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September 10, 2003
COLUMN ONE
Busman Stops at Nothing
* After 9/11, Kazuhiro Nakagawa's business was reduced from $10,000 luxury tours to $40 trips up and down the coast, but he doesn't give up.
By Ronald D. White, Times Staff Writer
It was almost departure time, but Kazuhiro Nakagawa's 55-seat tour bus still had that "Not in Service" look as it sat outside the Wilshire Grand Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
Slowly, a handful of passengers assembled: two teenagers from Altadena, a frugal twentysomething couple just back from Israel and a 19-year-old German woman touring the country.
A few years ago, Japanese tourists paid Nakagawa $10,000 each for whirlwind tours of the Western United States on his luxury bus. With that market ruined by the sour Japanese economy and the lingering effects of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Nakagawa sought a new niche running a nonstop luxury bus service from Los Angeles to San Francisco, $40 one way.
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Politics & Society
Bicycle Activists Take to the Freeways in L.A.
The Bryant Park Project, June 12, 2008 · People tend to think of Los Angeles as the natural habitat of the automobile, a land where giant on ramps and multilane freeways determine the course of life.
But for three cyclists in Santa Monica, Los Angeles is a bikers' world. Morgan Strauss grew up riding bikes around L.A. Alex Cantarero grew up riding local buses, even celebrating childhood birthdays aboard, before making the move to pedal power. Rich Totheie moved from New York City a few years back, having never much used a bike for transportation.
In November, the three bicycle activists began dreaming up ways to make their point — that two-wheelers deserve a place in the transportation network. They say they'd grown tired of playing cat-and-mouse with Santa Monica police at monthly Critical Mass rides. Instead, their group, the Crimanimalz, began protests like bottling intersections with endless, lawful rounds of Crosswalk Craps.
Metrolink Tries to Censor Bloggers
A paranoid transit agency spends public money threatening critical Web sites
By MAX TAVES
Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - 7:00 pm
'Chinatown buses' make no-frills inroads in Las Vegas
By Rosemary McClure, Times Staff Writer
May 17, 2007
They were an underground hit almost from the start.
The cut-rate transportation services called "Chinatown buses" originated about a decade ago in the Northeast. At first, they were an inexpensive way for Chinese restaurant workers to commute to jobs in nearby cities. Fares as low as $10 between New York and Boston were common.
Soon Chinese students began to hop aboard, and other students followed suit. Then savvy budget travelers noticed, and suddenly Greyhound was facing a new form of competition: low-overhead bus companies that thrived on a no-frills, shoestring approach to service.
Instead of picking up passengers at terminals, Chinatown buses picked them up - and deposited them - along curbsides; instead of maintaining ticket offices, they sold space online; instead of offering numerous routes, they offered only the most popular.
The bus lines, most of which are owned by Chinese immigrants, are common in the Northeast, but similar low-cost services also can be found in the West.
The online booking service GotoBus.com launched five years ago by Cambridge, Mass., businessman Jimmy Chen, handles reservations and helped put the low-cost bus trend on the road.
GotoBus.com now accounts for 1,000 scheduled departures a day throughout the country. Besides the low-cost players it now takes reservations for major sightseeing companies, such as Gray Line.
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Riders can choose transportation alone, paying fares as low as $25 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas or $45 between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Or they can choose vacations that include accommodations, such as a two-day trip from Los Angeles to Ensenada, Mexico, for $95; or a three-day trip from L.A. to San Francisco and Yosemite for $120.
Prices and tour components fluctuate - the $99 Las Vegas-Grand Canyon itinerary described in the accompanying story, for instance, is now available from various companies for prices ranging from $114 to $127, but a different Vegas tour is available for $99 that includes two nights in Sin City.
An Orwellian "100 percent parking reduction" rule quietly wends through City Hall
By STEVEN LEIGH MORRIS
Wednesday, August 29, 2007 - 5:00 pm
AFTER WORLD WAR II, the city of Los Angeles figured it would be a swell idea to provide incentives to the local tire industry by dismantling what was then among the most comprehensive and enthusiastically used light-rail systems in the nation. What's good for business is good for the city, the tire companies said on their way to the bank, before the city paved over or shut down every passenger-train track from Mount Lowe above Pasadena, to Long Beach, to Santa Monica - wiping out the popular Red Car rail line.
While keeping the city's poky bus system, Los Angeles leaders of yore took away what planners would call "transportation alternatives."
Or so the urban legend goes, a much-told but probably untrue tale about the Orwellian strategy of using free-market lingo - "good for business" - to restrict consumer choice and shutter the Red Cars. Sy Adler, professor of urban studies at Portland State University, has since shown that the deal wasn't so Orwellian: The Red Cars were abandoned after Angelenos took to their autos with such vigor that the rails lost riders.
But now, the sort of social engineers Orwell envisioned actually are in residence at City Hall as commuters piddle to work in cars. The worst traffic is probably on the Westside, where things move at about 3 mph during rush hour, in a sector of L.A. that lacks a subway and suffers from infamously slow bus service.
Perhaps taking inspiration from the old Red Car legend, the city's Planning Department is using free-market lingo to restrict consumer choices. The bureaucrats' aim: to get Angelenos out of their cars and onto a troubled, skeletal mass-transit system that's a pale reminder of past Red Car glory.
Under this scheme, veteran city planner Thomas Rothmann is pushing to restrict parking, even at condos and apartments. He hopes to render your car so burdensome, and your life around it so miserable, that for relief you'll use the frequent and efficient buses or subways - neither of which will actually exist in most corners of L.A. for 20 to 30 years even under best-case scenarios.
The city's euphemism for all this is "pedestrian friendly."
Will gridlocked L.A. heed this toll call?
While Orange County officials have built a network of toll roads to address growing traffic, L.A. officials have invested much more heavily in rail and bus service.
By Rong-Gong Lin II and Steve Hymon, Times Staff Writers
June 29, 2007
The land of the freeway is poised to become a little less free.
Los Angeles County transit leaders on Thursday agreed to develop plans for toll roads within the next three years, after decades of opposition to the concept of motorists paying tolls to use the roads.
The decision by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board comes amid criticism that Los Angeles has not joined other metropolitan areas around the nation in experimenting with "congestion pricing," in which motorists pay to use less crowded lanes.
Last month, L.A. County lost out on a major federal grant because it did not have any congestion pricing in the works.
Area officials put on a full-court press in Sacramento after bond funding for new carpool lanes is threatened.
By Duke Helfand, Times Staff Writer
February 21, 2007
SACRAMENTO - After an intense day of lobbying in the state capital Tuesday, Los Angeles' top leaders appeared to be winning their fight to secure $730 million in bond money to widen one of the nation's most congested freeways, with one powerful legislator threatening to hold up funds for transportation projects statewide if the city and other congested areas don't get what they need.
More than a dozen Los Angeles-area elected officials - including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, County Supervisor Gloria Molina and Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) - descended on the Capitol to voice their unhappiness with a recommendation by the California Transportation Commission staff to omit new carpool lanes for the 405 Freeway and other local projects from an initial funding list.
Evolving Region Pushes for More Rail Lines
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 17, 2006; Page A03
LOS ANGELES -- Demeaned as a car-crazed megalopolis where people drive two blocks to valet-park at the dry cleaners, Los Angeles is on the road to fashioning one of the best public transit systems in the nation.
Villaraigosa promotes the use of public transit, but he doesn't spend much time on the city's bus and subway system.
By Duke Helfand, Times Staff Writer
November 14, 2006
From the moment he took office nearly 18 months ago, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made traffic gridlock a cause celebre - exhorting Angelenos to help solve the problem by forsaking their cars whenever possible.
"You've got to use public transit," Villaraigosa said just last week while unveiling an automated signal system to help unclog busy intersections. "You can't keep on pointing to someone else and saying it's their responsibility."
But Villaraigosa's own travel habits don't match his public pronouncements.
The mayor rarely, if ever, takes the bus or the train to work. Instead, he rides around town in a GMC Yukon chauffeured by a Los Angeles police officer who doubles as a bodyguard.
Unlike many others in Los Angeles, Villaraigosa has easy access to public transportation.
Hollywood plots freeway coverup
Those proposing what they call Hollywood Central Park will reveal preliminary details tonight when leaders of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency meet with local business executives in an effort to raise $120,000 for a project feasibility study.
When the study is completed, local leaders say, they will be able to seek federal funding for the estimated $209 million that the freeway retrofit and park construction could cost.Backers say other densely populated U.S. cities have undertaken similar projects to carve out hard-to-find recreation space.