Hey, f’ you too :)

Agreed with you on Phylis, though. I wish I had said it!

Spokker: That’s the first truly insightful thing I think I’ve seen you write.

Kym: Thanks for supporting Steve. Your comments were meaningful.

Phylis: You are by all measures a social retard. Quite offensively you read your own twisted thoughts between the lines of others and then attribute them wrongly. Steve has the same right to drive his car as you have to stumble aimlessly through life. We need more automotive reporting in this city, by the way. The only true solution to the congestion is a comprehensive transportation plan.

Let’s not eulogize Steve or the Times, let’s move forward and make things better.

From the interview:
” I take the Gold Line occasionally, but I’ll be quite honest. I find it a lot faster to drive. I do take mass transit a lot, but typically during work hours for work purposes. Every couple of weeks I do try and hop on the Gold Line.”

So he uses transit for getting around town to do his reporting, but typically drives between work and home because it’s faster. In your eyes that makes him a “liar” and a hypocrite.

As for your statement:
“If he is taking a bunch of alternative routes then he is deliberatley attempting to put transit at a disadvantage to cover his ass from looking like a hypocrite that writes and reports about transit but never steps foot on a bus or train. “

Seriously? So, it’s not that you don’t think he can’t make his commute faster in a car, even at rush hour. It’s just that you disapprove of the fact that he’s found some great route that maybe avoids the freeway in order to avoid traffic jams. So if someone finds and drives the quickest way to get between their home and their work, that’s not them being efficient and saving themselves time, that’s them “deliberately attempting to put transit at a disadvantage”? You have a pretty warped worldview. So anyone who finds the quickest way to get between two points and uses it is in fact being conniving and malicious against the institution of public transit. You’ve already admitted that transit is almost always slower than driving, and that’s really all that Steve said, so you’re calling him a liar and a hypocrite for saying something you yourself have admitted is true. That leads me to conclude that there is some other reason you have an axe to grind with steve, because the reasons your providing don’t make any sense. Maybe he was a jerk to you at some point or you’ve had some other run-in with him, I dunno.

As for your statement: “Steve’s commute is not faster in a car David during rush than the Gold Line.”

Oh, and you know that because. . . ? Can you tell me exactly how long MY daily commute is? How about if I tell you that you’re doing YOUR daily commute wrong, because I clearly must know how long it takes you to do your commute much better than the person who actually MAKES that commute daily. Calwatch says the time he quoted is reasonable, and gave an explanation as to how Steve could make that commute in less time. Sounded reasonable enough to me.

Steve told us how long is commute takes. You call him a liar. Alright then, prove it. If you’re going to say that he lied, go ahead and support your statement. So far you’ve claimed he’s said things he didn’t, and called him a liar without supporting that statement. That makes YOU the liar, not him.

I’ll go ahead and go out on a limb and say that I aren’t that many routes in Los Angeles where driving is NOT faster than taking transit, even during rush hour. Not saying they don’t exist, but I’m betting they are pretty rare. Maybe trying to get from Downtown to NoHo at 5 pm, if your origin and destination are very close to redline stops. But otherwise, the light rails and buses can’t compete time-wise. Example: I commute from Sherman Oaks to Long Beach once a week. Using the orange/red/blue lines, it takes just under 2 hours every time. Doing it on the 405 freeway takes 40 minutes without traffic, and has never taken me longer than 1 hr 45 minutes at rush hour in full traffic. Unless you live right next to a redline stop, and work right next to a redline stop, the door-to-door times just aren’t going to compete.

Now that’s obviously not the only reason to take transit, there’s the whole monetary cost as well and the intangibles of not having to sit in traffic while being occupied with driving, which is one of the main reasons I do it. But to resort to calling Steve a liar, a racist, and a hypocrite, which you have done several times in this thread and the other one, simply because he made a true statement about door-to-door trip times is insane.

C.Phyllis, is it really that hard to believe that Steve’s commute is faster in a car than on the Gold line? For some of your post you sound like you don’t believe the times he was quoting (he was quoting his door-to-door times, not duration on the gold line), and then for another part you act like it is a given that his drive would take less time than using transit. So which is it? Do you think he was exagerating the PT time, or do you think his statement about the PT time being longer was too obvious for him to mention? You can’t claim both at the same time.

And yes. When someone makes a blatantly false statement, I do challenge them to support that statement. You claimed he said something he didn’t. That’s not “criticizing”, that’s just making stuff up. You and fallopia have read SO much into a simple and realistic statement that steve made: the fact that unless gas prices are very high its simply not worth the extra time for most people to take PT. Just for him making a true statement, now in your eyes he is a racist, classist, arrogant person.

Whatever, I realize there’s no convincing you on this and I’ll stop wasting time trying to talk some sense into the senseless.

God forbid someone cover the 75% of people who DRIVE in Los Angeles. You’re acting like they don’t pay taxes for your transit. Someday, whether because of higher taxes, transit operator strikes, or whatever, people are going to say to transit rider, “go buy a car.” That’s what they did between 1972 and 1980, when four transit measures failed and the longest RTD bus strike happened (in 1974). The public said F-U to rail and to bus drivers, and it took the fare cuts of the 80′s to arrest the ridership decline.

Steve played the class card by bringing up the fact that his sorry ass was too lazy to ride the train because he had enough money to own a car…..implying that people who usually don’t have enough money to own a car ride PT. This in reality may or may not be true but unfortunately we are then led to a couple of questions from that pretty arrogant statement.

1)Was Steve Hymon who must be aware of the class/race stigma and transit in LA and the rest of the country just using a bit of insensitivity to get himself out of not looking like a hypocrite who covers transit but rarely takes it? Ironically a beef he had with the so-called powers “that be” who he regularly cast in a hypocritical light because they would sit on boards and make decisions that effected transit but rarely or never took transit themselves. Looks as though in reality he was more or less one of them.

2)Or is he just plain stupid? I’ll take the former. Oh yeah, the lie that he so obviously told that I and others exposed about the Gold Line taking 45 minutes (presumably during rush) and Mr. Steve (I like to lie) Hymen getting from the Civic Center up the 110 (DURING RUSH) down the we’re assuming 210 (DURING RUSH) in about 25 minutes to his front door………….

(Since this transpo reporter cited the full length run of the Gold Line which is just over 30 minutes he must live somewhere close to its last stop which is Sierra Madre. In a car you most likely would have to take 2 freeways the 110 and the 210 to approximate this location. Has anyone been on either freeway during rush? Not sure but isn’t there some street running sections included in this? And if he was not speaking of rush then why in the world would a transpo writer bring up beating the Gold Line in his car during off peak hours? Isn’t that a given?)

Anyway, instead of just allowing folks to dissent and criticize David you must “challenge”. Yes I used the mexican and homeless quip to add a bit of color to the reality of what the man was really saying and I aint taking it back! Steve was great to some of you…cool, he was a weasel to me and it’s probably better to have no coverage of transportation than have someone who reports on transpo reinforcing ideas about who takes and rides PT. And don’t say that he was only saying what most people think cuz then I’d have to ask “who do you think are most people?”

David, the real question is “what has the weasel done for you lately”?

They are currently paying staff members to provide content for 5 sports blogs (one on the Dodgers, one on the Lakers, one on high school sports, one on the preparation for the 2010 Olympics, one on general L.A. sports) and 10 “entertainment” blogs (one devoted entirely to celebrity gossip, one about comic books,one completely dedicated to a single television show (American Idol), one about Las Vegas (in an L.A. paper?), etc.).

In most cases, each of those 15 blogs has a different staff member assigned to it.

Yet they just can’t seem to figure out how to keep paying their sole traffic/transportation writer or support the one blog (bottleneck) that covers traffic issues? In the most traffic-congested city in the nation? Really? Having multiple celebrity gossip reporters and their blogs is more important than an issue that affects all angelnos lives daily?

People do not read the L.A. Times for insights on Lindsay Lohan’s nocturnal activities. For that, they can go to TMZ, Perez Hilton, the E channel, or any number of other garbage-sellers. A newspaper of the L.A. Times’ reputation should provide comprehensive coverage on one of the most important LOCAL issues of this city: traffic/transportation.

With priorities like these, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Times goes under in less than 5 years. And we will know that they can’t just blame it on the internet; they made some really dumb priority decisions as well.

“Gold Line in Hymen’s world = mexicans, the old, the poor, homeless”

You are lying. He never said that. He clearly stated that taking the train takes him 45 minutes at best, and driving takes him 25 minutes typically. He stated that the reason he usually drives is because it takes less time, which is true. He never brought class into the discussion, he was talking about trip times. He did say that he can afford to own a car. So can I. Does that mean I am saying that public transit is only for the old, poor, homeless, and the mexicans? No.

You are misrepresenting his position, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

“I have money therefore I drive”- transportation reporter and class advocate Steve Hymon.

Gold Line in Hymen’s world = mexicans, the old, the poor, homeless and now…..Steve Hymon!! Ha Ha!@!

Not that I could offer him a dime — heck, I just wish someone would pay me, already — but if Steve ever wants to take over BikingInLa, the password is his.