Topics Archive: Getting Around
Here's a nice little story from writer Mark Evanier's blog, called modestly News From Me. Seems he began teaching a humor writing class at USC yesterday, but his car broke down. He took a cab to campus, then to catch one home walked over to Jefferson and Figueroa and called...
Posted January 17, 2008 11:12 PM
Gene Maddaus at the Breeze delves into the decision long ago to spend $700 million building the Green Line light rail for 20 miles from Norwalk to Redondo Beach, then stop it two miles short of the terminals at Los Angeles International Airport. Conspiracy by the taxi and shuttle operators?...
Posted January 9, 2008 05:27 PM
The Santa Anas are back and the LAFD has declared a red flag day in the hills for Wednesday. Those who live there know what it means: no parking on designated streets after 10 am....
Posted November 27, 2007 11:40 PM
Larry Mantle this morning took on one of the lesser issues of our time, but one that's still interesting and perplexing for locals: should we refer to freeways by their name or number? I haven't listened yet, but I will. Larry was joined by KPCC Program Director Craig Curtis and...
Posted November 13, 2007 12:41 PM
Sue Doyle compiles her realities of driving for the Daily News, and some are just so true: If you're waiting behind cars in a left-turn lane, never expect to go when the arrow turns green. The first driver in line will almost always be distracted and fail to notice that...
Posted November 8, 2007 09:34 AM
CityBeat columnist Alan Mittelstaedt FOI'd the chancellor of UC Irvine trying to find out who pressured him to un-hire Erwin Chemerinsky as dean of the new law school, before eventually doing the re-hire thing. The result: 430 pages of email and letters that shows Chancellor Michael Drake did hear from...
Posted November 7, 2007 11:25 PM
A new book released this week, The Driver: My Dangerous Pursuit of Speed and Truth in the Outlaw Racing World, describes a wild cross-country drive that broke the previous record by averaging 90 miles an hour between New York and Los Angeles. That includes six gas-and-bathroom stops and dodging state...
Posted October 17, 2007 10:48 AM
* 8 am update: Lanes were open in both directions this morning. Caltrans district chief Douglas Failing said the southbound lanes of the freeway would be opened through Newhall Pass in time for this morning's peak rush. Two northbound truck lanes opened for general use on Sunday, and the rest...
Posted October 15, 2007 12:13 AM
Author and journalist Ann Louise Bardach writes in today's Washington Post that a friend advised her to stay off US Airways — "It's the worst airline in the history of aviation" — but she made the mistake of booking a flight from Santa Barbara to Washington, D.C. anyway. Never again....
Posted October 14, 2007 11:57 PM
Don't plan on sailing in or out of Los Angeles on Interstate 5 (or the Antelope Freeway, for that matter) any time soon. Last night's conflagration in the truck tunnel beneath I-5 is still not fully under control, and the structural integrity of the freeway remains in question. Even by...
Posted October 13, 2007 04:03 PM
Richard S. Chang, writing in today's New York Times Wheels section about the pleasures of driving a stick shift: I was living in Los Angeles. Even though stopping and starting and stopping over Laurel Canyon during rush hour was excruciating, it was a completely different experience when the canyon roads...
Posted October 4, 2007 10:38 PM
Transportation planners get mounds of daily data from all the sensors installed beneath Los Angeles streets, but they throw it all away after a few days. The Times reports that "because the information is discarded, it cannot be used to determine over time where traffic is increasing -- or by...
Posted September 30, 2007 11:31 PM
In response to today's Breeze article on new computerized traffic signals across the South Bay, an LA Observed reader wrote to the Breeze reporter, Gene Maddaus: I noted in the article that it mentioned Imperial Highway and El Segundo as two of the areas newly added to the coordination system....
Posted September 18, 2007 08:14 PM
All those residential and commercial developments that planners and politicians like to promote near transit lines make getting around harder, since most occupants choose to drive and the businesses attract rather than discourage car trips. From Saturday's L.A. Times, which two spent months reporting on the habits of residents at...
Posted July 1, 2007 11:28 PM
It's illegal to turn right onto La Brea from Clinton Avenue during rush hour, and so many Hollywood traffic cops lie in wait that it has become fun entertainment for the inmates at Hancock Park Senior Assisted Living to watch tickets get written. There's a big sign announcing the ban,...
Posted June 21, 2007 11:50 AM
Highway crews and flagmen working on the widening of California 138 across the Mojave Desert have taken so much physical abuse from motorists that the stretch between Lancaster and Victorville will now be closed until September so workers can do their job safely. Two workers have been hit by cars,...
Posted June 6, 2007 10:03 PM
Franklin Avenue spotted handwritten signs today on 6th Street near the mayor's mansion in Windsor Square posted to beseech drivers, Burma Shave-style, to SLOW... THE... F**K... DOWN! Photos at the blog....
Posted June 4, 2007 06:09 PM
Scaffolding has been spotted around the vacant stores at the northeast corner of Wilshire and Barrington, alerting tipster Doug that his commute through the habitually jammed Brentwood-adjacent intersection is about to become a whole lot less fun. He emails: "I think this means that after six months-plus (since the businesses...
Posted May 7, 2007 11:42 PM
Another Gran Marcha to support immigrants begins Tuesday morning at Broadway and Olympic, moves north on Broadway starting at 10 am, and heads to City Hall via 1st Street. Fewer marchers than last year are expected, but traffic will likely be tied up in a large swath of downtown. Freeway...
Posted April 30, 2007 08:13 AM
John Stodder was one of the smart ones who got to Dodger Stadium early yesterday and was able to observe the mess with somewhat detached eye. He pulls from his public relations experience to offer some advice: The McCourts should a) apologize; b) completely ditch the new traffic scheme, which...
Posted April 10, 2007 09:50 AM
President Bush has an evening fundraiser in Brentwood, there are accidents on both sides of the 405 near Wilshire, and the northbound Pasadena is backed up near I-5. Luckily, Bush is moving by helicopter and departs the area about 7 pm. Good luck out there. * Winner's perk: The president...
Posted April 4, 2007 05:05 PM
Film director Bob Clark and his son Ariel were killed in the crash that kept Pacific Coast Highway closed through the Palisades during today's morning rush hours. Clark directed A Christmas Story and was the producer of the "Porkys" films and other features. The LAT says the crash occurred about...
Posted April 4, 2007 12:56 PM
With this year's new L.A. Marathon route, a lot of people are going to head out Sunday and run into street closures. The map and timetable is more complex than ever — behold the detour map — but basically it's like this. The race begins at Universal City, comes down...
Posted March 2, 2007 08:06 AM
Squeaky wheels do get the grease, it turns out. The state transportation commission rethought its earlier decision to leave the freeway out of the spending plan. Also: The day's headlines at LA Biz Observed include Oscar ratings (up) and stock tables in the Daily Breeze (down.)...
Posted February 26, 2007 05:20 PM
Pasadena keeps the Rose Parade route open to the public pretty much until show time. Ditto for the Los Angeles Marathon. But for some reason, busy Hollywood Boulevard has to be closed for a full week before the Oscars ceremony. The block between Highland and Orange shut down last night;...
Posted February 20, 2007 01:46 AM
Throttle Jockey columnist Susan Carpenter walks, talks and rides on her video reviews on the Times website. Today's installment covers three-wheeled bikes and scooters and shows Carpenter whizzing around downtown, Silver Lake and the beach set to music, with some mysterious uncredited riders alongside. It has the feel of a...
Posted February 14, 2007 11:59 AM
A crane that fell onto the northbound San Diego Freeway just before the Ventura Freeway in Sherman Oaks about 1 pm has the area a big Friday afternoon mess. The crane operator has been extricated and flown to a hospital, but as of a few minutes ago emergency crews were...
Posted February 2, 2007 03:27 PM
Michael Dukakis's campaign to free Westwood of the plague of apron parking — parking in driveways so as to obstruct sidewalks, for the uninitiated — has hit a snag. City parking officials have apparently decided not to ticket apron violators until the end of the spring quarter, according to the...
Posted January 29, 2007 02:25 AM
Protesters against the Iraq war will assemble at noon tomorrow in front of the Democratic Party headquarters at 9th and Figueroa, then march to the federal building via this route: East on 9th to Broadway. North on Broadway all the way up to Temple. East on Temple to Los Angeles....
Posted January 26, 2007 03:12 PM
→ The Times' Robin Abcarian is filing video updates (left) from Sundance on LATimes.com. → Variety's Gabriel Snyder is jumping to the Los Angeles bureau of W. He will be senior writer starting Feb. 1. → Savethe76Ball.com, another product of the folks at the 1947 Project, is claiming victory now...
Posted January 22, 2007 12:59 PM
Free today at WSJ.com, economists Peter Gordon of USC and Matthew Kahn of UCLA discuss the costs of traffic congestion: "the problem it poses -- or doesn't pose -- for cities and how policy options such as London's traffic congestion charges might play on this side of the pond." Pretty...
Posted January 18, 2007 02:58 PM
One of the traffic engineers being arraigned today for shutting down four intersections on the day that EAA went out on strike was featured last January in a Downtown News story on the city's automated traffic system. Kartik Patel was reporter Chris Coates' guide through ATSAC, the Automated Traffic Surveillance...
Posted January 8, 2007 10:24 AM
What a story. Two high-ranking city traffic engineers, Gabriel Murillo and Kartik Patel, were charged Friday with breaking into the city's automated traffic system and disabling the lights at four busy intersections just before the city Engineers and Architects Association walked out last August. On the eve of the strike,...
Posted January 6, 2007 09:32 AM
I won't repeat my rantlet (and here) about casual abuse of the word 'gridlock' by local media and pols. Just check out this photo of the real thing from Xiamen, China. Even it's not quite full gridlock, but it's pretty scary nonetheless. Full-size image after the jump....
Posted January 5, 2007 11:08 AM
Meant to re-post this oldie but goodie from 2004 for New Year's. On Dec. 31, 1897, a cameraman for Thomas Edison shot movie footage of the street scene in the heart of Los Angeles, then populated by about 100,000 people. Twenty-nine seconds — possibly the first motion picture footage of...
Posted January 3, 2007 02:00 PM
You can ride the buses, Red Line and light rail lines for free from 9 pm Dec. 24 to 2 am on Christmas morning. The fare gets dropped again from 9 pm on New Year's Eve to 2 am on January 1. As for which lines are running and when,...
Posted December 23, 2006 12:10 PM
Laura Mecoy, the Sacramento Bee's Los Angeles reporter, weighs in today with a longish piece on L.A. transit pegged to the revived talk of a subway out Wilshire Boulevard. Mayor Villaraigosa and the mayor of Beverly Hills talk it up, the Bus Riders Union is held up as the main...
Posted December 14, 2006 11:43 AM
Brief history lesson and somewhat optimistic view of the future from The Economist: In the past 15 years the city has gradually built a skeletal subway and light-rail system. Thanks to some creative local politicking, it can now begin to put flesh on the bones. Los Angeles' dependence on the...
Posted December 8, 2006 11:26 AM
LA Observed contributor Cari Beauchamp posts at Native Intelligence on the frustration of trying to wrestle answers about her cable service from the voice(s) on the line at Time Warner. At We Get Email, ex-Times subscribers vent about how delivery troubles broke them of longtime newspaper habits. Below, reader Ann...
Posted December 5, 2006 05:13 PM
Michael Dukakis, the Democratic candidate for president in 1988, lives in Westwood's North Village during his part-time teaching gigs at UCLA. For two years, the LAT says, he has been campaigning for enforcement of the law against blocking sidewalks by parking on driveway aprons in the neighborhood. The city now...
Posted November 30, 2006 01:24 AM
Item: A big rig rig on the northbound I-5 struck and killed a pedestrian this afternoon near Zoo Drive in the Griffith Park area. Two lanes are blocked. Item: A gasoline tanker crashed about 8 am on the westbound 134 in Burbank, closing all lanes for a couple of hours....
Posted November 27, 2006 03:22 PM
Germany recognizes 648 valid traffic symbols, but all that instruction can leave drivers confused or, perversely, encourage them to drive unsafely. Now seven cities in Europe are going naked — or libertarian, if you prefer. They have taken down all their stop signs and other traffic guides as an experiment...
Posted November 20, 2006 11:53 AM
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky says he's actively looking for support to put a county executive initiative on next year's ballot. Voters have rejected the idea of an elected county exec before, but Yaroslavsky told the Current Affairs Forum at lunch that he thinks the time may be right. The mess at...
Posted November 17, 2006 05:00 PM
Veronique de Turenne gives bicyclists their space on Pacific Coast Highway, but asks the same in return. "Share the road, you arrogant cyclists. Sure, it's narrow, sure it's scenic, sure that's the Pacific just a few feet away. But the slow, Sunday-driving days of PCH are long gone. You're riding...
Posted November 14, 2006 01:42 PM
Just last September John Catoe withdrew from consideration for the top transit job in Atlanta to remain with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Now today's Washington Post reports that Catoe has been offered the job of general manager of the Washington region's Metro rail-and-bus network. They are said to be negotiating...
Posted November 14, 2006 11:37 AM
Mixed in among the nine-hour parking meters on Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica, TJ Sullivan found a stretch of nine-minute signs. It pays to check the details twice. At Native Intelligence. Previous adventures in parking: NYT bureau chief racks up a few tickets....
Posted November 3, 2006 04:54 PM
Filming for Live Free or Die Hard has been postponed a couple of days, so the production won't be shutting down Imperial Highway beside LAX until the weekend. Previously: Vengeance on El Segundo...
Posted November 2, 2006 10:38 AM
Live Free or Die Hard received the permits it wanted and will be disrupting traffic in El Segundo and the south side of LAX starting Thursday. And not just a little bit. Imperial Highway will be closed in both directions for long periods during the work week until Nov. 10...
Posted October 30, 2006 06:26 PM
U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter ruled today that a ten-year-old legal agreement with the Bus Riders Union that prodded the MTA to spend $1.3 billion to improve service for the poor can expire later this month. Rachel Uranga reports on the Daily News website: In a major victory for the...
Posted October 25, 2006 03:27 PM
The worst is over on the southbound San Diego Freeway between Sunset Boulevard and the Santa Monica Freeway. After more than a year of orange cones and restricted flow that really mucked things up, the new lanes are partially open. It will be awhile before the new diamond lane is...
Posted October 24, 2006 10:57 AM
Mayor Villaraigosa returned to City Hall today almost giddy from his fortnight in Asia. Flanked by twenty fellow travelers, the mayor met the media this morning and talked about the trade and tourism dollars that would be coming L.A.'s way. It wasn't on his script cards, but he also left...
Posted October 23, 2006 05:22 PM
It just gets worse. Besides the major sporting events that will overlap, officials are warning that the LA Weekly's Detour Festival in the Civic Center and the Grand Avenue Festival on Bunker Hill pretty much guarantee extraordinarily tough travel downtown. Streets will be closed, bus lines disrupted and the Harbor...
Posted October 6, 2006 02:21 AM
UCLA has revised the traffic alert for this afternoon that I called unhelpfully vague yesterday. They still won't say that the president is the reason that Westside traffic will bite more than usual, preferring the more security-conscious and politic "very important dignitary." Anyway, the details are that Sunset Boulevard north...
Posted October 3, 2006 12:57 PM
The president of these here United States is going to be on the Westside again tomorrow for a Republican fundraiser. UCLA has given its folks a day's notice, in an unhelpfully vague way, that traffic near campus will suffer from 4 to 8 pm. Which side of campus? Which streets?...
Posted October 2, 2006 04:47 PM
As of yesterday, the city of Santa Monica is seeking out people who overpaid on parking tickets to give them refunds. The city has collected and quietly held on to about $950,000 in double payments on 18,000 parking citations. In a fit of civic ethics, the city plans to send...
Posted October 2, 2006 11:09 AM
Times critic Christopher Hawthorne welcomes the revived interest in tunneling a subway under Wilshire Boulevard all the way to the ocean. He writes today about its possible effect on the city: Maybe it's time to redefine exactly what cost-efficiency means in a city such as Los Angeles. If we had...
Posted September 27, 2006 08:20 AM
The most meaningful stat in the Times' Sunday page one story about the Westside's awful traffic is that it takes an average of nineteen minutes to travel one mile on Wilshire Boulevard at rush hour. I know that stretch — heading east from Brentwood to the 405 freeway and Westwood....
Posted August 28, 2006 01:04 AM
For his interview on today's "Morning Edition," How To Live Well Without Owning A Car author Chris Balish took the Metro bus to Venice Boulevard and Hughes then rode his bike to the NPR studios on Jefferson Boulevard in Culver City. "LA is full of wonderful, compact walkable communities," he...
Posted August 15, 2006 11:13 AM
The weekly Highway 1 section in the Los Angeles Times always skews toward the few who are buying a vehicle and usually has little if any information or fun stuff for the millions of Southern Californians who drive cars. This week's section, though, is beyond thin. There is a full-page...
Posted July 20, 2006 11:23 AM
Members of Southern California Transit Advocates like to challenge themselves — and explore the region — by taking long group excursions on public transit. They have gone as far as Laguna Beach and San Diego, and tonight plan to see what the MTA system has to offer late-night travelers. Their...
Posted July 14, 2006 12:09 PM
If you watch traffic maps online or listen to radio reports, the earliest freeway snarls are often out in western Riverside County where commuters get up early and begin slogging toward Irvine or Santa Monica on the 91 and other routes. A new study out there predicts a horrendous future...
Posted July 14, 2006 10:08 AM
Red-light cameras will be turned on in August at two intersections, LADOT officials said today. The first two corners where tickets will be issued are Laurel Canyon at Ventura boulevards in Studio City and Manchester Boulevard at Rodeo Street in Ladera Heights (or so the Daily News says, but that...
Posted July 10, 2006 03:02 PM
Tales about riding Metro Rail and buses make up a growing subset of the L.A. blogosphere. Doc on the Train is written by a resident at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center who carries a skateboard on his daily travels and who discovered a missing patient at a bus stop. Yesterday he offered...
Posted July 6, 2006 11:05 AM
Los Angeles airport chief Lydia Kennard today described $1.2 billion worth of coming improvements to LAX: an expanded Bradley International Terminal, realignment of the southernmost runway to improve safety and automated screening of all checked baggage. What's not going to happen anytime soon—maybe never, if she has anything to say...
Posted June 29, 2006 09:23 PM
The Daily News' Mariel Garza blogs about the physical effects of trading her car for the bus this month. I have two blisters on my left foot -- one on my heel and one between my big toe and second toe. On my right foot I have a blister on...
Posted June 29, 2006 09:36 AM
My favorite reads of the week have been Thomas Curwen's musings on Los Angeles and the automobile in the Times' commemorative issue of the Highway One section. About Mulholland Drive, the time warp that winds through the Santa Monica Mountains for 55 miles (some of it still unpaved), Curwen writes...
Posted June 22, 2006 03:56 PM
After two weeks of riding the MTA, Daily News columnist and editorial writer Mariel Garza blogs that she drove her car. "I need to drive for work," I told myself. It was true; I needed to zip from one end of the city to the other this morning. I suppose...
Posted June 16, 2006 09:46 AM
At 4 pm, Mayor Villaraigosa will emcee the ceremonial rollout of his Gridlock Tiger Team on Wilshire between Normandie and Ardmore. The office all but promises the media that they will see somebody get towed. Just across the line in Orange County, the Register notes that the car-pool lane on...
© 2003-2015 • About LA Observed • Email the editorPosted June 5, 2006 12:52 PM
The funeral for Mark Lacter will be held Sunday, Nov. 24 at 12 noon at Hillside Memorial Park, 6001 W. Centinela Avenue, Los Angeles 90045. Reception to follow.
More From Mark Lacter:
After 22 years of loyalty, Baylor is unceremoniously shown the door.
Before I lived in Echo Park, there was a tiny 1920s bungalow-cottage-standalone house on N. Occidental in Silver Lake. I...
