I have paid a fare, and left a train station to take an Uber because I saw the crowd I would be riding with and decided to eat the cost. When gas prices began to rise earlier this year, The Times explained how safety concerns make transit a hard sell. Before I came up with a plan, a young Latinx man who had more courage than I did confronted the guy who had caused the ruckus. I sat for three seconds after the incident, wondering what to do. I witnessed a transgender woman who was minding her own business get verbally harassed by a man. I have sympathy for the person who did not intervene in the moment, because I am still traumatized by a situation where I also failed to act. A woman soon after approached me to ask if I was OK. I ended up running off the bus when it reached a stop. Passengers stared at me, unsure of how to help me. While riding a bus in Pasadena, a man stood over me staring while crinkling up a plastic bottle and sweating profusely. I have been called the F-slur while waiting for a train in East Hollywood. Although I had a good laugh about it, not all of my experiences have been funny. It turned out to be a pretty hefty blunt. I remember riding a bus in Los Feliz and looking down at some item on the seat next to me. I have experienced some wild circumstances. I have been in the city for 3½ years and I have seen everything: people getting jumped arguments among passengers a guy getting his phone stolen out of his hands people smoking cigarettes and meth a couple on a bus in Hollywood rolling up a dollar bill and doing cocaine off of a book. There’s also the ongoing drama around the California bullet train, which - despite all its hype and cost - has yet to be completed.īut I want to talk about another transit issue: bad behavior on trains. Many of the state’s biggest cities have failed to make their train systems connect to the local airport. When I came to California, I discovered that public transit isn’t one of its strengths. Paying astronomical rent, putting out a daily newsletter and dating men is hard enough as it is. My main reason is because I don’t want to deal with fines, parking, fender benders and the other nonsense that makes car ownership a chore. Sure, people who take the bus or the train are causing less emissions. During that time, I got around with public transit, as do many other residents of those cities. I lived in New York City for seven years and, before that, Chicago for four. There’s something I try not to discuss when in casual conversation with other residents of Los Angeles, a city known for its lengthy commute times and conversations about roads so infamous that “Saturday Night Live” (among others) parodied them. Ridership on the Red Line in particular was 56% of pre-pandemic levels.Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. Though overall ridership ticked up 12% in 2022 over the previous year, the 57 million estimated train riders were still far below the 93 million reported in 2019, according to the transportation authority. Metro’s head of security has sought to expand the agency’s in-house force of nearly 200 transit officers, some of whom are armed, and transit officials committed $122 million over the last year to put 300 unarmed “ambassadors” throughout the system to report crimes and help passengers.Ĭommuter numbers on Metro rail have plummeted in recent years. Recent measurements found the music registered at an average of 83 decibels on a handheld decibel meter sound levels of 80 to 85 dB, on par with gas-powered lawnmowers and leaf blowers, can damage hearing after two hours of exposure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The classical music at Westlake/MacArthur Park, part of a pilot program implemented in January, is meant to deter “people from bedding down or sheltering in place at the station,” Chandler said, though the tactic is divisive, with some critics calling it inhumane and saying it does not address the root causes of public safety problems.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |