Public Transportation
May. 24th, 2005 07:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fabrisseSince I've been in L.A., I've been helping out at least once a week at the Food Pantry that's run by my family's church. A combination of illnesses and vacations left them short handed, and the call went out at the service for people to help. It made sense.
What didn't make sense was driving my car nearly thirty miles from "the valley" into the city. There are two routes to do this, by the way. The first is the highway. Highways aren't bad, but there's been a rash of shootings recently and the California system of suddenly sprouting and pruning lanes is confusing to this out of towner. The non-highway method includes a section that can be very crowded and has more curves than Marilyn Monroe. I love the drive, but not during rush hour and certainly not first thing in the morning.
However, about two miles from my sister's house is a Metro stop. It's the final stop on one branch of the red line and, with one minor change of trains, it drops me off a block from the church. Among the bonus points, it connects with the bus line to the museum complex, and, I discovered yesterday, I can get to the beach at Santa Monica on the same bus. Cool.
So why am I sitting here typing this instead of helping to feed the homeless? Because the parking lot for the metro station holds fewer than 150 cars before 11:00 a.m. Why don't I take the bus to the Metro stop? There isn't one. Why don't I walk? There's more than 1/2 a mile of the route that has no sidewalk and lots of speeders.
If I get to the parking lot before 7:00 a.m., I can get a space. Nearly a third of the parking, by the way, is by permit only until 11:00 a.m. There's no way to get a permit that I've been able to find, and, frankly, for the little bit of parking that I need to do, a permit would be too expensive.
Thanks to a concatenation of circumstances, mostly involving the dog, I didn't make it to the metro stop in time. It was, literally, one minute after 7:00 when I arrived. There was no place to park. Worse, there was someplace to park, but no information about how to pay for the space, and an implication that short term rental of the space wouldn't have been possible anyway.
Who decided that a commuter magnet stop should have so little parking? Quincy-Adams can hold nearly 1,000 cars (that's my "by eye" approximation. I may be wrong, but if I am, I'm willing to bet it holds more not less.) Quincy Center and Braintree each hold over 300 by my estimation and both have a wide variety of bus routes that feed in to them. Alewife has parking that matches or exceeds Quincy-Adams. Riverside, Malden, Wellington, and Ashmont have at least as many parking spaces as Quincy Center.
My biggest comment with this comparison is that I consider the Boston T to be completely inadequate compared to most of the places I've lived. It's price is its best feature. However, Boston's completely inadequate system is still light years better than the Los Angeles system.
I'll go help the food pantry on Thursday.
What didn't make sense was driving my car nearly thirty miles from "the valley" into the city. There are two routes to do this, by the way. The first is the highway. Highways aren't bad, but there's been a rash of shootings recently and the California system of suddenly sprouting and pruning lanes is confusing to this out of towner. The non-highway method includes a section that can be very crowded and has more curves than Marilyn Monroe. I love the drive, but not during rush hour and certainly not first thing in the morning.
However, about two miles from my sister's house is a Metro stop. It's the final stop on one branch of the red line and, with one minor change of trains, it drops me off a block from the church. Among the bonus points, it connects with the bus line to the museum complex, and, I discovered yesterday, I can get to the beach at Santa Monica on the same bus. Cool.
So why am I sitting here typing this instead of helping to feed the homeless? Because the parking lot for the metro station holds fewer than 150 cars before 11:00 a.m. Why don't I take the bus to the Metro stop? There isn't one. Why don't I walk? There's more than 1/2 a mile of the route that has no sidewalk and lots of speeders.
If I get to the parking lot before 7:00 a.m., I can get a space. Nearly a third of the parking, by the way, is by permit only until 11:00 a.m. There's no way to get a permit that I've been able to find, and, frankly, for the little bit of parking that I need to do, a permit would be too expensive.
Thanks to a concatenation of circumstances, mostly involving the dog, I didn't make it to the metro stop in time. It was, literally, one minute after 7:00 when I arrived. There was no place to park. Worse, there was someplace to park, but no information about how to pay for the space, and an implication that short term rental of the space wouldn't have been possible anyway.
Who decided that a commuter magnet stop should have so little parking? Quincy-Adams can hold nearly 1,000 cars (that's my "by eye" approximation. I may be wrong, but if I am, I'm willing to bet it holds more not less.) Quincy Center and Braintree each hold over 300 by my estimation and both have a wide variety of bus routes that feed in to them. Alewife has parking that matches or exceeds Quincy-Adams. Riverside, Malden, Wellington, and Ashmont have at least as many parking spaces as Quincy Center.
My biggest comment with this comparison is that I consider the Boston T to be completely inadequate compared to most of the places I've lived. It's price is its best feature. However, Boston's completely inadequate system is still light years better than the Los Angeles system.
I'll go help the food pantry on Thursday.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-05-24 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-24 04:33 pm (UTC)I'm just frustrated.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-24 07:46 pm (UTC)I grew up near Boston, though, so I at least have an understanding of what you're talking about--as far as that area goes. I've driven by the places you've mentioned, especially the Quincy-Adams commuter parking lot (or whatever it's called). The city I lived in when I was growing up had no public transportation at all, though. When I lived on Cape Cod, many people from there commuted into Boston everyday, though I don't know anyone (personally) who drove up and parked and then took the train in.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-24 11:05 pm (UTC)If a city is going to have public transportation, it must be thought through. Otherwise people are going to continue to use cars to the exclusion of everything else -- which in this oil crisis is just silly.
*sigh*