy to access a large number of books for no cost and my work has a "Book Swap" shelf where people deposit books they are done reading for others to pick up. Sometimes I just look out the window (especially on the Gold Line) and think. Sometimes I talk to a random train person or someone I know from work. From time to time I work on art and craft projects like colored pencil drawings, crocheting, knitting and needle felting. But even despite those things, sometimes it would be nice to get home and do something else instead. A car ride from my apartment to my work would take about 20 minutes. The train ride and walk to and from the stations takes about 1 hour and 15 minutes. It's easy to see why I have difficulties convincing others that even live on my street and work in the same area, to take public transportation instead.
I've been riding the train for over 4 years and it has improved in that time, but sometimes I am also a little discouraged to see so much time pass by and nothing really changing to make my ride more efficient or better in any other way. It's not that I keep my mouth shut either - my line of work both enhances and encourages me to exercise my skills at letting people know where there are problems in their system.
Oh well. Off for another day's commute, this time with How Trees Die: The Past, Present, and Future of our Forests in hand.
Showing posts with label Subway. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Subway. Show all posts
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Park(ing) Day 2009
I decided to take off work this past Friday and went out with a friend with a fairly flexible schedule to visit some of the temporary parks that appear on Park(ing) day, a day when parking spaces normally only used by cars are used for more people oriented activities. I started out trying to hit up the only Park mapped in the San Fernando Valley in Studio City. I was too early though and as I was leaving, I noticed the park components being unloaded from a couple of cars.
My friend and I took the subway to Hollywood and Highland and biked to our first stop, Hollywood Community Studio and Urban Outfitters park.
They were handing out maps with some of their favorite spots in Hollywood, including the largest tree on sunset and where the local Community Gardens are located. We asked for a drink recommendation and we ended up at the nearby Farmer's Kitchen, a small restaurant that serves in season local foods in a constantly changing menu.
Here my friend had some soup and we both had some refreshing agua fresca in an unknown lightly sweetened "purple" flavor. We were excited by the bike rack out front :)
The next stop was the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council BBQ and Pool Park. This was the largest park we visited. It was right outside of the Bicycle Kitchen and featured a pool, BBQ, a table from Guerrilla Gardens (I made some seed bombs with them!), music, shade, plants and places to rest.
We happened to arrive here just as Damien Newton from Streetsblog LA and some others arrived as well on their ride. We continued on with them to the next couple parks.
Our third park was the East Hollywood Light Yard park.
This park had more of an art related emphasis, including completed art, art materials and a guy working on a painting.
For our last park stop, we continued to Silver Lake and up a hill to JaredFood's park.
My friend and I then biked back to Vermont and Sunset and caught the Red Line back to my apartment. We both had an excellent day and got to see new parts of the city and had a lot of fun. I also got a chance to take someone on the Subway for the first time, which is always an adventure in itself. The time and effort put into the parks was rather impressive. I enjoyed interacting with and being with people that see the potential in the city to be something better and more inviting for people. I'm definitely looking forward to this event next year.
My friend and I took the subway to Hollywood and Highland and biked to our first stop, Hollywood Community Studio and Urban Outfitters park.
They were handing out maps with some of their favorite spots in Hollywood, including the largest tree on sunset and where the local Community Gardens are located. We asked for a drink recommendation and we ended up at the nearby Farmer's Kitchen, a small restaurant that serves in season local foods in a constantly changing menu.
Here my friend had some soup and we both had some refreshing agua fresca in an unknown lightly sweetened "purple" flavor. We were excited by the bike rack out front :)
The next stop was the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council BBQ and Pool Park. This was the largest park we visited. It was right outside of the Bicycle Kitchen and featured a pool, BBQ, a table from Guerrilla Gardens (I made some seed bombs with them!), music, shade, plants and places to rest.
We happened to arrive here just as Damien Newton from Streetsblog LA and some others arrived as well on their ride. We continued on with them to the next couple parks.
Our third park was the East Hollywood Light Yard park.
This park had more of an art related emphasis, including completed art, art materials and a guy working on a painting.
For our last park stop, we continued to Silver Lake and up a hill to JaredFood's park.
My friend and I then biked back to Vermont and Sunset and caught the Red Line back to my apartment. We both had an excellent day and got to see new parts of the city and had a lot of fun. I also got a chance to take someone on the Subway for the first time, which is always an adventure in itself. The time and effort put into the parks was rather impressive. I enjoyed interacting with and being with people that see the potential in the city to be something better and more inviting for people. I'm definitely looking forward to this event next year.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Subway Adventures
This morning seemed pretty normal. I woke up, took care of my pets and plants and left for the train on time. The Red Line train arrived at Universal City station as expected. Somewhere along the way between Universal and Hollywood and Highland while I was enjoying music on my mp3 player, I heard the driver announcing something. I didn't think much of it as they frequently announce train stops and what train and direction you're riding in. A guy standing near me suddenly had a taken aback expression on his face, so I pulled off my headphones only to find out the announcement was over. We gradually slowed down, a horrible smell began permeating the air and then we stopped.
Everyone stood and sat in the train quietly as the driver announced he was going to see if he could repair the train. The air turned off an on as he ran up and down the side of the train along the subway tunnel walkway. When the air was off, the car was oddly quiet. Considering everyone was sitting there silently save for the occasional cough or sneeze and the quiet buzzing of people listening to music that's maybe a little too loud. At one point the guy that made the expression that first alerted me to the situation said "Why can't we go? I thought they said it was a power problem. The air is on."
After about 30 minutes, we got an announcement saying we would evacuate the train and walk to the next station or a cross walk. Although I could sense some people were starting to get anxious, this was suddenly getting more exciting. They gave us some general direction on only opening one door of each car and everyone exiting from the car, one car at a time. As soon as the announcement stopped, one woman got up from her seat and started walking towards the end of the car where I was standing and most everyone else on that end of the car followed.
While standing around trying to figure out what was going on, I noticed a stream of riders walking along the outside of the car. Someone asked what was going on because based on the evacuation announcement, we expected people to walk through the middle of each car to the front car and from there, exit through a single door onto the pathway, however the people walking outside of the car were walking toward the front of the train. People inside of the car I was in stood with their cameras flashing, taking pictures of the stream of people walking by and periodically stopping.
I heard some noise on the end of the train car with the driver area and some metro officers appeared and told us to travel through the middle of the train cars. 2 guys in front of my walked their bikes through, but I wondered how this would have worked with some of the people I've seen in wheelchairs in the past, as there were decent sized gaps between the doors on each car. It was an odd sensation to walk in a line through the middle of each train car (I think we went through 3 cars) while watching people travel along a somewhat dark path in a parallel line on the other side of the train windows.
Finally we got to the front of the train where more metro officers were standing and we had to exit the train and integrate into the line of people traveling on the walkway. Since I had just traveled through the train up until then, I have to admit I felt a little nervous as I stood in the tube shaped tunnel with the 2, maybe 2 1/2 foot wide walkway pressed against the left side and nothing on the right. It's somewhat surprisingly clean and empty outside of odd patterns all over the walls. Maybe every 20 feet along the walkway on the wall is a florescent light tube and along the entire way there is a railing. The floor was bare concrete and there was a straight drop to the tracks below. Just like walking along the train tracks in the station, but with a somewhat narrow walkway and less lighting.
A girl behind me said "I bet no one was expecting this today!" and another girl in front of me had out her video camera and was recording the whole walk. The walk was stop and go and occasionally I'd look back at the train and try to look ahead. I didn't realize that we were walking uphill until we were almost to the station and when I looked back to the train, it was suspended there shining it's crazy train light-eyes at us. I forgot to look for the little plaques telling you how many feet in either direction to the nearest station, but I think we probably walked between 600-800 feet before we walked down some steps and past a weird metal cage looking area that allowed you to see through to the train on the other side of the tracks and a giant marked area on the wall that said "DANGER DO NOT DRILL HIGH VOLTAGE" with giant yellow lines over it. We then walked up a few more stairs and we were at Hollywood and Highland on a jammed platform.
In all, the trip between Universal City and Hollywood and Highland took about an hour. I know some people were agitated with the delay because they were late, but in all I don't feel like it was a bad experience. In fact, I thought it was fun in some ways and outside of the horrible smell at the beginning (I didn't smell it when we walked through the trains) and a little bit of discomfort when the air was off on the train. I image the experience might have been a little confusing for people that didn't speak English as I only heard English announcements and no one did any sort of translations on the car I was on. Walking along the tunnel was exciting if not a little scary as well. Not that I'd want to do this every day or anything, but I felt reasonably safe throughout the process.
Everyone stood and sat in the train quietly as the driver announced he was going to see if he could repair the train. The air turned off an on as he ran up and down the side of the train along the subway tunnel walkway. When the air was off, the car was oddly quiet. Considering everyone was sitting there silently save for the occasional cough or sneeze and the quiet buzzing of people listening to music that's maybe a little too loud. At one point the guy that made the expression that first alerted me to the situation said "Why can't we go? I thought they said it was a power problem. The air is on."
After about 30 minutes, we got an announcement saying we would evacuate the train and walk to the next station or a cross walk. Although I could sense some people were starting to get anxious, this was suddenly getting more exciting. They gave us some general direction on only opening one door of each car and everyone exiting from the car, one car at a time. As soon as the announcement stopped, one woman got up from her seat and started walking towards the end of the car where I was standing and most everyone else on that end of the car followed.
While standing around trying to figure out what was going on, I noticed a stream of riders walking along the outside of the car. Someone asked what was going on because based on the evacuation announcement, we expected people to walk through the middle of each car to the front car and from there, exit through a single door onto the pathway, however the people walking outside of the car were walking toward the front of the train. People inside of the car I was in stood with their cameras flashing, taking pictures of the stream of people walking by and periodically stopping.
I heard some noise on the end of the train car with the driver area and some metro officers appeared and told us to travel through the middle of the train cars. 2 guys in front of my walked their bikes through, but I wondered how this would have worked with some of the people I've seen in wheelchairs in the past, as there were decent sized gaps between the doors on each car. It was an odd sensation to walk in a line through the middle of each train car (I think we went through 3 cars) while watching people travel along a somewhat dark path in a parallel line on the other side of the train windows.
Finally we got to the front of the train where more metro officers were standing and we had to exit the train and integrate into the line of people traveling on the walkway. Since I had just traveled through the train up until then, I have to admit I felt a little nervous as I stood in the tube shaped tunnel with the 2, maybe 2 1/2 foot wide walkway pressed against the left side and nothing on the right. It's somewhat surprisingly clean and empty outside of odd patterns all over the walls. Maybe every 20 feet along the walkway on the wall is a florescent light tube and along the entire way there is a railing. The floor was bare concrete and there was a straight drop to the tracks below. Just like walking along the train tracks in the station, but with a somewhat narrow walkway and less lighting.
A girl behind me said "I bet no one was expecting this today!" and another girl in front of me had out her video camera and was recording the whole walk. The walk was stop and go and occasionally I'd look back at the train and try to look ahead. I didn't realize that we were walking uphill until we were almost to the station and when I looked back to the train, it was suspended there shining it's crazy train light-eyes at us. I forgot to look for the little plaques telling you how many feet in either direction to the nearest station, but I think we probably walked between 600-800 feet before we walked down some steps and past a weird metal cage looking area that allowed you to see through to the train on the other side of the tracks and a giant marked area on the wall that said "DANGER DO NOT DRILL HIGH VOLTAGE" with giant yellow lines over it. We then walked up a few more stairs and we were at Hollywood and Highland on a jammed platform.
In all, the trip between Universal City and Hollywood and Highland took about an hour. I know some people were agitated with the delay because they were late, but in all I don't feel like it was a bad experience. In fact, I thought it was fun in some ways and outside of the horrible smell at the beginning (I didn't smell it when we walked through the trains) and a little bit of discomfort when the air was off on the train. I image the experience might have been a little confusing for people that didn't speak English as I only heard English announcements and no one did any sort of translations on the car I was on. Walking along the tunnel was exciting if not a little scary as well. Not that I'd want to do this every day or anything, but I felt reasonably safe throughout the process.
Monday, November 24, 2008
NBC/Universal Red Line Project
Today is the last day to send feedback on the Environmental Impact Report to jon.foreman@lacity.org about the NBC/Universal Project planned on top of the Metro Universal City Red Line station.
This particular topic hits close to home for me because this project is planned on top of the subway station I use every day to get to work and home. After reviewing the Environmental Impact report I was rather stunned in the lack of consideration for the people that are already using the Red Line in this neighborhood. I know there are those statistics floating around from a few years ago about people not using the Metro Rail Line in their neighborhood despite living close to the stations, but that still doesn't mean anyone is using them. If any of those people are like me, I honestly had no idea I lived near a Red Line station for about a year. It wasn't really advertised and frankly a little weird looking elevator structure that I passed on the street didn't scream "Public Transportation HERE" to me.
The project has no planned pedestrian or bicyclist mitigation that I can find besides a potential Pedestrian Bridge leading from the Red Line to the current Universal Studios property. Even that isn't a definite. Many of the project's significant and unavoidable impacts directly affect those that walk and bicycle to the train station. The project is expected to generate 15,000 additional car trips in the area per a day (they only expect 2000 public transportation trips from their employees per a day). The resulting traffic issues will spread all through the area past all path ways that bicyclists and pedestrians must walk. There are about 8 or 9 nearby freeway on and off ramps that will have additional traffic on as a result. Some of these ramps are already extremely unsafe as drivers are both exiting and entering at high speeds and are generally not looking for slow moving bikes and pedestrians. There is also 7 years of construction planned that would at one point include moving hundreds of trucks of dirt out of the site and onto the freeway, every day.
Air quality levels around the construction sites (that are on top of the Red Line) during the 7 years of construction will be affected negatively. Multiple air quality measurements will exceed safety thresholds. This is where people must walk and bike to get to their public transportation without the covered safety of a car. There is no mitigation planned to deal with this.
The planned project will also include excessive noise, which again pedestrians and bicyclst are particularly susceptible to since they do not have the closed in car to protect them. Construction is set to go on for 21 hours a day at some points of the project.
The end project also includes a huge number of animated, moving and illuminated signs, which again come with no mitigation to ensure that pedestrians and bicyclists will be safe while moving through this area. These sorts of signs have a tendency to draw people's attention away from the street, which is a major safety issue.
For a project that is being touted as LEED certified, I am amazed at the lack of consideration for the already existing "greeness" of the surrounding community. This project also has a stated goal of encouraging use of the transit system and as the plans stands, there is a very real possibility of this project discouraging those that are currently using the system to continue. The train stop where I get off for work has been under construction for the past 2 years. As much as I hate driving, I found driving to be less stressful than dealing with some of the construction near the rail stop, so I stopped riding the train for a period of time until the construction was completed. There was no consideration taken for those that had to walk along the sidewalks without closure warnings, past people using jackhammers, sidewalks were closed and left with huge open trenches for weeks on end. Sidewalks were constantly littered with screws, nails, stray pieces of metal and wood and who knows what else. I got my tetanus shot as a precaution. Marked sidewalk closures only lead people to even worse sidewalk conditions. Cars were equally confused by closures, which then puts pedestrians at a higher risk. If we want people to use the public transportation systems we need to not treat those riding them as 3rd class citizens. Walking and biking through construction for 7 years with a result of increased traffic and no safety measure for bicyclists or pedestrians is an alarming development for a "green" company.
I urge you to please write to jon.foreman@lacity.org and email him any questions or comments you have on this project and what they plan to do to preserve the current metro ridership and help keep people out of their cars.
This particular topic hits close to home for me because this project is planned on top of the subway station I use every day to get to work and home. After reviewing the Environmental Impact report I was rather stunned in the lack of consideration for the people that are already using the Red Line in this neighborhood. I know there are those statistics floating around from a few years ago about people not using the Metro Rail Line in their neighborhood despite living close to the stations, but that still doesn't mean anyone is using them. If any of those people are like me, I honestly had no idea I lived near a Red Line station for about a year. It wasn't really advertised and frankly a little weird looking elevator structure that I passed on the street didn't scream "Public Transportation HERE" to me.
The project has no planned pedestrian or bicyclist mitigation that I can find besides a potential Pedestrian Bridge leading from the Red Line to the current Universal Studios property. Even that isn't a definite. Many of the project's significant and unavoidable impacts directly affect those that walk and bicycle to the train station. The project is expected to generate 15,000 additional car trips in the area per a day (they only expect 2000 public transportation trips from their employees per a day). The resulting traffic issues will spread all through the area past all path ways that bicyclists and pedestrians must walk. There are about 8 or 9 nearby freeway on and off ramps that will have additional traffic on as a result. Some of these ramps are already extremely unsafe as drivers are both exiting and entering at high speeds and are generally not looking for slow moving bikes and pedestrians. There is also 7 years of construction planned that would at one point include moving hundreds of trucks of dirt out of the site and onto the freeway, every day.
Air quality levels around the construction sites (that are on top of the Red Line) during the 7 years of construction will be affected negatively. Multiple air quality measurements will exceed safety thresholds. This is where people must walk and bike to get to their public transportation without the covered safety of a car. There is no mitigation planned to deal with this.
The planned project will also include excessive noise, which again pedestrians and bicyclst are particularly susceptible to since they do not have the closed in car to protect them. Construction is set to go on for 21 hours a day at some points of the project.
The end project also includes a huge number of animated, moving and illuminated signs, which again come with no mitigation to ensure that pedestrians and bicyclists will be safe while moving through this area. These sorts of signs have a tendency to draw people's attention away from the street, which is a major safety issue.
For a project that is being touted as LEED certified, I am amazed at the lack of consideration for the already existing "greeness" of the surrounding community. This project also has a stated goal of encouraging use of the transit system and as the plans stands, there is a very real possibility of this project discouraging those that are currently using the system to continue. The train stop where I get off for work has been under construction for the past 2 years. As much as I hate driving, I found driving to be less stressful than dealing with some of the construction near the rail stop, so I stopped riding the train for a period of time until the construction was completed. There was no consideration taken for those that had to walk along the sidewalks without closure warnings, past people using jackhammers, sidewalks were closed and left with huge open trenches for weeks on end. Sidewalks were constantly littered with screws, nails, stray pieces of metal and wood and who knows what else. I got my tetanus shot as a precaution. Marked sidewalk closures only lead people to even worse sidewalk conditions. Cars were equally confused by closures, which then puts pedestrians at a higher risk. If we want people to use the public transportation systems we need to not treat those riding them as 3rd class citizens. Walking and biking through construction for 7 years with a result of increased traffic and no safety measure for bicyclists or pedestrians is an alarming development for a "green" company.
I urge you to please write to jon.foreman@lacity.org and email him any questions or comments you have on this project and what they plan to do to preserve the current metro ridership and help keep people out of their cars.
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