Nobody Drives In LA — Sunset4All

I think it was in 2019 that Terence Heuston (LA Bike Dad) approached me to discuss the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition's Sunset4All at one of that street's many coffee shops. He described to me the effort to reconfigure Sunset Boulevard -- one of Los Angeles's most iconic streets -- to make it safer, and … Continue reading Nobody Drives In LA — Sunset4All

Nobody Drives in LA — Historic Los Angeles Transit Rail

I know that it's not the case -- but even the most recently transplanted Angeleno should know that Los Angeles was built around railroads. The first steam train appeared in Los Angeles in 1869, nineteen years after the city was incorporated. The first horsecar showed up in 1874. The first trolley began operation in 1885. … Continue reading Nobody Drives in LA — Historic Los Angeles Transit Rail

Nobody Drives in LA — Public Stairways, Stair Streets, and Walk Streets of Los Angeles

Los Angeles was built around the walker. During the Last Glacial Period, the first humans arrived in Southern California, almost certainly by foot. As the glaciers receded, both these stone-age Paleoamericans and their non-human neighbors carved and shared trails through the green woodland, wetland, grassland, desert, and chaparral landscapes. Some 10,000 years later, the Tongva arrived … Continue reading Nobody Drives in LA — Public Stairways, Stair Streets, and Walk Streets of Los Angeles

Nobody Drives in LA — Get on the Rapid Bus

Lately, there's been a surprising amount of talk about dedicated bus lanes and busways in Los Angeles. Metro is currently moving forward with three Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects: the North SFV BRT, the NoHo to Pasadena BRT, and the Vermont BRT. In 2017, Metro created a short, dedicated bus lane along Sunset Boulevard for the Dodger … Continue reading Nobody Drives in LA — Get on the Rapid Bus

Nobody Drives in LA — So Why Are Our Train Stations So Crap?

There've recently been a couple of articles in the Los Angeles Times about the various state of local mass transit that have got me thinking. Mehmet Baker's "Metro is hemorrhaging riders. It needs to stop studying obvious fixes and start acting" appeared on Sunday, was good but many of the complaints voiced were the sort … Continue reading Nobody Drives in LA — So Why Are Our Train Stations So Crap?

Nobody Drives in LA — A Parking Lot Pothole Garden in Echo Park

The private automobile is the scourge of cities. In Los Angeles, on an average day, such cars injure or kill 39 Angelenos. They pollute air, land, and water -- except for the electric ones, which rely on child slave labor to mine the precious materials required for their batteries. Electric or smog-box alike, they all … Continue reading Nobody Drives in LA — A Parking Lot Pothole Garden in Echo Park

Swinging Doors — Los Angeles Train Pub Crawl

The train-enabled bar crawl is surely as old as the train itself. The first public transit line in Los Angeles was the Spring and West 6th Street Railroad, a railway founded in 1874 which served Downtown. Surely some bright 19th Century Angeleno had the brilliant idea of using the horse-drawn railcars to carry them from saloon … Continue reading Swinging Doors — Los Angeles Train Pub Crawl

Nobody Drives in LA — Riding the Pacific Surfliner to San Diego

I've now lived in Los Angeles for eighteen years. Even though most of my dreams still seem to unfold in Missouri, I've been in California longer than I've been anywhere else. However, as much as I love exploring cities, I rarely make it over to the state's second largest, San Diego. Furthermore, as much as … Continue reading Nobody Drives in LA — Riding the Pacific Surfliner to San Diego

There It Is, Revitalize It — The San Gabriel River

The San Gabriel River is one of three major rivers which drains and flows through the Los Angeles Basin. The river drains a watershed of roughly 1,850 square kilometers and is bounded by the watersheds of the Los Angeles River to the west and the Santa Ana River watershed to the southeast. For most of … Continue reading There It Is, Revitalize It — The San Gabriel River

Swinging Doors — A Gold Line Beer Crawl

In Los Angeles, I regularly find myself so spoiled for choice that it sometimes leaves me distressed; but really, there are surely worse problems than being presented with too many great possibilities with how to spend one’s time. On Sunday there was a nine kilometer hike in the San Gabriel Mountains which culminated with a … Continue reading Swinging Doors — A Gold Line Beer Crawl