Yesterday morning the Times’ Bottleneck Blog made its re-debut with Times’ transportation writer and “Road Sage” Steve Hymon at the wheel. Now I’ve been somewhat critical of some of Hyomn’s writing in the past, so I wanted to give it some time before I reviewed his online efforts.
First off, Hymon deserves a lot of credit for the effort he’s putting into the blog. He’s been the lead content provider for the blog for a little under 30 hours and there are already 13 different stories posted.
I feared that the blog might become a lobbying tool for greater road investment, but a breakdown of those first 14 stories shows that even for the Road Sage LA transportation isn’t just about cars anymore. Instead of just highway stories, there were stories about why the city doesn’t do a good job promoting transit, the struggle over the Expo Line and even stories about traffic calming. Of course the Times’ hasn’t turned over an entirely new leaf on transportation, it looks like there’s going to be a daily update on gas prices as part of the writing.
Hymon ends his first post with a call for help, stories ideas and entries for pothole of the week. Let’s see if we can help him out by giving him lots of story ideas about buses, trains, bike and sneakers.
One simple request: I need your help. Shoot me an e-mail with your thoughts, ideas, questions, rants, photos. I want this blog to be informative. I am also determined to make it fun, whether the topic is driving, taking mass transit, cycling or -- gasp -- walking.
I’m presently looking for nominees for “Pothole of the Week," which I'd like to make a regular feature. If you want to nominate your favorite crater, send me a photo (in the JPEG format) and brief, poetic description with the exact location. The e-mail is steve.hymon@latimes.com.
