September 2007 Archives

A crucial vote today for a massive $1 billion mixed-use project in NoHo has become tangled as 11 of the 13 Metro board members are barred from casting ballots on it - because they have all received campaign contributions connected to projects considered for the site. Read the Daily News story HERE.

The only two board members without conflicts are Richard Katz and John Fasana.

So now the Metro board will use an obscure lottery-based procedure, established by former state Sen. Tom Hayden, that solely applies to Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Under the legislation, a lottery will be used to randomly select five of the 11 conflicted members to cast their votes.

Still, the development measure will fail unless all five conflicted members - plus Katz and Fasana - vote to approve it.

Thoughts? Share them on our blog!

A critically injured man is in surgery now at a local hospital after allegedly jumping in front of an oncoming Orange Line bus on Wednesday, authorities said.

The 8:30 a.m. collision happened about one-half mile from the Tampa Avenue station as the commuter bus headed west on its route and encountered the man standing on the fenced off right of way.

The bus operator told authorities that he slowed down and steered the bus away from the man, who allegedly jumped in front of the vehicle, said Marc Littman, Metro spokesman.

Littman said the man was struck and then was stuck under the bus.

“It was no where near a station,” said Littman. “I have no idea what someone would be doing there.”
Littman said this marks the first serious accident with a pedestrian and the Orange Line, which runs from North Hollywood to Warner Center.

Bus service was detoured around the accident.

The saga of the Hollywood Freeway house ended Tuesday night when movers hauled it away to Santa Clarita.

Owner Patrick Richardson tried to move the house on his own from Santa Monica to Newhall on Sept. 15 but didn't get further than the Cahuenga Pass after the house clipped the Western Avenue overpass. Wheels on his vehicle also became disabled during the extreme moving nightmare, causing the 45-year-old to abandon the home on the northbound shoulder of the Hollywood Freeway.

Meanwhile the house sat on the freeway for 10 days.

Caltrans hired a moving company to get the house off the roadway and is sending Richardson the tab. On KFI radio last night, Richardson's fiancee Kim Bigman of Tarzana told radio hosts that the house was slated for demolition before they took ownership and had planned to move it to Newhall where it would serve as a homeless shelter.

At the stroke of midnight, the story of the little house on the Hollywood (101) Freeway should come to a close.

At that time, a hired moving company will haul away the green ranch from the northbound highway shoulder, where it has sat for 11 days after a moving disaster on Sept. 15 that snarled traffic for eight hours.

Caltrans hired Master House Movers of Santa Clarita to whisk away the battered home from the roadside in the interest of public safety. The house owner, Patrick Richardson of Castaic, will be billed.

The far right lane closest to the house is now closed in preparation of tonight's move, Caltrans officials said.

The house was abandoned on the roadway after its owner tried to relocate it from Santa Monica to Santa Clarita and ran into all sorts of troubles with his vehicle, including losings its wheels during the move, officials said.

For rent: Green ranch home with incredible freeway access. Close to shopping. Cheap.

That could be the ad for the slowly disintegrating house that was abandoned last week during a moving nightmare and now sits on the shoulder of the northbound 101 Freeway near Studio City. It's day six of the saga, and overnight someone hung a "for rent" sign on it.

The drama began last Saturday when owner Patrick Richardson tried to move his house from Santa Monica to northern L.A. County and along the way ran into all sorts of troubles -- from wheels falling off his vehicle to smacking the house into a freeway overpass. The extreme moving adventure snarled traffic on the Hollywood Freeway for eight hours. Get the whole story HERE.

Caltrans says the house will remain a roadside fixture until Patrick can safely move it again. He has not been cited for the debacle. But taggers are having a field day with it.

Meanwhile, commuters have grand ideas for the place -- from turning it into a Starbucks, a lemonade stand or throwing a party inside. Living out of state, my dad is thinking of buying it since it should go for a reasonable rate, and he'd finally own some California property. He could pass the time there shouting at speeders.

What are your thoughts? Share them with our blog.
And do you know Patrick? We are trying to reach him! Please tell him to give us a call.

A Metro Gold Line commuter train headed toward downtown Friday morning struck a car on the tracks and burst into flames during rush hour, leaving five injured, authorities said.

The train and vehicle collided around 7:20 a.m. at Avenue 50 and Figueroa Street in the Highland Park area.

The Metro Gold Line commuter train caught fire and received “significant damage” before it was doused, said Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Ron Myers.

Three people were transported to the hospital and two others were treated at the scene, Myers said. He couldn’t immediately say whether the injured were in the car or the train. Televised news reports showed what appeared to be the charred wreckage of a van lying next to the front of the train.

A crossing gate nearby had been torn off but the cause of the accident was not immediately determined.

Source: Daily News wires

Surprise, surprise. Motorists in Los Angeles face the absolute worst rush-hour traffic in the country, spending nearly two workweeks stuck behind the wheel in jams and wasting nearly 60 gallons of gas, according to a study released Tuesday.

Angelenos spend 72 extra hours a year on the road - 12 more than commuters in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, which all have the second-highest traffic delays in the nation, according to the federally-funded report by the Texas Transportation Institute.

The national average is just 38 hours of extra delay each year. But the report found traffic congestion around the country has continued to worsen, creating a $78 billion annual drain on the U.S. economy as motorists consume 2.9 billion gallons of fuel idling in bottlenecks and lose 4.2 billion hours from their lives.

"There is no magic technology or solution on the horizon because there is no single cause of congestion," said Tim Lomax, a researcher at the institute and co-author of the report, which is based on data from 2005.

Read the whole story HERE.

Thoughts? Tell our blog!

Four people suffered minor injuries Monday when a car and a Metro Blue Line train crashed near downtown Los Angeles, officials said.

Paramedics were sent to Flower Street and Washington Boulevard at 11:10 a.m., said Diana Igawa of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

No one on the train was injured, Igawa said.

Source: Daily News wires

Authorities issued a whopping 600 citations to pedestrians and motorists Friday morning during a clamp down of illegal train track crossing along Metro and Metrolink tracks.

Despite ringing bells and flashing lights, some people cross the tracks when trains are coming, said Jose Ubaldo, Metro spokesman.

"People think it's a game," he said.

It all happened along tracks for the Blue Line and Union Pacific trains that run parallel from downtown Los Angeles to around Metro's Rosa Parks Station in Wilmington, a transfer point between the Blue and Green lines.

Tickets for each offence costs $177 and were issued by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Union Pacific Police Department and Metro security staff, Ubaldo said.

After a story ran in the Daily News on Wednesday about a stinging blog that outs lain-brain drivers in Los Angeles, blogger Michael Shen got a call from CNN.

The national news network will air a feature on Monday from 6-9 a.m. EST about the Los Angeles man and his popular blog that points out L.A. can't drive -- lacantdrive.com.

While most of us will still be in deep REM at that time, thankfully CNN will also include the piece during the day.

If you catch it, let us know! Meanwhile, read the story HERE.

A major obstacle to tunnel through the Fairfax District for a subway to serve the Westside moved closer to being lifted Wednesday when the U.S. Senate voted to repeal a ban on federal money for construction under Wilshire Boulevard.

Approved 88 - 7, the vote would repeal a ban enacted in 1985 when Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, argued that the threat of methane explosions made tunneling in the area dangerous. In 2005, an independent panel determined the area was safe for tunneling. Now the measure heads to a Senate-House conference committee, to reconcile differences between House and Senate versions of the funding bill.

While digging in March 1985 to build the Red Line subway -- originally designed to head west along the Wilshire Corridor to Santa Monica -- a methane gas explosion ripped through the Ross Dress for Less at Fairfax Avenue and Third Street and blew off much of its roof.

Tunneling in that direction stopped and the Red Line's route was changed to Hollywood and Vine and eventually North Hollywood.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called Thursday's decision a victory to getting the city moving. Building a "subway to the sea" is a cornerstone of the mayor's political agenda.

At an international car show in Frankfurt, Germany, Lamborghini has unveiled an exclusive sports car along with its $1.4 million price tag. Called the Reventon, only 20 of these luxury rides will be produced. All of them are already sold.

Check it out the Reuters story on it HERE.

Check out more Lamborghini cars HERE.

What say you? Dream car or overpriced toy? Tell our blog!

So we all know that people in L.A. can't drive. Now a Web site proves it. On lacantdrive.com, one Los Angeles man and his growing following are snapping photos of these reckless and red-faced folk and posting them online.

The brain child of Michael Shen, the blog began shortly after he moved to Los Angeles and was appalled by the oversized egos he found on the roads. He measures their behaviors on an idiocy meter.

His goal? To promote safe driving and have mandatory road tests randomly issued to all motorists every six years, weeding out the ones who should never get behind the wheel in the first place. Read the Daily News story HERE.

Should this be a law? What would make our roads safer? Tell our blog!

A pickup driver remains in critical condition after colliding with a Metro Gold Line train in the Highland Park area, authorities said.

The accident happened at 7:54 a.m. in the 100 block of North Avenue 55, leaving the truck pinned between the Metro train and a concrete pillar. The southbound train crushed part of the truck bed.

The driver was briefly trapped but was conscious and alert when he was cut free and taken to a hospital, said Captain Rick Godinez, Los Angeles City Fire Department.

Four people on the train complained of neck and back pain, including four passengers, the train’s operator and a sheriff’s deputy, Metro spokesman Jose Ubaldo said, describing the injuries as minor.

The railroad track was closed in both directions while an investigation was conducted. About 50 passengers were aboard the train.

Source: Daily News wires

Those with weak stomachs should stop right here, because things are about to get gruesome.

A mother who was caught on video racing a freight train last week in Indiana has died this morning after her minivan didn't make it across the tracks in time and the car was hit by two trains, reports the Chicago Tribune.

The 32-year-old woman's death follows her two children, ages 8 and 11, who were killed in the Sept. 1 crash outside the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District's Hammond station.

Both freights were operated by CSX Corp. of Florida.

Check out the video HERE. Video is shot from two angles and comes from Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District.

FYI, no blood is shown but it does show the desperation some drivers have to beat trains -- an issue that Metrolink is working on here with $20 million to seal up right-of-ways to stop these kinds of motorists.

A Metro Orange Line bus and a vehicle collided on Monday night, authorities said.

The crash happened about 6:30 p.m. near the intersection of Victory Boulevard and Mason Avenue, said Brian Ballton, Los Angeles City Fire Department spokesman.

One woman complained of injuries and was taken to Kaiser Permanente-Woodland Hills Medical Center, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lt. Keith Obenberger.

Authorities are investigating the cause of the crash.

Metrolink will double its weekend service to the Antelope Valley starting Saturday, Metrolink officials said today.

The Antelope Valley Line, running between Lancaster and downtown Union Station, will have three more trains on Saturdays, doubling the service to six trains. The first train will leave Lancaster at 6:45 a.m. and the last train will leave Union Station at 9 p.m.

The line will also have three trains on Sundays for the first time. The first train will leave Lancaster at 6:45 a.m. and the last train will leave Union Station at 6:05 p.m.

“The Antelope Valley is a vibrant and growing community and we hope that even more people will be encouraged to take the train instead of the freeway,” said Metrolink Board Chair Ron Roberts.

-- source: Daily News wires

States nationwide are cracking down on motorcycle noise, raising concern among local bikers that their noisy pastime could be stifled if California cracks down, too. Get the story HERE.

As of July 1, riders in New York can get slapped with $440 in fines for screaming mufflers. Those revving their engines too loudly in parts of Pennsylvania can get $150 tickets.

Some bikers in California are reporting more fines these days for loud motorcycles but argue that police are unfairly calling the shots without an instrument to measure the noise.

What do you think? How should this be handled? Tell our blog.

Responding to the federal government's push to speed up carpool lanes, Caltrans on Tuesday said it wants stronger patrols of those lanes to crack down on solo drivers illegally using them. Get the story HERE.

Targeting illegal use of carpool lanes is the first step toward unclogging them. But only 5 of drivers don't belong there. It will take more to make the car-pool lanes travel at 45 mph, which the federal government wants. Caltrans is still honing solutions and will announce more next month.

What do you think it will take to get these lanes moving? Tell our blog!