Let me be the latest to post about the cool photo archives now found at the Life website. Type in “Los Angeles,” and check out some cool shots (and some not so interesting ones, BTW) of L.A. in mid-century.
Above, a reminder that our traffic woes are nothing new…
The blue “signal sync” signs have started popping up on Wilshire (or at least I’ve finally noticed them), part of the LADOT’s $5.5 million plan to synchronize 256 traffic signals in Mid-City (specifically, between Wilshire and Hollywood, as well as La Cienega and Western).
Signs like the one above will be posted at more than 200 intersections around the city. LAist covered Mayor Villaraigosa’s press conference announcing the program in February:
Apparently, vehicles traveling on Wilshire Boulevard at a speed within 2 mph of the 35 mph speed limit will be greeted with green lights throughout the corridor. The downside of the bias in favor of Wilshire Blvd. vehicular traffic is that this plan will then have a negative impact on north/south vehicular traffic on streets such as Vermont, Western, La Brea, Fairfax, La Cienega, and Sepulveda.
Another detail that didn’t come up was the impact of a capacity increase, which critics claim will attract more single occupant vehicles resulting in the same gridlock that this plan purports to address…
Not only will motorists be treated to a ~35 mph ride down Wilshire but they will be also reminded of the wisdom of their route selection by the new “Signal Sync” signage!
Has my daily drive down Wilshire been smoother? Tough to tell; I usually leave the office after 7:30 p.m. (plus I head east, away from westside gridlock), so the boulevard is already clearer by then.
If you hit the freeways this weekend (despite that $4.40/gallon gas), you probably encountered this message from the CHP. Guess they can’t say they didn’t warn us.
(Flickr pic by The Damn Mushroom.)
According to the L.A. Times, the City of Los Angeles is still losing money on its red light traffic cameras. What’s more, according to the story, tiny Culver City generated nearly $2 million in revenue from its red light cameras over the past eight months, more than Los Angeles ($1.6 million)!
The lesson here, other than the obvious L.A. incompetency angle: Do not drive in Culver City. Just don’t do it. I don’t care if you find Tito’s Tacos delicious. Chances are you’ll be slapped with a red light ticket. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
(Flickr pic by The Damn Mushroom.)
According to the L.A. Times, the City of Los Angeles is still losing money on its red light traffic cameras. What’s more, according to the story, tiny Culver City generated nearly $2 million in revenue from its red light cameras over the past eight months, more than Los Angeles ($1.6 million)!
The lesson here, other than the obvious L.A. incompetency angle: Do not drive in Culver City. Just don’t do it. I don’t care if you find Tito’s Tacos delicious. Chances are you’ll be slapped with a red light ticket. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
You know, the one that probably doesn’t have an answer?
I’ll start it off: Whenever I’m stuck in truly horrible, bumper-to-bumper gridlock on a Los Angeles freeway, I’ll flip to KFWB and KNX to check out what’s impacting my commute. Yet almost always, the freeway I happen to be on won’t be mentioned in those traffic reports. How can that be? Is it simply that ALL traffic is bad in Los Angeles, and I happen to just always be stuck in gridlock that wasn’t caused by any specific incident or SigAlert?
Your turn!
http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x52zko&v3=1&related=1
BusRace2008
Bus Race! Bus Race! Will Campbell writes in Blogging.la that today’s the day he faces off with The Bus Bench’s Bus Tard to see who makes it to Downtown first.
Will explains:
I’ll be on the MTA’s No. 439 catching up on my reading of Mercedes Lambert’s “Dogtown” and he’ll be bribing the driver of Big Blue’s No. 10 to skip stops as we travel from our respective points of embarkation deep in the westside sometime shortly after the 5 o’clock hour then call crawl our separate ways across town to see who gets to Clifton’s at 7th and Broadway first. With fingers crossed that we both get there before the place closes at 7:30 p.m., we will then retire inside for loser-buys dinner with perhaps whiskeys at Seven Grand afterward, or just we’ll pass around The Bus Bench Publisher Browne’s bottle of Everclear.
Will will be posting his progress via Twitter.
Bus Race! Bus Race! Will Campbell writes in Blogging.la that today’s the day he faces off with The Bus Bench’s Bus Tard to see who makes it to Downtown first.
Will explains:
I’ll be on the MTA’s No. 439 catching up on my reading of Mercedes Lambert’s “Dogtown” and he’ll be bribing the driver of Big Blue’s No. 10 to skip stops as we travel from our respective points of embarkation deep in the westside sometime shortly after the 5 o’clock hour then call crawl our separate ways across town to see who gets to Clifton’s at 7th and Broadway first. With fingers crossed that we both get there before the place closes at 7:30 p.m., we will then retire inside for loser-buys dinner with perhaps whiskeys at Seven Grand afterward, or just we’ll pass around The Bus Bench Publisher Browne’s bottle of Everclear.
Will will be posting his progress via Twitter.
LAist’s San Francisco sibling, SFist, last week <a href="http://sfist.com/2007/10/02/sfist_mail_the.php
” target=”_blank”>took up the Northern vs. Southern California debate over whether to add the article “the” to freeway names. 405, or The 405?
In Los Angeles, of course, we have a habit of referring to “The 5,” or “The 101.” And that apparently drives them batty up north. One SFist comment read:
I know there are lots, tons, bunches of transplants here in the City, and we’re better off for it, I think. But once the transplants arrive, I too have those moments where I hear something that sounds like proverbial fingernails on a blackboard.Since when is SFO shorthand for San Francisco? Dudes, that’s the airport, homies.
I hate SOMA. I’ll never say NOPA.
And whyohwhy are there soooo many dodger fans at Giants games? Whyohwhy aren’t said dodger fans being spit on?
But yes, the #1 indicator of a transplant is the “the” before the freeway number. Who does that??? It’s just so effing weird.
Poor, poor supersensitive San Francisco. Yep, that’s how Los Angeles will conquer San Francisco: First, it starts with how we refer to freeways… pretty soon, your mayor will be caught in a sex scandal… oh, wait!
Meanwhile, Blogging.la mentioned the “The” debate while asking a burning question of their own: Why do the Caltrans LED boards refer to interstates as “Routes”? They write:
I’ve only lived here for 22 years but I’ve never said “route”. It is always THE 10 or THE 405 or The Santa Monica Freeway. Is the person programming the sign from somewhere else? Have they outsourced it? If it is a matter of saving letters, RTE is the same as THE or FWY.
Thankfully, NO ONE — except for traffic reporters — refer to the freeway by their full-fledged monikers. (After all, the 10 boasts at least four — Santa Monica, San Bernardino, Rosa Parks, Christopher Columbus Transcontinental.)
LAist’s San Francisco sibling, SFist, last week <a href=”http://sfist.com/2007/10/02/sfist_mail_the.php
” target=”_blank”>took up the Northern vs. Southern California debate over whether to add the article “the” to freeway names. 405, or The 405?
In Los Angeles, of course, we have a habit of referring to “The 5,” or “The 101.” And that apparently drives them batty up north. One SFist comment read:
I know there are lots, tons, bunches of transplants here in the City, and we’re better off for it, I think. But once the transplants arrive, I too have those moments where I hear something that sounds like proverbial fingernails on a blackboard.Since when is SFO shorthand for San Francisco? Dudes, that’s the airport, homies.
I hate SOMA. I’ll never say NOPA.
And whyohwhy are there soooo many dodger fans at Giants games? Whyohwhy aren’t said dodger fans being spit on?
But yes, the #1 indicator of a transplant is the “the” before the freeway number. Who does that??? It’s just so effing weird.
Poor, poor supersensitive San Francisco. Yep, that’s how Los Angeles will conquer San Francisco: First, it starts with how we refer to freeways… pretty soon, your mayor will be caught in a sex scandal… oh, wait!
Meanwhile, Blogging.la mentioned the “The” debate while asking a burning question of their own: Why do the Caltrans LED boards refer to interstates as “Routes”? They write:
I’ve only lived here for 22 years but I’ve never said “route”. It is always THE 10 or THE 405 or The Santa Monica Freeway. Is the person programming the sign from somewhere else? Have they outsourced it? If it is a matter of saving letters, RTE is the same as THE or FWY.
Thankfully, NO ONE — except for traffic reporters — refer to the freeway by their full-fledged monikers. (After all, the 10 boasts at least four — Santa Monica, San Bernardino, Rosa Parks, Christopher Columbus Transcontinental.)
