too effing hot

LA should put elevated trains down all the major boulevards for the shade.

this is excellent btw https://placesjournal.org/article/shade-an-urban-design-mandate/

especially as the palm trees are due to die in the next decade or so iirc?

they offer almost no shade now so them dying off is no great loss

I meant more that they can give way to elevated train tracks

ah. word. of course it's not going to happen. there is actually a transit plan that is a good start (saner downtown rail lines, 405 transit, LAX link, etc.), thanks to the otherwise terrible olympics, but the main problem here right now is a ridership death spiral https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bus-ridership-falling-los-angeles-la-metro-20190627-story.html. we may not make it 2028 with a solvent metro. elevated rail would be a nice problem to have in this setting!

also good https://www.curbed.com/2019/7/10/20687762/trees-in-cities-climate-change-health-benefits

Angelenos will always choose cars over mass transit until it gets too painful to do so (cost or travel time).

poor saps

When I lived in San Antonio it seemed like a relatively unusual number of businesses were open 24 hours. Bars still closed at 2am but they were regularly packed after midnight. It was a pretty night-oriented place ime

Houston was like that too. But after the combo fuel crunch/economic downturn a lot of once 24-hour places cut back to just doing so on weekends or not at all. Even though things have since (theoretically) improved, a lot of businesses have relished saving money/not paying people, so the wild days of 3:00 AM hangs in Whataburger dining rooms haven't quite returned.

it will be 100 here both saturday and sunday this weekend. the air conditioning at my job has been broken all summer and has now completely failed so we closed early today. i was out doing something else when the announcement was made and had other office things to try to do before leaving. it was just unbearable, felt like 90 at least in my office, and it's not like i get any less work to do because of this. i don't have remote access to computer stuff. great!

there is apparently no a/c on rikers island (nyc's main jail). which is fucked up

the main problem here right now is a ridership death spiral

ime the two things that would immediately increase bus usage in LA are

1) make the buses run every 5 or 10 minutes, not three times an hour

2) universal health care

that LA times article i linked covers the main reasons. it's headways and reliability. the solution for that is bus lanes (these are super practical in LA because all the streets are so horribly wide.)

there's also class/cultural baggage and racism that keeps rich white people away (9 times out of 10 i'm the only white guy on the bus), but that's a tougher problem and right now we're losing poor non-white riders at a rate that puts the solvency of the transit system at risk, so let's start with some dang bus lanes.

one more thing: while the fact that white people don't ride the bus is not of itself a problem for the solvency of metro or for climate change (because there aren't that many white people in LA county), it is a big problem because people who don't ride the bus tend to be opposed the measures that make the bus better for people who do. check out this BULLshit, for example https://laist.com/2019/07/16/eagle_rock_metro_rapid_bus_route_noho_to_pasadena.php.

solution for that is bus lanes

In my scenario as soon as you commit to making the buses run reliably, you realise that bus lanes make this feasible

(these are super practical in LA because all the streets are so horribly wide.)

otm


there's also class/cultural baggage and racism that keeps rich white people away

My second point is connected to this: LA is the only American city that I’ve gotten around in via bus which sometimes vaguely justifies the otherwise bonkers American prejudice that buses have smelly and crazy ppl on them. Universal healthcare reduces the number of folks whose mental health situations lead them to shout or threaten the air on buses, and more non-smelly ppl on buses reduces the already-tiny proportion of smelly ppl to statistically insignificant.

I got nothing re racism though.

(I did read the LAT article!)

lol fire these NIMBYs into the sun

“We don't want to ride the buses," another speaker said, calling them "dirty and unsafe."

One woman had a suggestion for residents who don't take the bus: try it out sometime and make an effort to meet people different than yourself. That was met with a fair share of boos.

"How dare you come to our community and try to destroy it," one resident said to Metro staff at the front of the room. "Colorado [Blvd.] is not for sale."

love when the fact-checkin cuzzes get together (seriously)

My second point is connected to this: LA is the only American city that I’ve gotten around in via bus which sometimes vaguely justifies the otherwise bonkers American prejudice that buses have smelly and crazy ppl on them

No shade on Seattle, which admirably makes buses free (!) in the city center, but I have somewhat experienced that there as well on hot days.

Just looked it up, and apparently that policy ended in 2012 after a 40-year run. I guess it shows it's been a while since I've taken the bus in Seattle.

we're working on it from a different angle now: some free fare cards for public housing residents, 50 cents for youth this summer

Free buses ended in 2012 ftr, probably to encourage uptake of tap-on transit cards

and there's started to be more policy talk about figuring out how to make it free for everyone (i mean, through a tax, but you get what I'm sayin)

also https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/10/how-seattle-bucked-a-national-trend-and-got-more-people-to-ride-the-bus/542958/

If you’re afraid of the occasional smelly crazy person then move to the fucking exurbs and stay there

Urban amateurs wear my patience out like nothing else

xposts, sorry! I’m at a bus stop

NYC is opening more libraries on Sunday so ppl have places with AC to go to.

I am running [sic] my morning errands in last night's Mekons concert clothes, bcz where's the sense in taking two showers?

the more people that ride the bus, the smaller the portion of smelly people

I love the buses in my city. They're nice and clean and well-kept, and there's hardly anyone on them.

I just overheard someone a couple of days ago talking about how much they prefer taking the bus in the winter over the summer, because fewer people are riding and they get to their destinations that much faster.

I ride the most fucked bus in the city to and more distressingly from work every day, it can be nightmarishly crowded and slow but people still ride it!

Anyway Seattle’s best air conditioning is on the bus

I love riding the bus because I hate stairs. hardly any tourists on the buses cos they can’t figure it out. mostly old people tbh

Bus is an option if you don’t give a f about your time. Hey man I’ll be there whenever

Leave earlier ffs it’s not rocket science

I can either park four blocks away from the office or walk five blocks to the bus stop.

Boils down to walk an extra block +/- fight interstate traffic and find a good parking space.

I prefer the bus over the subway/metros/tubes if I have the time.

One of the things that brought me to Portland was the really good mass transit. Portland used to be free in a downtown area too - the expert opinion seems to be that it was a good idea that didn't really work and that that effort could better be spent elsewhere. This was before I moved there so I can't speak to it myself.

Re: smelly and/or mentally disturbed people riding the buses - this is going to happen as long as there are smelly and/or mentally disturbed people. And people will always complain about it, and some people who have the option will always avoid mass transit because of it. There are a lot of arguments in Portland, and especially in the suburbs, about making the homeless and overtly disturbed people invisible. I'm against it but I understand why it's something people want.

Ideally the convenience of riding mass transit will be greater than people's fear of people who aren't like them, for enough people for mass transit to be viable.

That's harder in a city like LA, which developed from sprawl, than Portland, which has much less of it. I try to avoid driving in the city if at all possible. Traffic is bad, parking is bad, stress is high, all of these things are worse for me than the possibility of encountering a mentally disturbed person in close quarters. But I am also a luxury space communist, which means I don't expect people to give up luxuries like air conditioning and beef and cars. I certainly haven't.

some of you seem to be losing sight of the issue here, which is that it's too effing hot

it's 72 in seattle and 76 in la and a lovely dry 80 in portland. go take a pleasant bus ride

Leave earlier ffs it’s not rocket science

We'll get a couple of days over 30C again in London midweek apparently although the real feel on a lot of the buses might be 40+ even with the windows open.

the forecasted low here on Wednesday night is 68 and I think the forecast office is smoking banana peels, no way is that gonna happen

^^That's supposed to be because of the front that's making things nice in Seattle/Portland rn...IF it gets here.

I am not in a summer zone right now, but when I was in the city I would put wet towels and alcohols (vodka) in the freezer in case the power went out and at least I would have something super cold to sleep against at night.

It is not 76 where I am in LA (extreme temperature gradient that correlates closely with income is a particularly Southern California problem as well as a macro global thing)

It’s calamitously bright and the air is terrible on the eastside of LA, but relative to New York well I guess it’s a dry heat.

nyc doesn't cool down at night and it's terrible.

I read some asshole nyt or wapo story awhile ago about renters who don't pay their electricity and they just leave their ac on even if they go on vacation for a week or two because it's so nice to come home to a cool place and I lost my mind which I suppose is the point.

apparently those overnight lows above 80 are actual killers https://www.curbed.com/2019/7/18/20699431/heat-wave-record-high-overnight-temperatures

Urgent New York news you can use btw

https://ny.curbed.com/maps/new-york-parks-splash-pad-sprayground-central-park

moose be time for a shower

You know it's hot in Canada when 👇 pic.twitter.com/2aGwkxejQw

— Bob (@Bob_Animal) July 19, 2019