Perhaps Fred and Steve might tell us why Tom Horne—Metro's head of customer service—is the weakest link in metro's chain, so lousy as to dissuade straphangers and bus riders from complaining. Maybe the Metro duo can tell us why metro is more concerned with fantastic "Go Metro!" video campaigns with Hollywood stars and massive sound stages instead of putting the same safety features on the MGLEE as it does for the Pasadena segment of the Gold Line. Or maybe there's an article to be done about the massive print campaign that promotes Metro despite the decades-old dearth of timetables on the busses and trains. or why not just tell us why Metro hired a former L.A. Times columnist and a transit blogger to parrot the PR from "the source" instead of fixing the problems that we all know exist but which Metro will not acknowledge?

It is obvious that Metro is more concerned with its reputation than with making its execs and PR mouthpieces put its boots on the ground (Fred notwithstanding, which is shameful in its own fashion) so as to understand how Metro does NOT work. Art Leahy is commendable in what he has done and is doing, but he is but one man—and a former bus driver who's father was in transit in Chicago, so he knows the ropes—against a vast sea of bureaucrats. Unfortunately, these clueless execs as well as PR people who brazenly proclaim their refusal to regularly ride the rails about which they write daily, are busy putting lipstick on a pig and calling it a thoroughbred horse.

Take away those home ownership handouts and even the Teabaggers will be up in arms whining about how their give-away went away.

Politically, it is tough to fight against the cluelessness of the entitled

If not, I'll take wider sidewalks, calmer traffic, and a god damned bike lane on Alameda from Little Tokyo to Union Station.

I dug through all my baby in bakfiets pictures and tried to choose the best.

By the way, I am carry bakfiets at my shop in a variety I never thought possible before!

(1) Flying Pigeon lightweight bakfiets
(2) WorkCycles bakfiets
(3) nihola cargo trikes

Bakfiets in LA! Woo hoo! Now all I need is a customer or two to buy them (other than Damien, of course).

Where do you choose to live anyway?

I don't agree that these items are subsidies for home ownership vs. renters.

Landlords can deduct mortgage interest and property taxes as business expenses, and also benefit from capital gains treatment of property sale proceeds. All these provisions are factored in to rental rates.

On the contrary, if this kind of favored tax treatment were not available individual home owners, they would face substantial penalties vs. rental owners.

These provisions simply even thing up.

Been there, seen it, don't want to do it again.

It wasn't (going to have been) "massive" and it wasn't ugly. It was colorful. It would give people an easy way over Alameda. It would fit right in with the Nikkei Center. It would give Little Tokyo a new landmark.

It would have been public art, but with a public purpose.

How well has that been working out? Last year they were showing a special on PBS about homeowners in Temecula and Murrieta going apeshit over gas prices and home foreclosures. One dude, a real man's man, owned a truck nearly his whole life and after 2008 the fucker was driving a Prius with three other people.

People scream, "But the free market! The free market! People will live where they want!" all day but you have to determine whether the free market actually was at work all these years. You know, if planning favored the suburbs, if government funding favored the suburbs, if policies favored single family homes, how free market is that? If I wanted to live in the city, but I saw that they were only investing in the suburbs and not urban areas, I'm going to choose the suburbs! The decision was practically made for me!

If you had a bunch of blacks and Hispanics wanting to move to the suburbs but local governments artificially inflated the price of housing by enacting strict zoning laws and outright banning the construction of apartment units in some cases, how free market is that? If a company wants to build an apartment, why prevent them from doing so? Where's the laissez faire attitude then?

Some people advocate pro-choice attitudes about where people can live. I'd like to see it, believe me.

James Fujita, another railroad crossing in Tokyo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL177gDK95E&feature=fvw). Three trains cross before people are able to go, haha. Only a minute delay though.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22038157@N05/sets/72157618807616940/

=

Putting that aside, I am glad that the MTA and the Little Tokyo community were able to discuss things and come up with something that should work well.

Honestly, I didn't see the at-grade crossing as that big of a deal, but it does look like they might be able to have the trains go underground without seriously affecting the Nikkei Center, so that's good.