This is much like mom saying in the 1950s her uncle had the finest outhouse in rural Tennessee when everyone she knew in her Illinois town had flush toilets by then. "Metro" may be outstanding, but it is still merely a string of wood planks with a whole cut into it with a stinking mess of feces and urine in a pit below.
Saying a public transportation system is "Outstanding" in the U.S. is like saying that eight year old boy I saw doing some traditional Polish dance last Sunday in Verdugo Park was "Outstanding." Sure, the serious look on his face while he awkwardly bumped into his dancing partner was very cute. But since they are merely a group of eight year old kids who practiced for an hour six Saturday's in a row--except for Suzie who was sick one day and Kevin who was crying uncontrollably that one morning because daddy put cinnamon and sugar on his toast, and even though he wanted it on, HE wanted to put it on himself--one is impressed they even remember to twirl when they are supposed to twirl. But it's really nothing like going to see the professionals of Podhale.
The public transportation systems of European cities are flush toilets next to the piss poor service we have in the U.S. New York is somewhat of an exception--there are plenty of places where the subway smells like piss, but at least you can get from the Bronx to Coney Island in under an hour. By contrast, when I went to see those kids perform at the Unity Festival, it took me over two hours to get from Encino to Glendale, approximately the same distance.
And last Friday, in mid afternoon, at the corner of Wilshire and Vermont, I waited 15 minutes before squeezing onto an overloaded "Rapid" bus, which then took twenty minutes to arrive at USC, a distance of exactly 2.5 miles. Metro celebrates the Rapid Bus as a prime reason they received the APTA award, but for actual bus riders, the "Rapid" is a sad joke. As I have discussed, it is often just as slow as the regular bus because it has to manage the same traffic jams as every other vehicle that crawls up and down Vermont or Wilshire or Ventura. And as I have also mentioned before, the solution would be cheap and fast: bus-only lanes on these thoroughfares.
Instead our Mayor and the propogandists behind this ad campaign--who don't actually ride the bus but love looking at statistics saying the Rapid is 25% faster than the regular bus--sure and this is 25% slower than that fourteen year old girl on her one speed beach cruiser--are calling for billions to be spent on extending the rail network. Let's say in twenty years our Mayor's dream is realized, and two rail lines to Santa Monica are completed, it would still take me 20 bleeping minutes to go 2.5 miles south on Vermont!
Mayors love to fantasize about future monuments to their reign, in the meantime people who live in the present get stuck in a barn with manure a half-foot deep. That's why the Bus Riders Union needs people who know a crap hole when they see it to show up October 17 and demand a halt to all rail projects until a true rapid bus system is built. And while we are at it we should demand future board meetings be held outside with a port-o-potty standing behind each of the board of directors seats. Its nothing less than L.A. deserves.
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