Chris "Criswell" Predicts: The Year in Transit

[Transit Coalition]

Every year our friend and pal Chris "Criswell" Predicts The Year in Transit
Here are his 2008 predictions and most excellent rant!

The Year in Transit is not the most important thing to look forward to this year, but it is the brightest spot in a year filled with the tedium that is the unfortunate byproduct of leap years. The first comes in the form of the Summer Olympic Games, this year in Beijing.

American athletes usually dominate the games so much that they made winning go out of style. The must-see event is the opening ceremonies, where the United States formally passes the torch of world’s only superpower to the host country, China. How often is there a chance to make the symbolic literal?

Then comes another pointless quadrennial ritual that occurs every November but fortunately is only participated in by half of all adults and by all indications, like oil production and newspaper readership, trends downward to the point of losing all relevancy and simply be forgotten.

There is, after all, segments of the population that view these trends with a smidgen of hope. It’s not large, and not welcome in most communities and places of business. But The Year in Transit salutes you.

The last thought ran on too long, and the transition to this thought about politics is therefore not that fluid. A young almanac is precocious enough to discuss politics, and has a surprisingly vivid memory of events dating back to the terrible toddler years. The year 2008 offers unique reflection not of the more timely prior year, but an eight-year epoch of monumental importance. The Year in Transit uses this opportunity to write history’s first draft.

Don’t worry. The predictions are here, as usual. The introduction is longer than in year’s past, because 2008 offers a time of unmitigated spleen-venting that comes along, well every four years. That’s just too long to wait.

The citizens of the United States of America, some by choice, the rest by fiat of the Supreme Court, took an eight-year voyage on the scenic road to hell that began on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in the eleventh month in November, 2000 anno domini.

We did not witness the smooth transition of the executive branch for another month, but we eyewitness the pointlessness of the electorate in the process of continuing the chain of succession.

The person who emerged from this dung pile was one George W. Bush, a fortunate son of an aristocratic clan whose pedigree distracted the population from what merit he has performed to warrant elevation to the presidency.

And eight years has shown past performance is indicative of future results. With the life he was endowed, George Bush the Lesser became the political, heck the social, equivalent of what is known in sports as a choke artist. The Americans were expecting mediocrity but received a failure spectacular in quantifiable space and time.

Catastrophic is too charitable to describe the administration under Bush the Lesser. The man whose intellectual means came nowhere close to his financial means allowed the most sociopathic, malignant elements of his political party unparalleled power to put ideology into political action, typically with disastrous consequences.

His corporate kindred spirits plundered the treasury. Worst of all, he desired a war purely for reasons of vanity and is unaffected by the financial, tactical and human toll his wars have affected. These eight years have been marked by the worst leadership not just in American history, but the history of civilization.

How can we, as Americans, reconcile this past administration with a remedy and an improvement to our collective lot?

This introduction has already run too long, so the answer, my friends, is blowing at the bottom of the Year in Transit. Without further ado, other than the pimpage for previous editions of, here is 2008: The Year in Transit.

The Year in Transit archives are maintained on the web site of The Transit Coalition. All editions are available here. They are also simulcast on the Usenet group la.transportation. Now, the entree is served. Bon appetit.

* The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board passes a moratorium preventing planners from holding any more scoping meetings in 2008. Riders are too fatigued from having to go to all the meetings in the last quarter of last year.

* The Inland Empire, reeling from massive foreclosures, comes up with a novel way to maintain fare revenue in light of declining tax revenues. Both Omnitrans and Riverside Transit Agency will allow riders to transport crystal meth made in the region to travel for an extra quarter, as long as the drugs are sealed and not within the riders’ systems.

* The Sprinter opening on January 13 features a christening of the first train of the day and an exorcism for the board members who surely must have been under demonic influence when they approved building this joke of a line.

* Metro stands by its decision to install fare gates after the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department only offers the alternative of “enhanced fare collection techniques.”

* RobDawg’s tenure as a signed MetroRiderLA contributor lasts for exactly one post. He repeats the phrase “transit math” 2,164 times, and he resigns in frustration when all the comments ask “What?”

* Damien Goodmon declines a job offer and a $250,000 compensation package to become the executive director of an upstart Cheviot Hills transit advocacy organization, Concern Trolls for a Safer, Better Expo Line.

* The American Public Transportation Association does not want to see transit oriented development go by the wayside as the housing market continues its downward spiral. It teams up with developers to offer a free home with the purchase of a lifetime bus pass.

* Metro and Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus come to an agreement to run a single service along Pico Boulevard in time for the December shake-up. Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Burke worries that the change would subsequently close the Crackton Turnaround, which would result in closed businesses and lost jobs at the nearby Midtown Shopping Center. Her last-minute meddling preserves the routes as they are today.

* Gold Coast Transit must make massive service cuts after the Ventura County Transit Commission fines the agency for false advertisement, since there has not been any significant quantity of gold found on Ventura County shores in recorded history. Also, other Ventura County transit agencies frown upon systems whose acronyms cannot be played in Scrabble.

* For his activism against a subway with no funding or formal plan for construction, County Supervisor Mike Antonovich thankfully resigns his post to take a position with a certain presidential candidate’s campaign to stop a similar unfunded and unplanned NAFTA Highway.

* Per the request of Fred Camino, the name of that presidential candidate shall not be mentioned on MetroRiderLA for fear that the candidate’s followers will get too excited about seeing his name in blogs and make the comments section look like Exposition Park when the Raiders played home games.

* The Orange County Transportation Authority earns $1 million for naming its bus rapid transit lines Bravo from the cable station of the same name. The channel will pony up another $500,000 if OCTA can make the BRT lines as gay as the TV programming.

* Monorail fans have their faith strengthened in the gadgetbahn’s viability after Disneyland puts the latest generation of vehicle into active service. When Disney said the vehicles are powered by fairy dust and youthful imagination, the monorailists take the comment literally and proclaim them to be superior fuels to electricity.

* L.A. Sniper Alan Mittelstaedt introduces a new video blog on the Los Angeles City Beat web site. The segment, entitled “Strop’d”, is based on the hit television show “Punk’d” and has the Sniper videotaping himself smacking politicians and journalists upside the head with a leather strop anytime they say or write anything asinine about public transit.

* Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa allots two of his three appointments to the Metro board to the Southern California Transit Advocates’ Kymberleigh Richards and The Transit Coalition’s Bart Reed. The triumph for transit users is short lived, as a minor argument makes the boardroom look like a session of the Taiwanese parliament.

There you have it, 2008: The Year in Transit, in all its glory.

In closing, the rant from the introduction resumes now that the rich, meaty goodness of this satire hoagie has sated the hunger of knowledge. The question posed was something akin to, “Where do we go from here?” Behold, the Year in Transit voter guide.

The best, most informed vote for the 2008 election is not for the candidate that is the most capable, charismatic, moral or even courageous. Rather, the ballot should be cast for the candidate you hate the most and want to see fail. The George W. Bush era produced disasters that started under his tenure but will have repercussions for years, even generations, to come.

By and large, our fates are going to be determined by forces stronger, smarter and more determined than our society can bear. And, as of this writing, the 2008 campaign has a good chance of producing either a woman or an African American as the Democratic candidate in November. Should one of these candidates win, their trailblazing will be less remembered than the wave of policy disasters that will chew up and digest their candidacies.

Americans are nothing if not judgmental, and if the first woman or African American leaves the office in disgrace, the failure will haunt all future female and black candidates because of the experiences of the first.

The next four years and beyond have our nation cruising along the pothole-scarred road to hell in our Hummers, talking on our cell phones, when the road narrows to a frayed tightrope hanging above an abyss.

All human knowledge, and most Vegas odds-makers, say that falling or the frayed wire breaking is a lock. The point is now not to stand behind the odds-beater, but to elect a person you would watch enjoying fail. The Germans call this “schadenfreude.”

This has the most downbeat, callous Year in Transit ever compiled. It’s overabundant in pessimism and dark humor. Something we can use, especially since 2007 saw the passing of two grand masters of this genre, writer Kurt Vonnegut and director Ingmar Bergman. The Year in Transit closes in dedication to these greats.

Peace, y’all.

[Bart Reed]

Every year our friend and pal Chris "Criswell" Predicts The Year in Transit

Here are his 2009 predictions and most excellent bushwack![/size]

The Year in Transit commences its second decade into guessing what the future holds for the analysis and advocacy of getting-aroundery. For this edition, The Year in Transit is modifying the protocol slightly by cutting right to the chase and writing the looking back/looking forward after the predictions.

Stand clear, the doors are closing.

• Metro scrambles to name a replacement for the forgotten-but-not-gone CEO Roger Snoble. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s figures the position is a good consolation appointment for former Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent David Brewer.
  
  
• Omnitrans and Riverside Transit Agency report record ridership throughout 2009, most of it coming from Inland Empire residents who now call the buses their primary residences after being foreclosed from their McMansions.
  
  
• All major capital projects that were to be funded by Measure R will be scrapped after Metro must redirect the projected $40 billion to pay off the wrongful arrest lawsuit ruled in favor of Randall BusTard.
  
  
• Upon hearing news that Montebello Bus Lines is canceling its three express lines into downtown L.A., County Supervisor Gloria Molina jumps to the conclusion that Westside politicians and business leaders conspired to loot funds from an Eastside bus system. She spends most of the year making the issue a crusade, and explanations from Montebello staff that lines 341, 342 and 343 would just duplicate the Gold Line only make the supervisor angrier and more strident.
  
  
• Damien Goodmon gives his efforts of fighting the Expo Line a rest after he gets a lucrative offer to tour the dinner theater circuit as the star of “Man of La Mancha.”
  
  
• A legion of Orange County toll road supporters, frustrated by the coalition of surfers stopping the project near San Onofre, hope to disrupt the opponents through a plan called the “Million Driver Dump.” Proponents are coordinating a simultaneous toilet-flushing in the hope that the surfers will be impaired by the sudden onslaught of bodily waste.
  
  
• The TAP card gains more validity as many merchants in the county agree to take it in lieu of cash in case the economy gets worse and the dollar goes Zimbabwean.
  
  
• California High Speed Rail blogger Robert Cruickshank is determined to see the project start construction, come hell or high water. He’s not waiting for the Pooled Money Investment Board to get its act together. He is asking for supporters and investors to fund the project through PayPal.
  
  
• All the people who voted for Barack Obama, expecting his administration to change transportation funding priorities, are in for a shock. Transportation secretary Ray LaHood assembles the nation’s transit managers into one room, and reaches into his pocket to have them scramble for spare change he throws in the air. LaHood then sneers, “They wanted change? They got it. Ha!”
  
  
• RobDawg gets the appointment of a lifetime – as citizen representative on the Ventura County Transportation Commission – but takes a pass on the opportunity. He admits he is too busy writing memos for the Tribune Corp. under the pseudonym of Lee Abrams.
  
  
• Los Angeles Councilman Eric Garcetti jawbones Metro into making Rapid Line 704 serve all the local stops between Alvarado Street and Vermont Avenue. He admits that the move was not intended to increase ridership in Silver Lake; he just thinks hipsters would get a kick out of the irony.
  
  
• While Orange County elected officials ruminate on what the Orange County Transportation Authority’s bus rapid transit is supposed to be, bureaucrats do a head-fake and rename all local bus services as Bravo! The credulous politicians are impressed by the outcomes: rapid buses on every street and hundreds of thousands of daily boardings.
  
  
• Metro forgets to cancel the Eastside Gold Line opening during the same weekend its employees go on strike.
  
  
• The North San Diego County Transit District announces that it is increasing Sprinter service to every 15 minutes, yet at the same time it must make drastic cuts to bus service and then pawn off many coaches just to meet payroll.
  
  
• During a summer confab of North American transit advocates and transit bloggers, participants agree to spread the following Godwin’s Law-inspired meme: When opponents argue against rail because it is 19th century technology, the debate has gone on too long and their side loses by default on account of imbecility.

Whew! Were all the events of 2008 a dizzying event? They sure felt that way. They should, since that’s normal for a civilization that’s circling the drain.

The year 2008 marks the twilight of the eight-year junta led by George W. Bush. This may seem like reason enough to celebrate, especially with one of the most lively and enthusiastic elections in modern history. After November 4 and the days immediately after, many Americans were basking in the election’s afterglow.

America, stop it! Now! It’s not healthy.

Look forward to 2009. It’s hard to look beyond it, because it’s hard to see past the ass of the first horse of the apocalypse George W. Bush rides off into Crawford, Texas.

In the meantime, we can shake off the dust and hold our noses to block out the equine methane and remind ourselves that George W. Bush goes beyond being the worst world leader in the history of civilization. George W. Bush was a force of nature in the form of a double-digit IQ man, unstoppable in its destruction.

Eight years ago, America was the undisputed heavyweight champion economically, militarily, geopolitically. The United States was feared, admired, and at the very least, tolerated because we didn’t cock-slap the world with our gluttony, cupidity and stupidity.

Under the stewardship of George W. Bush …

… our “unimpeachable” economy is now at the point where Robert Mugabe is watching CNN and laughing at us.

… our “unstoppable” military with its overwhelming technological prowess is gassed and rope-a-doped by loosely disciplined non-state militias. More organized states and their forces see this as a development most interesting.

… our “unshakable” faith in the Constitution, checks and balances and civil authority has been autoerotically asphyxiated. Done. Finished. Kaput. Somehow, this epic imbecile managed to get through a harrowing vetting process, impress enough credulous people to plausibly steal an election and then when this 20 gallons of crap in a 10 gallon hat took his brain for a test drive in the Oval Office, the most dangerous elements of the Republican Party saw their opportunities for a jailbreak. The Supermax Death row of conservatives cozied up to the rookie guard and managed to get him to surrender his keys. Now they took over the facility, and warden Richard Cheney was in on it all along.

There used to be a thing called justice. There used to be a thing called poetic justice. Leaders who had twice the popularity of George W. Bush during their wane would usually find their fates sealed by the vengeful. This time, there’s no bunker, no noose, no rotting in exile. The last eight years will be morbidly enshrined in the George W. Bush Presidential Library.

The GEORGE W. FRIGGIN’ BUSH PRESIDENTIAL FRIGGIN’ LIBRARY!

Americans are understandably angry, but because George W. Bush failed on the public relations front, just like everything else he has touched in life.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, cannot polish this turd of a nation again. The land may have some potential. It’s the people living in it who are SOL and JWF (s— out of luck and jolly well f—ed).

Americans, by temperament, are overfed, overentitled and petulant. The problem is, there is a power greater than ourselves that has tried to warn us to change our ways and learn to coexist with fellow Homo sapiens and the world at large. First we drove bigger cars with more muscular engines to get away from the message. Then we tried to silence the messenger. Now we cannot escape it, and cannot deign ourselves that this greater power was right all along.

This greater power, of course, is reality.

November 4 was not an acknowledgement of this message. Americans think they exchanged their votes for hope and change. Progress? Oh, please. Americans did see a big mess — and they hired a black guy to clean it up.

This synopsis of the years past and future is dedicated to the memory of George Carlin, America’s philosopher-king who gained fame and legitimacy by posing as a stand-up comedian. He saw the direction America was heading in, and he left the mortal world too soon before his predictions became reality. Rest in peace, Mr. Carlin.

Pray for peace, everyone else. Dare to have a happy 2009.

There’s not much to be happy about in the coming year, but Angelenos and affiliated suburbanites – more than 67 percent of them – should be applauded for standing up once again for public transportation. Bravo, L.A.! And bravo to California for leading the nation in high speed rail, and bravo to all the other regions in the country who have also affirmed their commitment to public transportation.

Even the curmudgeons, cranks and nihilists need their ray of sunshine. And you can get yours by looking at the Year in Transit in The Transit Coalition’s archives.

Happy New Year, and most of all, peace!

[wad]

We’ve made it through 2009, and before 2010 is bound to give us another round of motion sickness, let the Year in Transit be your Dramamine. The Year in Transit gets you to the destination directly, and unlike Metro Rapid, the Year in Transit catches green lights all the way.

The Transit Coalition, a rider advocacy group pleasantly short of kooks and cranks, has graciously volunteered to maintain the Year in Transit archives. Look back at the years past and see how frighteningly true these predictions have come.

With the pre-trip inspection complete, let’s roll this bus out of the division.




Metro once again shows it can make quick decisions, and once again, it shows the quick decisions only leave riders confused and angry. A week before the June shake-up, Metro decides to transpose the colors on the two busways. Riders and bus drivers are baffled, but Metro says the confusion is worth it because it was stupider to have silver buses on the Orange Line and orange buses on the Silver Line.

Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach wins the hearts and minds of locals with his new solution for the OCTA funding crisis: Cancel all bus service, then round up Orange County’s transit-dependent population to be ground up and fed to the hungry.

Los Angeles’ bicyclists evolve from a community to a fierce, hardy tribe when they acknowledge Ubrayj as their leader. The announcement catches Brayj by surprise and he decides to learn leadership methods from a weekend of watching “Braveheart”. He is then inspired to lead bicyclists on a siege of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation headquarters in downtown L.A.

Californians are getting so sick of the state’s raids on transit to balance its own budget that a group is now circulating an initiative petition to stop it once and for all. The wording of the measure says that if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger or any state official attempts another raid on funds, their punishment shall be to strap all their campaign contributions to them and then have a transit agency representative be able to keep all the money they can obtain from turning the politicians upside down and shaking them.

The Metrolink board is unable to decide on either raising fares or cutting service to meet budget shortfalls, so it instead decides to allow passengers to get free passes if they mail in a manila envelope filled with gold coins or jewelry they no longer use.

The Expo Line is so desperate to get any part of the problem-plagued light rail line in service by the end of 2010, the best it could do is scale back Phase I to operate peak hours only between 7th Street Metro Center and Pico stations in time for the service shake-up in December.

Metro decides fare gates are a failure -- we can only hope -- after an experiment to try actual fare collection ends miserably when riders stare glazedly at the turnstiles because they aren’t sure how they work.

California’s high-speed rail plan wins federal funding, but the state doesn’t even get beyond the $1 billion mark. The federal money we get is just enough to buy higher-speed service powered by adding sails to existing Amtrak trains and locomotives.

Long Beach pours water on a councilwoman’s ambitious plans to introduce modern streetcars in the city. The City Council instead votes to spend the equivalent amount of money that would have gone into a steel-wheel system and spend it on buying battery-powered faux trolleys and use the money left over to “paint” tracks into the street.

One of the last acts of retired USC president Steven Sample is to announce that the University of Southern California will be vacating the campus and leaving Los Angeles the Friday before the weekend the Expo Line will open. He put a few professors in the School of Policy, Planning and Development in charge of the transition team, and they settled on an ideologically correct campus near the junction of the 133 and 241 toll roads in Orange County.

An investigation reveals Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s vow to have a subway extension completed within 10 years relies heavily on a speculative extension beyond Santa Monica to the Moon. Villaraigosa figured an extraplanetary extension would make the Purple Line extension eligible for NASA funding.

Southern California transit systems become the test markets for a new federal initiative to get on-the-ropes carmakers General Motors and Chrysler back into health by building transit equipment. The yet-to-be-named end product has the looks of a Pontiac Aztek combined with the reliablity of a Chrysler.

While we’re on car companies, the latest conspiracy theory to raise teabaggers’ hackles the way chum does in shark-infested waters is a Drudge Report post claiming the Obama administration deliberately bankrupted GM and Chrysler in order to weaken the auto industry and force everyone onto transit. Teabaggers claim they are victims of the “Reverse Roger Rabbit Conspiracy.”

RobDawg, who has been noticeably quiet for much of the last year, will resurface in a big way after he completes his move to the Inland Empire. He says his heart will always be in Ventura County, but the houses he scored for cents on the dollar at an auction was a deal too good to pass up. He will relaunch his blog as Methburban Nation.

And speaking of relaunches, Fred Camino will be coming back to MetroRiderLA full-time, only this time, he knows the haters are the only ones that get readership. So starting April 1, MetroRiderLA will keep the same name, except content from then on will be a daily candid photograph of a transit user that Web users can laugh at without the fear of putting themselves in danger -- transit’s answer to PeopleOfWalMart.com.


There you have it, the Year in Transit.

The Year in Transit wishes you peace and a Happy New Year.

[Gokhan]

Jan 1, 2010 3:34:42 GMT -8 wad said:

The Expo Line is so desperate to get any part of the problem-plagued light rail line in service by the end of 2010, the best it could do is scale back Phase I to operate peak hours only between 7th Street Metro Center and Pico stations in time for the service shake-up in December.

That section of the Expo Line actually already opened in 1991. Bingo! What we will see is that the segment between Vermont and Crenshaw will open in December 2010. You will transfer from the Pico Station to the Vermont Station on a bus and from the Crenshaw Station to Santa Monica on another bus. LOL

[wad]

It’s hard to believe, but this here Year in Transit series has now continued on for 13 years … or the exact time it takes for a bus to cross from one end of the Beverly Hills city limits to the other. See previous predictions in the archives maintained by The Transit Coalition.

And in honor of the 13th installment of the Year in Transit, I present to you a word that’s sure to make you a hit at parties: triskaidekaphobia. If you haven’t had a reason to fear the number 13, now you do. The fear of it has its own phobia. There’s also paraskevidekatriaphobia – fear of Friday the 13th. Needless to say, it refers to the calendar date. People with that phobia wouldn’t even bother with the slasher film series.

I can go on, and I’d like to, but it’s predictions for 2011 you’re here to see. This installment of The Year in Transit is brought to you by the number 13. I can’t keep holding this door open for much longer, so on we go!

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority board will pass a simplified policy written by member and County Supervisor Mark-Ridley Thomas regarding rail station policy. Instead of taking “subjective” factors into account, Metro planners must follow a policy of not building a rail station that will harsh a community’s mellow.

Teabagger indignation nationwide leads California to be the last state standing in the running for federal high-speed rail funds. The good news: California will get all high-speed rail funds for the next two years. The bad news: All of it will be used to finish a line that runs from Madera to Shafter.

The Orange County Transportation Authority, wanting to restore its night owl services and massive service cuts during the rest of the day on most of its lines, authorizes bus riders to conduct bake sales to raise operating funds.

The Bus Bench obtains a leaked cable from Metro indicating plans to discontinue all Rapid service by the December 2012 shake-up. The rationale given by Metro staff: The revenue from all Rapid lines combined doesn’t ever cover the costs of red paint.

The Inland Empire hopes to turn around its moribund real estate market by doubling down on transit-oriented development. A report by real estate experts finds that a Omnitrans and Riverside Transit Agency bus has held its value better than most area homes, prompting the agencies’ marketing departments to adopt the tagline, “If you rode us, you’d be home by now.”

Joel Kotkin will release his much-anticipated treatise on urbanism and suburbanism, what he describes as his answer to Jane Jacobs’ “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” It is titled “How Irvine Are You?”

A group of Westside residents opposed to the Expo Line founds the first known group not to conceal its intentions with a name suggesting conditional support. It will be called Angry Residents Stopping Expo, Hoping Obstructionist Lawsuits Eventually Succeed.

Rob Dawg emerges from his undisclosed bunker in Ventura County … oops, Sorry, Rob … to ask whether the above group really exists, but doesn’t stick around for the answer as angry mortgage industry big shots with friends in low places have him in his crosshairs. He specifically tells Year in Transit readers it’s OK not to have a Ventura County transit item in this year, and to knock three times if you are bringing food.

California’s high-speed rail may have some life left in it, as Orange County politico Curt Pringle makes a vague promise that he will endow the project from his family’s trust fund earned through sales of canned potato chips.

Hancock Park and Windsor Village homeowners aren’t content with just eliminating the Wilshire/Crenshaw stop on the Purple Line extension. They want to make it clear they want Metro to make sure the subway and their neighborhoods cannot connect in any way. Metro agrees to remove all bus stops between Western and La Brea avenues by the time the subway extension opens.

As California faces a permanent budget crisis, incoming governor Jerry Brown creates a new idea for appropriating whatever little can be spent. Schools, transportation, law enforcement, environment and business special interests can each send out one representative to find a bag of cash hidden somewhere in the state, and the first person to find it can spend it any way the special interest wishes.

The Federal Railroad Administration certifies Metrolink’s Guardian Fleet cars by Hyundai Rotem under a new category of “the safest, most reliable passenger rail car fleet just as long as coins are not placed on the tracks.”

Metro runs out of ways to break the bad news to West Hollywood that despite its heavy support for Measure R, the city will not get the Pink Line or any consolation rail service. In what had been intended as a way to let West Hollywood down easy, Metro’s “Don’t Task, Don’t Sell” policy of not committing any more resources into a Major Investment Study for another 17 years is met with indignation.

Census data from 2010 show Southern California is by far the densest region in the U.S. Urbanists are crestfallen when they learn it was data about residents’ intelligence.

Noting the Blue Line’s dubious distinction as the nation’s most accident-prone urban rail line, the Darwin Awards gives the 20-year-old Los Angeles-to-Long Beach service a Lifetime Achievement statuette.

[bobdavis]

Blue Line wins Darwin Lifetime Achievement Award? Cold shot!
Out in the San Gabriel Valley, ways of funding Gold Line Foothill Extension 2-B (Glendora-Montclair), which probably won't be covered by Measure "R" were discussed. Federal financing will be sought, but at a recent gathering, one person jokingly suggested bake sales, and Bob Davis offered to borrow the "tip jar" from his favorite band. Perhaps a Shakespeare Festival could be staged ("2B or not 2B, that is the question"). We now take off our "jester's hat" and resume serious discussion.

[wad]

The Expo Line was so abysmally built that the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has announced Phase II will open first while Phase I must be completely disassembled and the project started over from the study phase.

Because the city of Los Angeles cannot afford to repair the lawn damaged by the Occupy LA protests, the City Council votes to turn the prime Civic Center land into a surface parking lot but commemorate it in honor of the protesters.

Metro's policy of aggressive rear-guard goodwill moves in the face of bad press or regulatory lawsuits will outpace salaries to be the single-largest line item in its budget.

RobDawg will take more interest in transit, but just to take his camera on the buses and ask passengers to model for his collection of cheesecake stock photos on his Exurban Nation blog.

As Montebello faces a crisis of fiscal mismanagement, it becomes the first city to privatize its bus service by putting up the whole operation to be bid for on eBay.

San Fernando Valley business leaders, upon learning of Metro's station renaming policy, urge one of the area's subway or Orange Line stops to be commemorated after porn legend John Holmes.

Torrance Transit puts its plans to build a transfer center in a desolate corner of industrial Crenshaw Boulevard on indefinite hold. City leaders are hoping to take over a hazardously contaminated corner of an oil refinery that is even further away from homes or businesses than the Crenshaw site.

Inland Empire real estate professionals put a new twist on transit-oriented development by promoting houses' proximity to plain-old Omnitrans and Riverside Transit Agency bus stops. The motivation behind this was based upon the fact that bus stops now have the highest land values in San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

County supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and Los Angeles city officials say only $1 billion for the Crenshaw Line is an insult to the community, but they'll set aside protests if the project budget includes rhodium-plated rails and gold leaf station paneling.

It turns out that foes of gay marriage are also vehemently anti-transit. So, in order to avoid highway projects from facing budget cuts, they will draft an initiative that defines "freedom" as strictly between an automobile and the roadway beneath it.

Metrolink will not resume the trains for Angels service at the request of team owner Arte Moreno. He is counting on everyone to drive to the stadium and pay much higher parking rates in order to cover Albert Pujols' salary.

CicLAvia proves to be so popular that it has inconvenienced drivers to the point where the event needs to be shut down. L.A. leaders work out a plan for a single CicLAvia, to be held during the L.A. Marathon, and bicyclists will share the road with runners.

The Orange County Transportation Authority board will make an offer to Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff Joe Arpaio to become the system's CEO should a federal indictment or other scandal force him from his present office. The board is hoping he will incorporate his law enforcement techniques on the county's bus riders.

Hollywood residents are furious over L.A.'s "elegant density" plan because they fear the developments will lead to gentrification. Residents insist that Selma Avenue and Yucca Street be covered by the city's first heroin alley preservation overlay zones.

Governor Jerry Brown and Sacramento's Democratic leaders tell Robert Cruickshank, the state's one and only remaining high-speed rail supporter, that they will vow to complete the project if he can piss molasses up a rope.

[wad]

Welcome back to another new year, which means it’s time for another Year in Transit. This is not for the triskaidekaphobic, as it’s 2013. All aboard for this Internet tradition.



The Blue and Expo lines junction’s builder is found guilty of making the problematic “frog” with actual amphibian frogs. The builder’s defense: That’s why we bid the lowest.

A Los Angeles Times investigation uncovers shoddy construction on the Expo Line, and the crew that built it went on to work as the replacement NFL referees after the project was completed.

A multimodal transit center for downtown Riverside will never materialize because Riverside County Transportation Commission blow the last-chance deadline for federal funding. The commissioners were caught kicking the can down the road – literally. A YouTube video shows them playing hacky sack with a Campbell’s soup container.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich announces another try for Measure J in 2014. This time, though, he’ll support it because half of all funds raised by it must be spent solely in Lancaster and Palmdale.

The Ventura County Transportation Commission will attempt to plan for a countywide transit system. The inexperience shows, as commissioners suggest all of the city-level systems be merged into a single bus route that would somehow serve everyone.

The fiscal cliff will force the elimination of all transit subsidies. Transit agencies nationwide are unable to meet payroll, but they cover some of the gap by adopting an approach started by Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus: Putting a tip jar for the drivers next to the farebox.

A bicyclist will actually stop at a stop sign, but since no one made a photo or video or posted it to social media, no one will believe it actually happened.

The next Orange County Transportation Authority CEO will take a page from retired executive Will Kempton and build goodwill among riders by raising fares another dollar and eliminating Sunday service.

Metro will point to a dubious study that suggests not only will turnstiles prevent all fare delinquencies once locked, they'll generate enough revenue to pay down the federal debt in 10 years.

Cost overruns on California's high-speed rail will be so high -- even before the first mile of track is laid -- that mathemeticians have to invent a new word for the several dozen digits the project will end up costing.

Beverly Hills will argue in court that the subway cannot be built within several miles of the high school because tunneling will disturb a highly sensitive C.H.U.D. habitat.

The Omnitrans board will heed the San Bernardino City Council's request to cancel the sbX bus rapid transit project. The city says its financial advisors tell them that scrapping transit project will appease the mythical bankruptcy fairy.

The Crenshaw line will be the first rail project Metro designs entirely around a community's wishes no matter what the expense. Every Line 210 bus stop will have a underground station, and the line will now have a branch in addition to the LAX terminus: the re-created route of the now-canceled Line 305.

Megabus will resort to paying California passengers to ride its buses. It will still have lower ridership than its abysmal 2007-2008 tenure.

After this prognosticator proposed abandoning the terms Bus Rapid Transit and BRT in favor of Sporkbus, transit bloggers make it a meme. It proves to endure throughout the year, and by next year or 2015 at the latest, Sporkbus eventually forces Bus Rapid Transit and BRT into disuse.



That is your 2013: The Year in Transit. This is dedicated to Dick Clark, who made every New Year’s Day memorable on TV and helped shape music for the 20th century, and Alexander Cockburn, who helped slap some honesty into journalism with the provocative Counterpunch website.

Happy New Year, and peace!

[wad]

Hope you had a great 2013 on and off the buses and trains. Without further ordure, the Year in Transit leaves the station. The headsign: 2014.



The Metropolitan Transportation Authority board, embarrassed by revelations that turnstiles revealed discrepancies in subway ridership numbers, will spend at least $100 million to send all Metro employees to school to teach them to count.

The costs of Positive Train Control will be so high that Metrolink will "afford" it by running all lines Sunset Limited-style: one train in each direction, three times a week.

The Orange County Transportation Authority will once again lower its expectations of what it can hope to accomplish with public transit. Its board votes to formally stop pursuing any rail or bus rapid transit initiatives, and instead directs the agency to refer to routes that run hourly as "high-frequency service."

Metro Line 442 will once again be proposed for elimination, but the line gets a reprieve when a New York Times reporter profiles the three dozen people who'll face hardship if the line is cut.

Elon Musk scraps his idea for the Hyperloop in favor of a system he proposed would allow people to transport themselves to any location they desire by way of what he calls "human fax machines" and says the system will cost only $2 billion and take only two years to build.

Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus will redecorate its new Gilligs with blacklight, beaded curtains at both doors and shag carpeting to match the Day-Glo green seats.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority's revised cost-saving plan will call for the cheaper SNCF option via Interstate 5 between L.A. and the Bay Area, then using the cost savings to deracinate the Central and Antelope valleys.

New Metro rail car builder Kinkisharyo will have a rough go in its new L.A. headquarters, as it has to explain to the porn industry in the San Fernando Valley that despite its name, it is a builder of rail cars and not Japanese sex toys.

Dollar-bus companies Megabus and BoltBus will have competition from yet another upstart intercity carrier. The yet-unnamed company will be bankrolled by entertainer Yakov Smirnoff, whose low-cost model is said to be based on the Soviet Union custom in which bus rides you.

CicLAvia organizers will have their first public relations crisis on their hands when a Sunday bike-and-pedestrian-only event is planned for San Vicente Boulevard -- but which one was not specified.

The Reason Foundation and its claque of academics at USC will go all in on a meme to have Cincinnati run Los Angeles' Measure R project planning and construction.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band will win a lawsuit against Omnitrans to stop it from launching sbX service. Lawyers argue that the musicians' names would be devalued because they would not only be associated with a run-down street in a bankrupt city, but also -- to quote legal briefs, "bus rapid transit adds insult to injury."

Torrance will make it easier for bus riders to know where the future bus plaza is in the city by renaming the streets it intersects Middle Road and Nowhere Boulevard.

Ventura County will argue its way out of establishing local bus routes connecting cities with one another by saying it cannot find a staff member on consultant sufficiently qualified to draw lines on a map.

Metro and Beverly Hills will reach an agreement over the Purple Line extension crossing Beverly Hills High School. The pact calls for the subway to run at grade while the high school campus will be placed underground in a tunnel.



As you know, tradition calls for the Year in Transit to be dedicated to someone we lost in the prior year. This is dedicated to Nelson Mandela, whose 95 extraordinary years on this earth and his sacrifices and achievements will continue to awe and inspire generations to come.

Happy 2014 and peace!

[wad]

As The Year in Transit matures, 2015 marks a watershed year that will change the way public transportation in Southern California is parodied. If you are reading this on la.transportation, you wouldn’t know it. Last year’s Year in Transit was the last Year in Transit. From 2015 forward, The Year in Transit shall be exclusively placed on the archives at The Transit Coalition. As the kids as, is Usenet still a thing? No it isn’t, and The Year in Transit will no longer be simulcast on Usenet newsgroups.

Onward …



Lancaster will retreat on its effort to close down the Metrolink station to stop the homeless from inundating the city after a study determines that the homeless are the only thing that’s classing up the place.

Instead of a senior prom, Beverly Hills High School students will protest the Metro Purple Line from running under the school with the “Million Trustafarian March.” They will hop in their BMWs, honk their horns incessantly and block traffic along Wilshire Boulevard.

Long Beach Transit will throw another curveball in its electric bus bid. The contract won’t go to either BYD or Proterra, but instead an ordinary bus that runs on ordinary batteries by Duracell or Energizer.

Now that New Flyer has acquired both NABI and Orion, it will petition the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark the word “bus” and be the only corporation allowed to use the word.

As Kinkisharyo works to complete Metro’s rail car order, it will make a successful expansion into the sex toy market with its popular Kinky Sharyo line.

A Gillig exhaust pipe cover will be cast in the title role in the remake of “E.T.,” which begins filming in the summer.

Metrolink will abandon a search for a new chief executive and just pick its new agency leader from Southern California’s juror pool.

Transporation advocates of all stripes will anxiously watch the fate of the Republicans’ new transportation bill, which proposes to strip all funding from any vehicle that did not exist during the time of the Founding Fathers.

A leaked schedule schematic about the Metro Expo Line extension to will dismay riders as an end-to-end trip from 7th Street Metro Center to Santa Monica will take 70 minutes each way. It will take 30 minutes to go from Santa Monica to 23rd Street, and another 30 minutes to go from 23rd Street to Pico.

Uber’s new recruiting spiel will claim a driver’s license is not required in order to be one of its drivers. After this produces a fierce denunciation by the DMV and journalists, Uber will say the rules are just set up to interfere with its free market rights … then threaten to doxx any journalist critical of the company.

As Lyft loses ground to Uber in the ride share wars, it will attract attention by changing its trademark from a pink moustache to a purple merkin.

The Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension will prove so transformative that Irwindale will be a finalist in the 2015 Curbed Cup.

Elon Musk will admit his Hyperloop was never meant to be serious transportation and he was just trolling us to oppose high-speed rail, but he said Hyperloop should be adapted to carry mail through a national network of pneumatic tubes and replace the U.S. Postal Service. He will say he’s serious about the proposal this time.

The Orange County Transportation Authority will successfully convince transit riders that paying more for their rides is in their best interests by a catchy song parody called “All About That Base Fare.”

“Frequency or coverage?” will replace “Boxers or Briefs?” and “Great taste or Less Filling?” as the question of the ages that will divide society.



The Year in Transit is dedicated in memory of Robin Williams. The world laughs a little less with you not in it. (Plus, Robin Williams had a hilarious scene on a San Francisco Muni bus in “Mrs. Doubtfire,” so the dedication is appropriate.)

Happy 2015 and Peace!

[masonite]

Overall 2015 was a very tough year for rail transit in SoCal. Falling ridership, frequent major breakdowns in the light rail system especially the Gold and Blue Lines and no rail openings. Not a lot of progress, but 2016 should be much better. The only real addition was the Wilshire Busway and that has been a disappointment as enforcement of intrusion is weak and Wilshire bus ridership has not improved at all since its opening. Work was done on the Regional Connector and the Crenshaw Line, but they both appear to be behind schedule with the Regional Connector over budget and now well behind schedule. Expo couldn't quite get substantial completion in 2015 either. Metro changed leadership during the year, but I think it is too early to see what that really means.

In 2016, we have 2 major rail openings, a Metrolink extension opening, new light rail cars coming as well as a bunch of smaller projects like the Orange to Red Line portal opening. It may even be enough to get a Measure R2 passed in Nov. Anyway, looking forward to a much better year in 2016 with a lot of things happening.

[wad]

If it weren’t for bad news in 2015, there would be no news at all. Ridership has fallen in Los Angeles, as it has all over the country, although this comes as the county is being asked to approve more money next year … to move fewer people. The good news is that Metro is opening the Expo Line, joining the backward Westside with the rest of the civilization that is L.A. County. The Gold Line will also go toward Azusa. These rail expansions alone make all the downsides worth ignoring. Anyway, onward with the predictions!



Metropolitan Transportation Authority planners will propose to cancel all bus and rail services with the expectation that munis will to take them over if them feel like doing so.

The GEO Group will purchase Greyhound from FirstGroup to solidify its position as the world leader in prisoner transportation.

The first self-driving car will go on sale this year by Range Rover. It will be programmed to cut drivers off, waver in lanes like the driver is talking on a cell phone, and take up more than one space while parking.

The sales tax measure will not only provide money for the Orange Line to be converted to light rail, but also for the Blue, Gold and Green lines to be converted to BRT.

Uber will use its ludicrously large multi-billion-dollar valuation to purchase Tinder and allow passengers to swipe left to avoid drivers they find ugly.

After Metrolink banned hoverboards on trains, hoverboard manufacturers will band together to forbid sales to anybody who rides and/or likes trains.

Paul Druce will spend 2016 battling a very expensive lawsuit by the Reason Foundation over his website, Reason and Rail. The plaintiffs will argue “Reason” and “Rail” misleadingly implies the libertarian institute tolerates rail transit.

The Los Angeles alt-transportation community will meet the person behind the @limitedstop Twitter account and be surprised the Metro drawing of a train operator saying “exclamation point!” is what he looks like in real life.

A poll will findsDonald Trump supporters are the most vehemently against high-speed rail, because more than half of them told pollsters they believe the California High-Speed Rail Authority is a Muslim.

Bicyclists will abandon support of Vision Zero and focus their advocacy energy into the abolition of stop signs.

A Los Angeles Department of Transportation report finds more cars using the bus-only lanes on Wilshire Boulevard than the regular lanes combined.
The Orange County Transportation Authority board will unanimously approve a restructuring plan that eliminates unproductive services but vote down higher frequencies and expanded Bravo services on the grounds that better public transportation will make the county’s image look bad.

For the first time since opening more than 25 years ago, the Blue Line will spend more hours out of service due to crashes with cars and breakdowns than in revenue service.

Swatting is so 2015! The new meme of 2016 will be to report to authorities that a suspicious package was found at the Westlake/MacArthur subway Park station, only for the bomb squad to find those were cakes left out in the rain.

StreetsblogLA and The Source will go dark in 2016, with editors of both sites expecting calwatch to report all transit news if he feels like doing so.



This Year in Transit is dedicated to the memory of Stan Chambers, the last of KTLA’s Three Musketeers.

Peace, and Happy 2016!

[wad]

The 2016 Year in Transit was the last edition. As of 2017, the Year in Transit is retired.

[bluelineshawn]

Jan 1, 2017 5:11:51 GMT -8 wad said:

The 2016 Year in Transit was the last edition. As of 2017, the Year in Transit is retired.

Aww. And you should resume posting here. You added a lot.