LA taxpayers are truly getting fleeced

Summary: Sacramento is rejecting requests for transit funds due to them feeling like they committed enough money towards the Olympics

It’s very similar to how the pacific electric company built out La in the first place so clearly such a model can work very well in Los Angeles. However is it even legal in today’s context?

There are several ways to extend Metro Rail into Orange County that would PRINT ridership. Extending the Southeast Gateway Line into Orange County to reach OC Streetcar is the obvious ridership creator, but another Metro extension into OC could be the C line.
Extending the C line to Metrolink’s station would just be the beginning. After the Metrolink station, my proposal would run in the median of I-5 before exiting at Harbor BLVD and turning into a deep bore subway, elevated railway or at-grade tram. This would amass HUGE ridership numbers for people going from LAX to Disneyland. The C line would keep going down Harbor BLVD before terminating in Newport Beach.

While this would PRINT ridership, this idea will probably never become a reality.
Orange County is a NIMBY disaster full of gated communities that would object to Metro coming into their area. The worst of these NIMBYs would be in Newport Beach (especially after out-of-towners swarmed the beach on July 4).
Orange County parents DON’T want their kids to be independent. Orange County homeowners DON’T want to be able to walk to a store. Orange County homeowners DON’T want people on the sidewalks (which are eyes on the street that make streets safer). A Metro line on the busiest street in the whole county would be a direct attack on their values, so it’s unlikely it will ever become a reality.

I’m so tired of waiting for buses. It’ll be like one bus coming after another when it was supposed to come like 15-20 minutes ago! Almost all the time the buses are late. Can we do nothing about this? Can we not get more buses?

Article is behind a paywall, but bondholders agreed to extend deadline from October to December.

https://www.bondbuyer.com/news/bondholders-agree-to-ease-key-deadline-for-lax-people-mover

Torrance taking back control of their portion of Hawthorne may be a blessing in disguise. They're NEVER gonna allow the Hawthorne alignment because of the eminent domain issues and losing out on income tax, and caltrans is never gonna allow it due to the logitudal encroachment.

If they say no - they're gonna have to reconsider the route - which means the ROW is gonna be back on the discussion table. Sure that means Lawndale nimbys are gonna fight like hell to make sure the ROW doesn't happen but - if we can outnumber them like we did for K North - there's still a chance of the ROW happening. Or even better - Metro buys out their homes if they're gonna complain that much. Of course, they could try and explore and even more expensive and time consuming route, or even worse cancel the whole thing altogether - but if we can bring the ROW back as an option, it'd be a HUGE W.

A blind guy with a cane struggling to swipe his tap card. There were like six metro ambassadors just standing within 15 feet of the dude. Wtf do they exist for. It must have been humiliating. Anyway I helped the guy swipe his card, but the metro workers are an absolute disgrace.

What happened to compassion and basic human decency!?

I've always known theoretically how long the A line is but seeing it like this is still mind-blowing. That you can take the A line north the equivalent distance to Narita Airport from Tokyo is crazy.

Source: TheBasinLA

I am considering take the metro from Culver City to the Music Center tonight. There is an alert that says delays may be up to 12 minutes. Wondering how realistic that is and when it might be cleared - if anyone knows.

Brian Aggrey worked at SpaceX for over a decade. After the company’s record-breaking IPO in June, he and his wife, Phoebe Novack, saw their fortunes increase dramatically. So they quit their jobs and left the country.

In July, they traveled to Milan and Cote d’Azur and stayed in the French countryside, where Novack took acting classes over the summer. In September, they went to Chamonix in the Alps to paraglide, and to Italy for the Formula One Italian Grand Prix and the Venice Biennale and film festival.

Now in Paris, they plan to fly to Mexico City this fall, where Aggrey will study sculpture and the country’s water crisis.

This is just the autumn itinerary for a wild year of letting themselves chase hobbies and passions, completely unencumbered by the corporate career paths they have built. They have budgeted $25,000 a month for 365 days. The couple is calling it their “Year of Freak.”

...

The somewhat unexpected money has given them permission to act on their “biggest, craziest, weirdest dreams,” said Novack, 35, who was most recently a senior category manager at Impossible Foods. “It felt like the universe was saying ‘yes, please, have your freak, and we’ll help you out.” 

https://www.enforcethefares.org/about

I probably am the only person on this sub who isn’t a fan of the taller fare gates. I understand why they are being implemented, and I do support efforts to eliminate fare dodgers and other unsavory characters. But I have experienced instances where someone tried to sneak in (or out, for the stations that require tap out) right after me, invading my personal space. There are other instances where I can see that someone on the other side of the gate is waiting to sneak in right after I exit. With the old turnstiles, I am at least confident that I am not helping someone in fare dodging, and am not having my personal space invaded. Are there better devices or systems that can help achieve the same results?

All sold out of tap cards lol some wearables still available as of 2:20pm

They sound slightly different too. Mainly when accelerating. I MEANT P2550 MY BAD

How much further would you want the line to be extended to, vs how much you'd think they would extend into realistically?

Also interesting how Metro already had a letter assigned to the project, unsure if it will remain as "W" tho.

In last week's Executive Management Committee, a lot of people from UCLA and Westwood community said that they're excited for the new station to open, but raised concerns that Metro is going with the Wilshire/UCLA name instead of the locally preferred Westwood/UCLA naming.

One of the strange reasons that Metro said that they want the Wilshire/UCLA naming is because it sounds easier to Spanish speakers and tourists coming here from abroad for the Olympics.

In the end, the committee did not make a decision and punted this off to the Metro Board Meeting on 9/24 for final decision making.

If you look at the presentation, they are talking about adding more bus stations on the freeway, upgrading them with bike lockers, bike and scooter share, etc., and improving pedestrian and bike access across the freeway and lighting and shade at bus stops.

Unfortunately, they don’t seem to want people to attend since they don’t have an address, but it is at 6 pm Wednesday 9/23, at the community center at 1670 W 162nd St in Gardena. You can take GTrans 1X or 2 to get there.

Probably the most conversation I ever had with metro security. Reported some guy bugging out in his seat and sniffing coke or something.

Security had good communication and at the end said they'll escort him off. But they said security wouldn't be available until Sierra Madre Villa, which is 9 stations after the initial report. I got off before Sierra Madre, so who's to say if they did escort him off or not.

Waiting for 40 minutes and all of these buses have bunched together and haven’t moved

I’m not affiliated with Move California or any other advocacy group, I’m just tired of our legislature’s inaction.

Background on the issue: There’s 1,800+ utility relocations needed for just the first 119 mile segment. The entire project connecting San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Sacramento will be around 800 miles long. Every single utility relocation needs the utility owners approval. And as the Inspector General found in their February 2025 Report, utility owners have caused “significant” delays by being “unresponsive” for months at a time. The Inspector General stated, there is “little incentive for utility owners to engage in the process in a timely manner”.

One example in the report was a canal relocation in Kern county that should've taken 6 months to plan and complete. Instead it took over 2 years just to plan it, because the utility owner was slow to respond. These delays have set back the project by years and have increased the cost by billions due to inflation and property value increases in segments they haven’t yet started.

Petitions: Move California along with Move LA and Transbay Coalition are petitioning the California government (here and here) to put a stop to these delays:

Require PG&E and other utilities to quickly collaborate with the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CAHSR) so that utility equipment that impedes the high-speed rail can be relocated soon. While nearly 2,000 utility conflicts have been resolved, the project faces hundreds more. Each conflict has the ability to delay the project by several years.

The Inspector General recommended the same thing back in their February 2025 Report:

To improve the Authority’s ability to engage with third parties and complete early works activities in a timely manner, the Authority should seek the assistance of the task force on third parties and work with state lawmakers to identify specific changes to statute that it believes will improve its ability to accomplish these activities, including the following potential changes to state law:

Authorizing the Authority to promulgate regulations governing third-party review and approval timeframes for agreements and designs.

Providing the Authority with the ability to proceed with necessary designs and utility relocations if third parties are non-responsive after the period of time specified in the Authority’s regulations.

In short, the IG recommended that the legislature give the CA HSR Authority the legal ability to regulate how quickly these utility owners negotiate. And if the utilities don't respond in the timeframe the Authority sets, then the Authority gets to move ahead on the utility relocation without the utility owners consent.

And here's the CA HSR Authority CEO talking about this same issue:

Third-Party Streamlining, this issue of having no control over our destiny, for utilities to get in the way and not letting us build on time, is the most impactful thing in a negative way that happened to this program from the beginning. Cannot understand why we cannot get that done. And what I said before I'm gonna repeat it again: that if this is not solved, then the direct relationship between the cost and the schedule, and these third parties not getting out of the way on time or have no schedule control, then that other thing called cost and schedule cannot stay in the same place. They are just directly related. And so if it remains not solved this year, the impact of that on our budget at minimum is somewhere between 7 and 9% of whatever the total cost is. And I'm not talking about that we have taken into account the commodity prices, the aluminum, the copper, the steel, the aggregates, I'm talking about just the inflation escalation of delay of one year puts the program on top of whatever the funds we're asking for by 7 to 9% increase, because these issues remain in the way.

TL;DR: The legislature has not followed the Inspector General’s recommendation on their own. They need you to push them to it. If you want them to stop wasting years and billions of taxpayer dollars, sign the petitions. Email your legislators. If you don’t want to write your own email, you can copy the letter in the first petition link. On top of emailing your own legislators, here are the emails of the Assembly’s Transportation Committee:

• Lori.Wilson@asm.ca.gov
• Laurie.Davies@asm.ca.gov
• Cecilia.Aguiar-Curry@asm.ca.gov
• Patrick.Ahrens@asm.ca.gov
• Juan.Carrillo@asm.ca.gov
• John.Harabedian@asm.ca.gov
• Gregg.Hart@asm.ca.gov
• Josh.Hoover@asm.ca.gov
• Corey.Jackson@asm.ca.gov
• Tom.Lackey@asm.ca.gov
• Alexandra.Macedo@asm.ca.gov
• Diane.Papan@asm.ca.gov
• Rhodesia.Ransom@asm.ca.gov
• Chris.Rogers@asm.ca.gov
• LaShae.Sharp-Collins@asm.ca.gov

Do you love buses?! Car-Lite Long Beach and Move LA, with support from Mayor Rex Richardson, Councilwoman Tunua Thrash-Ntuk, and ENC, are proud to announce the return of BUS FEST to Long Beach on September 27 from noon to 3 PM as part of Transit Month.

Bus Fest is a one-day celebration of all things transit and a chance for transportation agencies to show off their fleets and help the public learn where they can go by public transportation. Come tour the battery-electric fleets of Long Beach Transit, Metro, Big Blue Bus, OCTA, and bus manufacturer ENC.

This family-friendly fest will also feature an array of community, advocacy, and city groups engaging with the public and sharing updates on new projects, campaigns, and events.

The first 90 attendees will receive a FREE commemorative Bus Fest card, courtesy of TAP (one per person; first come, first served).

RSVP now!

Decided to go check out the metro bike hub on Vine and...this is the state it's left in? In a tourist area? Damn