Streetsblog Los Angeles

(Note: When Streetsblog first launched, we were taken to task by the writing team at The Bus Bench for reporting about the dangers of cycling and harassment from drivers, but never the risks taken by transit riders, especially those riding after hours. We’ve gotten better on this issue, Sahra Sulaiman’s piece on THAT GUY and our ongoing coverage of the dangers posed by LASD Sheriffs only touch the issue. In the wake of a story of a group of women being assaulted on a bus in New Delhi, Dana Gabbard wonders how prevalent harassment is on Metro and other transit buses. If you have a story you’re willing to share, please do so in the comments section or you can do so privately by emailing me, damien@streetsblog.org. – DN)

Japan has "women only" rail cars because of rampant harassment on their subways. Rocket News

One morning last week while getting ready for work I was especially taken when hearing these comments on National Public Radio’sMorning Edition about the creation of women-only compartments on New Delhi’s metro system as a safety measure against inappropriate behavior by male passengers:

Male and female perceptions of the problem can differ widely.

Rajesh Kumar travels in the general compartment with his female colleague Manisha Murli. He says out of 100 men, “perhaps two or three” engage in Eve-teasing or unwanted touching.

But Murli disagrees. “It’s not that little,” she protests, putting it around 50 or 60 percent of the men.

It reminds me when looking over some online comments on my apartment building I ran across one in which a women resident complained that while working out in our gym that she noticed one of the male residents was looking her over in a way the creeped her out by being obvious objectification. Read more…

Streetsblog estimates 250 people were at the rally at any given point. The BRU put the total number between 350-400 as people came and went from the rally as it went on.

We’re the BRU. This is our fight
Mass transportation is a human right
We want 50 cent fares and $20 passes
‘cause mass transportation belongs to the masses
-BRU Chant, heard yesterday.

Hoping to leverage the importance of minority and lower income voters to President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, the Bus Riders Union (BRU) launched “a national campaign calling on President Obama to stand for the civil rights of Black and Latino transit riders in Los Angeles,” in front of City Hall’s west entrance yesterday afternoon.

The BRU’s campaign attracted the support of twenty allied organizations including the East Los Angeles Community Council, Koreatown Immigrants Workers Alliance, and SEIU United Service Workers West; each of whom had representatives sprinkled in the sea of yellow-t-shirt clad supporters wearing their own organizations’ colors.  A full list of supporting organizations is at the end of this story, after the jump.

Barbara Lott-Holland, co-chair of the BRU said, “This is a major civil rights test case for President Obama. With clear evidence that the nation’s second largest mass transit agency violated federal civil rights law, the case offers President Obama an important opportunity to bring justice to 500,000 Black, Latino, and Asian-Pacific Islander bus riders who have been slammed by service cuts and fare increases.”

Even if the President wanted to over-rule the FTA’s decision on Metro’s service policies, it’s doubtful he has the legal right to do so.  Streetsblog spoke with a legal expert familiar with the FTA’s recent review of Metro’s civil rights policies, who asked not to be identified.  This lawyer said that direct intervention by the President overruling a report by the FTA would create legal problems for the President if Metro opposed his decision.  If Metro accepted the President’s oversight, it would create a “terrible” legal precedent.  After all, would the BRU want Mitt Romney making decisions on what kind of transit service Metro should provide?”

Despite the t-shirts and banners with the president’s picture, the real target of yesterday’s rally could be Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.  Obama chose Villaraigosa to Chair of the Democratic National Convention in September. Attacking Villaraigosa’s progressive bona-fides, especially on his signature issue, could be an attempt to embarrass the mayor into taking a proactive role in restoring the slashed service hours.

“Sadly, Mayor Villaraigosa, as Chair of the L.A. Metro Board, has failed to take a clear stand for civil rights and for the restoration of the deep service cuts that are so devastating for the urban poor,” said Sunyoung Yang, lead organizer with the Bus Riders Union. “Will he allow black and latino communities to be pushed to the brink of economic survival and displaced from their own neighborhoods in order to pursue a transportation agenda that gentrifies the city and fattens the pockets of corporate developers and the construction lobby? Or will the Mayor take a stand for civil rights and for the restoration of one million hours of bus service?”

The mayor’s office declined to comment on the story, but recent comments made in Streetblog’s exclusive interview with Villaraigosa paint a picture of a mayor concerned about the cost and quality of local bus service.  When asked directly about his future plans, Villaraigosa commented, “My goal is to convince the Congress we need to spend more money on operations. That’s going to take more time.”

Whether the BRU can make enough noise to get the President’s attention has yet to be proven.  But regardless of one’s view of the BRU or this campaign, yesterday’s rally marked the first attempt by a group outside of Washington, D.C. to aggresively insert the plight of transit riders into the 2012 presidential debate.  BRU leaders listed allies in other cities: Atlanta, Chicago, New York and others. They’re going to need all the help they can get to be heard through the white noise of a presidential campaign.

Endorsers of the “Mr. President, Enforce, Restore, Expand Our Civil Rights” Campaign to date:

ACUSLA – Association of Communities United of South Los Angeles

CADRE – Community Asset Development Re-Defining Education

CHIRLA – Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles

CLEAN Carwash Campaign,

Coalition for Educational Justice

Comité Pro-Democracia de Mexico

Communities for a Better Environment

D.R.E.A.M. Team Los Angeles

Committee of Ex-Bracero Workers

East Los Angeles Community Corporation

Inner City Struggle

Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance

Los Angeles Community Action Network

Restaurant Opportunities Center-Los Angeles

SEIU United Service Workers West

Union de Vecinos

Youth Justice Coalition

A man takes shelter in the shade of a telephone pole on Figueroa Ave., just north of 85th St.

It’s been hot lately.

Maybe not as hot as out East and, thankfully, not as humid. But temperatures in the 80s are nothing to sneeze at. Especially if you have to stand around on a street corner with no shelter while waiting anywhere between ten minutes and half an hour for a bus. Now imagine that you are elderly, or that you have a couple bags full of groceries and a small child or two, and the heat can become oppressive.

A number of new benches have been put in place but, because there is no accompanying shelter, people tend not to use them during the heat of the day. In the few cases I have seen people using them mid-day, it has been to (unsuccessfully) hide behind them.

A woman waiting for the 745 prefers the shelter of a streetlamp to the comfort of the new bus bench. Slauson Ave. and Broadway.

Read more…

When riding to Wishire/Western, buses now announce the rail station. Photo: GTD Aquatine/Wikipedia

This past Sunday I was out and about, riding Metro’s line 20 westbound on Wilshire from the Westlake/MacArthur Park District and was startled as we approached Wilshire/Vermont that besides the usual verbal announcement for the stop a different deep bass voice interrupted to state “Connection to the Red and Purple Lines”. Continuing on at Normandie and also Western the same voice announced “Connection to the Purple Line”

This was the day service changes went into effect and I remembered Metro has said one of the key themes it is working to implement is connectivity and a focus on customer service as per the FY13 budget parameters

I was curious if this is isolated to the Wilshire District or includes the entire Metro Rail System and the Orange Line. Bruce Shelburne, Interim Executive Director for Rail Operations at Metro, in response to a query,informs me: “As part of the new system schedule changes, modifications are being made to the bus stop announcements to provide rail connections at the appropriate locations. Some of the bus stop locations do not necessarily match the names of the stations. Hopefully, this will help our passengers. This is system-wide for the rail stations. The Orange Line was not included for the June changes, but will be when the December changes go into effect.” Read more…

The proposed My Figueroa

(Not sure what the My Figueroa project is?  Check out this story from last year?)

Less than a month ago, it seemed as though the progressive South Figueroa Corridor Project, known as the My Figueroa project, was on the ropes.  No agency was stepping up to take it from the CRA and Streetsblog was pleading for someone, anyone, to take it on.

What a difference a month makes.  LADOT General Manager Jaime De La Vega can be heard calling the project a “legacy project,” and the Architect Newspaper is declaring a “Figueroa Comeback” now that LADOT is taking control of the project’s future.  The South Figueroa Corridor Project was a project of the Community Redevelopment Agency, funded by a state grant, which saw some of the most progressive local transportation consultants team with Gehl Architects, the legendary Danish transportation planning firm.

In early 2011, the team unveiled the project in a pair of meetings along the corridor that were packed with transportation advocates and community members.  When the CRA’s closed their doors earlier this year, the fate of the My Figueroa project was in doubt.

The project covers three miles of South Figueroa from 41st Street to Seventh Street as well as a half mile of 11st Street between Figueroa and Broadway, a half mile of Martin Luther King (MLK) Boulevard just south of Exposition Park, and a half mile of Bill Robertson Boulevard from into Exposition Park starting at MLK Boulevard.

Despite the happy news that the project might be back on track, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done before the project becomes reality, and advocates can’t let up just yet.  This article breaks down some of the places where advocates might still need to apply pressure to make sure the South Figueroa Corridor Project goes from pretty posterboard to Los Angeles’ most Livable street.

The Project Timeline

The biggest remaining concern is the timeline for the project.  The state funding comes from Proposition 1B that funds the project from initial outreach through design expires early in 2015.  LADOT must complete the project by the end of 2014 to qualify for reimbursements from the state funding.  While the Architect Newspaper announced that LADOT would be completing and environmental study of the corridor with a group of projects in the Bike Plan, LADOT is backing away from that claim. Read more…

Yang speaks at yesterday's rally while BRU members ask the President to take a personal interest in the FTA review of Metro. Photo courtesy the Bus Riders Union

The Federal Transit Administration seems pleased with the progress being made by Metro to change the way it does business to be in compliance with federal civil rights statutes.  Rather than requiring major changes to the way Metro does business, the FTA seems content with changes to its outreach and reporting methods.  The FTA began a Civil Rights Title VI review of Metro last year after complaints from the Bus Riders Union and other civil rights and transit advocacy groups.  These groups hoped the FTA would reverse the over 1 million hours of cuts to bus service that Metro has ordered since the end of a judicial consent decree mandating increases in service expired in 2008.

FTA Adminstrator Peter Rogoff is under fire from the BRU for refusing to roll back Metro's recent bus service cuts.

Already knowing there was no mechanism to appeal the FTA’s decision, the BRU rallied in front of MTA headquarters yesterday kicking off a campaign calling on President Barack Obama to overrule the FTA’s decision.

“FTA is ignoring the smoking gun uncovered by its own civil rights team,” said Sunyoung Yang, lead organizer at the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union, a grassroots civil rights membership organization of LA’s transit riders that has battled LA Metro for years. “Rather than hold Metro responsible, Administrator Rogoff is allowing the agency to paper over its civil rights abuses through more studies to make its civil rights violations disappear through administrative sleight of hand. Since Rogoff and FTA have abdicated their responsibility to enforce Title VI, we’re calling on President Obama to bring real civil rights to LA bus riders and order the restoration of lost transit service.”

These new metal benches began appearing late last year. In some cases they are replacing the old plastic benches, and in other cases are coming to stops that have had no benches at all. Photo: L.A. Urban Soul/Flickr

As Damien has noted previously new bus benches are popping up around Los Angeles as new bench provider Martin Outdoor gets up to speed following the city council awarding the contract in August 2011.

To find our the status of the program I contacted Lance Oishi, Contract Administrator for Streetscape Development and Coordinated Street Furniture Programs at the city of Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services, who kindly responded to a set of questions I emailed him.

Gabbard: what is the status of the program?

Oishi: The contract with Martin Outdoor Media (Martin) was signed on October 4, 2011, so they’ve been moving forward with the City’s bus bench program for a little more than 4 months now. Martin started fabricating their new benches for Los Angeles as soon as the contract was signed and installed their first 25 replacement benches on October 25 & 26, 2011. Since then, they’ve been primarily focused on continuing the replacement of the existing bus benches left behind by our previous bus bench contractor. The City’s Holiday Street Closure moratorium and a glitch with their bench fabricator slowed Martin’s installation efforts in November and December; they’re moving forward as expected at this time without any further impediments. Martin will continue to maintain both their new benches and the older existing benches until such time, the older benches are replaced. To date, Martin has replaced/installed over 800 new benches.

Gabbard: Has working with Outdoor Martin been productive and positive?

Oishi: From our perspective, working with Martin has been both productive and positive. They have been very responsive to requests or concerns raised by the City.

Gabbard: It appears so far Outdoor Martin is replacing existing benches with the new steel ones. When will the next step (benches at stops that lack benches now) start? Read more…

You may have noticed all the hullabaloo Metro made in January 2011 about retiring the last diesel buses in its fleet. Metro even gave the final bus a new paint job before it was ceremoniously towed away at the press event. Actually this was a bit mis-leading because some of the contractors that run selected Metro routes were at that time still using diesel buses in some cases, purchased for them by Metro. I believe even those buses have now been retired.

They all used to be this way, photo: Primary Sources/Flickr

In any case in all the coverage nothing was said about the origins of these buses, which is a rather interesting story. I wasn’t able at the time all the noise was being made to dig into that aspect of it but hopefully late is better than not doing so at all. Here 13 months later is the back story.

After Metro signed the consent decree in Oct. 1996 it quickly found itself struggling to meet the load factor targets the agreement set. One problem was Metro’s fleet was aging, prone to break down and unreliable. Also obtaining new buses is a slow process. Once you order delivery often takes 18-24 months. When Julian Burke became Metro CEO in August 1997 one of his priorities was to address the condition of the bus fleet.

Metro staff at his direction began scouring the country to see if any buses suitable for transit use were obtainable. And by a lucky break they found 20 buses in the procurement pipeline that the original ordering entity could no longer use. ATC Vancom ordered the buses from New Flyer for use in Las Vegas where they had a contract to run bus service. While awaiting delivery they lost the contract, and thus no longer needed the buses. Metro contacted ATC Vancom and arranged to purchase the buses in July 1998.

Thanks to the special circumstances of purchasing equipment already being built Metro took delivery of the first bus on August 18, 1998 with the other 19 received and put into revenue service by the following month. Amazing! And while these were the last new diesel buses Metro purchased for the fleet operated from its yards, they also held the distinction of being the first low floor buses ever operated by Metro. They were assigned fleet numbers 3000-3019 and in later years were placed in Division 6 (Venice), which lacks CNG fueling facilities. This meant they only were operated weekdays, often found serving major streets like Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards. One unique aspect is they had a three person seat flush against the side of the bus opposite the rear door, a layout which no other Metro bus outside the contractor fleets ever had. Read more…

These new metal benches began appearing late last year. In some cases they are replacing the old plastic benches, and in other cases are coming to stops that have had no benches at all. Photo: L.A. Urban Soul/Flickr

At the end of last year, the emails started trickling in.  ”There’s a new bench at my stop.”  ”They replaced the crappy plastic bench with something more durable.  Yes, after months of witnessing the dismantleing of the old network of bus benches after the City Council voted to replace their old bench contractor Norman Bench with Martin Outdoor Media.

As before, the benches will be installed by Martin Outdoor Media who will take care of the upkeep of the benches.  Instead of being paid by the city, Martin Outdoor Media makes their money off the advertisements on the benches themselves and pays the city for the right to put the benches down.  At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

Under Norman Bench, many of the most popular bus stops didn’t have benches because they were in lower income areas that attracted fewer advertising dollars.

“6,000 new benches will be installed, which include benches that are replacing the older, existing plastic benches and new benches at bus stops that currently do not have any bus patron amenities,” Paul Gomez, a spokesman with the Department of Public Works, writes.  ”All replacement and new benches, are to be installed over a 24 month period that started in Oct. 2011.” Read more…

A pair of LAUSD teachers has taken to YouTube to rally the troops against the Governor’s plan to cut funding for school transportation. Read to the cadence of “The Night Before Christmas” the narrator rips a political culture that will sell out children’s education instead of raising the funds to do it right.

Brown must really like the idea of children being driven to school. First, he vetoed a law that would make it safer for children, or anyone, to ride a bike. Now he’s cutting funds for school buses. What’s next, cuts to the Safe Routes to School fund?

The full text of the teacher’s plea can be found after the jump. Directions on how to make your voice heard on this issue can be found on their YouTube page.

Better get those messages in soon, the Governor’s proposed cuts to the school bus budget go into place on January 3.

Read more…