The Los Angeles Car Show in 2015 ... Future? What Future?

Sometimes we are called to look into the heart of Hell, the Devil's home, the place of Sin, where Righteousness is relegated to the gutter and vile Evil is outlined in chrome and worshiped.

For Los Angeles, the city of the Angels, what could symbolize Satan more than the automobile? This one invention has caused the corruption of the civic body, the destruction of neighborhood after neighborhood, the contamination of the very air with the fumes of Sulphur and other chemicals from the Infernal Regions, the people daily subjected to the insanity of traffic that sucks away their life and their hope, the parade of elite vehicles on the pothole filled streets that  provide some of the worst examples of the rich demonstrating their greed and indifference in the face of obscene poverty.

In Los Angeles we have the second largest automobile show in the world, second only to Detroit. Surely in light of the gross corruption and degradation of Los Angeles through the institution of the automobile  the annual car show must be the very Citadel of Mammon!

What will we see? The best? The worst? The future? The past?

I have always wanted to attend this show but through sheer Sloth I have never made it. But on this Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, it was easy for me to tag along with others who were going and I did.

It also provided an opportunity to drive in my first Tesla and I was impressed.

My friend, the owner of this Tesla made the point that Tesla had proven that the barriers to entry to the automobile industry in this country were no longer the gating factor. For decades it has been said that no new brands could come into existence without an enormous amount of money and maybe not even then.  But Tesla has proven otherwise.

My friend and I both believe that we are on the cusp of a tsunami of change that will whack the automotive industry the way it has deserved to be whacked for decades.  Self-parking, autonomy, and semi-autonomy, new drive trains hybrid and electric, new manufacturers in the People's Republic of China and India, we should expect that the dinosaurs of the past will be swept into the gutter where they belong and replaced by a new people and a new legion of car manufacturers.

Too bad America, you had your chance and you completely fucked it up.   This time the government wont save you.

This is the second largest car show in the country, possibly the world. I would expect the existing manufacturers to take their head out of their ass (the tragedy of rectal-cranial inversion) and present their ideas about the future to their loyal base. That is pretty much who comes to car shows I think, the loyal base of customers who care enough to spend the day and $15.00 checking out the polished and mechanical visions of the automobile manufacturers.

This is a short list of what I might expect at least from some of the exhibitors:

I would expect there to be demonstrations of some of this new technology, even if it was not ready to be deployed to the consumer. So I would expect demonstrations of self-parking cars, cars which were autonomous for long distance driving, cars that were autonomous for city driving. These demonstrations might not be using real, full-size cars. They might be short films on a large display, mini-documentaries if you will, or they might be radio controlled model cars, or even films of radio controlled model cars. I think that would have been very entertaining and would have the result of helping to associate that brand with innovation in the eyes and minds of their hard-core customer base.

I might expect expect to see a time line of the future of these technologies at the brand. What is often called a “road map”. I would expect a company that published such a road map to hedge their bets in numerous ways, but it might indicate when they thought a new drive train (e.g. hybrid, electric, solar) might be available, or when a new brand for a new technology might come into existence. Public companies have to be very careful about what they say about the future and I do not know all the rules, but still I would expect some of this road map to ba available, however hedged.

I might expect to see live demonstrations of such things as new displays for car control, or eye/head tracking so that they knew where the driver was looking.

I might expect that the different power trains already in production might be clearly marked out: what was a traditional gasoline engine, a rotary engine, a hybrid engine, an electric one, and so forth.

I might expect that the insurance industry would have some sort of presence to explain how they are working with industry and government to evolve this incredibly important aspect of driving.

I might expect some sort of discussion of the gross violation of trust that Volkswagon was guilty of, and how that is being handled for the future both by Volkswagon and other brands.

Since it is an open secret that people are reprogramming their cars to change engine and other parameters of a vehicle away from those set by the manufacturer, I might expect some sort of statement about where the car companies stood on this practice.

Since I knew that some of the car companies are performing trials with new technologies, I might expect some description of these trials and what is expected to come out of them and when.

And finally here is one more.  We are in the midst of the Paris Climate Talks. What positions are the various car companies taking with the respective governments on climate change?  Well this is a critical thing to know.  How can they not know?  How could they not tell us?  Are these the same old lying pieces of garbage car companies like the ones that destroyed mass transit in LA?   (Yes they did.  The counter rumors are just lies, they really, really did destroy mass transit in LA all those years ago).

But none of the above was visible at the car show. It was as if they expected nothing to change, no information needed to be communicated. All was well in the garden.

Total zip.

Not quite. There were, if you knew where to look, completely without any description, some cool vehicles that I happened to know were a part of tests. You had to know what they were, and what they represented and make your own guess about whether this might really ever become available but there were a few there.

There were many examples on the floor of innovative technologies, but essentially none of them were active and you had to know enough to even realize they were there. For many years now, apparently, certain high end cars have had a display that allows you to see your odometer, etc, without refocus from far to near distance. There were several, possibly even many, examples of this technology on the floor, but none of them were on, and you had to know they were there.

My friend pointed out in their defense that the show was as popular as ever, that people were buying more cars than ever before, that in some sense of the word, this show was serving the purpose that it was meant to serve, and I had to agree with him.

But for those of us who went because we thought in light of all these new technologies, changes, and violation of trust, that this car show would also present some vision of the future, we left disappointed. Perhaps we were wrong to expect such a theme at the car show.

But it seems to me in light of the tsunami of change that is coming down the road for these companies, that a vision of the future would have been a very smart thing to have on display for the attendees of this show, who were self-selected to be the most interested in the automobile in this city, the most car oriented city of the Union.

But I am happy to say that there was one redeeming exhibit: a magnificent statue of Satan, Lucifer himself, the fallen one, in the middle of all the car exhibitors laughing, laughing at the impending disaster that will wipe them off the face of the earth and straight to the hell that they so deserve.

Glamourous Fashion Shoot Observed on Expo Line

So I am on the Expo line between Culver City and downtown Los Angeles when suddenly 5 people get on. We are about to all be part of a fashion shoot.

The subjects are two oriental, probably Japanese, young women in some sort of friendly but conservative sports wear. They sit together on one of the rows of the train across from me and engage in a pseudo conversation under the direction of the photographer.

The photographer is a young woman in perhaps her early 30s. She is dressed in full hipster scruffy and directs the fashion models and takes 99 percent of the pictures over the next 10 plus minutes. She has not one but two assistants, one of whom, the lead assistant, wins the award for full-scruffy regalia. I was not close enough to tell, but from appearances we would guess he had not shaved or bathed for a solid week if not more. The other assistant was primarily a big fellow who watched over and carried the various tripods and backpacks filled with equipment that was not being used right that second.

The equipment in use seemed to be two bodies, one of them the high end Canon, and one of them a Sony, what I believe must have been a full-frame sensor mirrorless body with a Canon lens adapter on it. But it could have been any of the Sony full-frame bodies for all I could tell. There were two lenses in use, both of them Canon zooms, what I think was the 28-70 MM and the 70-200 MM zoom which was the lens most in use. Both bodies were used about equally, but with lens switches it was the 70-200 MM mostly in use.

From time to time the scruffy lead photographer, a very entertaining looking woman who shot the entire time with very dark sunglasses on (I dont actually understand how you do photography with very dark sunglasses the whole time, but thats just me) would give direction to the models, the jist of which was that they should pretend to chatter away like best friends saying absolutely nothing of consequence.

I would guess that about 500-600 photographs were taken in the 10 minutes they were on the train.  This  is a very loose estimate based on at least one photograph per second for 10 minutes.  Often it seemed the lead photographer was shooting more than 1 per second.

I would guess that the two zoom lenses were a matched set, in other words, between the two of them we had the full range of 28 mm to 200 mm, and that she needed that flexibility to compose the shots given that she could not easily change her position in the train.

As an additional accessory to this glamourous fashion shoot, having a British accent may be useful.  She certainly seemed to have one, at least as far as I could tell the few times I heard her speak.

At one point during this period, two very colorful men of color with disabilities, large and profane of speech, got on and I felt would be very entertaining backgrounds but I think she composed them out of the shoot because I did not notice anyone getting any kind of rights waiver.

After about 10 plus minutes of this, the whole crew got off on a stop and quite possibly got on the same train going the other direction. This you could repeat as long as you liked while the light was available, in other words for hours.

As always, it is entertaining to watch professionals at work. The thing that particularly stood out to me was that every time I have seen a professional of this type on location, there was at least one assistant and in this case two. Also, there was no toy equipment. Obviously everything was digital, there were no film changes but that is what we would expect. I was impressed and surprised to see the Sony body as the second body. I have heard that this was happening and obviously this is good for Sony. It perhaps makes them the third professional photography brand behind Canon and Nikon.

Earlier in the day, in Culver City, I had walked by a film shoot on location and I asked what project. The security guard said it was a commercial. So that suggests that on this Sunday we had not one but two professional commercial shoots going on in Culver City that I just happened to run into. This suggests to me that advertising production is healthy in Los Angeles, which is certainly good for the economy.

The Miracle of Light Rail to Santa Monica and Other Transit News

Watching a city build a transit system is like watching the grass grow. Not much seems to be happening on any given day but things are happening nevertheless. In the case of Los Angeles, we have a decades long process which is distinguished by world class obstructionism, stupidity, failure, self-destructive behavior and progress.

For those of you just joining us, Los Angeles has been slowly building a light rail system to various communities in the greater Los Angeles area and much more slowly and expensively building an underground heavy rail system, e.g. a subway.  The latter, the so-called Red and Purple lines, have been notable for their dysfunctional politics at the local and national level.

But its no big deal. I mean, its not really important. Why should it be important?   Los Angeles claims its a major city, but every street has potholes, except in Beverly Hills, of course. The traffic, as predicted, collapsed into a puddle of congealed shit two decades ago, and the smog caused by the automobile, the Port of Los Angeles, and the refineries results in an air quality which damages the life of everyone who lives here.

But slowly but surely things are starting to improve, and remarkably we are about to achieve a transit milestone I did not believe I would ever see. The light rail from downtown, through USC, and ending in Culver City is in the final stages of being extended to 6 th Street in Santa Monica. This extension is not sometime in the far distant future (see below) but is actually nearing completion and will be in test within 12 months.

Now 12 months is a reasonable time frame.

Expo Line extension being built out to Santa Monica

Furthermore, another extension to the Expo line will turn left at Crenshaw, pass through some of the worst parts of town, but then arrive at a new LAX combined transit center (i.e. where the shuttle buses meet the train and the rental cars).  And this is scheduled for completion in four years or about 2019.

Now four years is a little longer than we might like, but is still in the foreseeable future. And at that point we will have a light rail system that serves downtown, Pasadena, Long Beach, USC, Culver City, Santa Monica, the airport and several other communities.

But lets give credit where credit is due.  I am proud to say that all through this, citizens of Santa Monica have done everything in their power to destroy the extension of the transit system. True to their values. Pure and unspoiled.   They will fight a transit system to their last day.   Yes, they are that .... oh I don't know..... how about selfish and fucked up?

It is 2015 already.  We are 15 years into the new century.  Traffic collapsed in Los Angeles, repeat that word, collapsed, over 20 years ago.  As we all knew it would.   That means the city became unlivable, not that the city was becoming unlivable.  No.  20 years ago (or so) it became unlivable.  To oppose something as simple as light rail to Santa Monica for any reason other than something really serious, such as it destroyed an important historical monument, for example, is more than merely weird, it is insane.  Light rail could only help.  Opposing it is not just a sortof bad idea, it is nutty-boy crazy. 

So much for the positive news, now lets talk about the weird expensive heavy rail system. It stops right where it ought to stop, naturally, and sensibly at Wilshire and Western. Oh. Yes, I suppose that is a stupid place for it to stop, but hey, that was only 20 years ago. They plan to extend it all the way down to La Cienega and Wilshire!  And they will have that done in a mere 8 years, or 2023.

I can barely catch my breathe!   Those animals!  So speedy!   And then to Century City and finally all the way to Westwood in a mere 20 years or roughly 2035.

Planned Westside Extensions to the Transit System

If heavy rail is so expensive and slow, maybe they should put in light rail in the interim?  It would be no trouble installing light rail on Wilshire Blvd because you could just shut down the street while you were building it.  I mean why not?   The traffic is already fucked.

This should all have been started in 1980 and completed by 2005, a mere 25 years.  But not Los Angeles, no.   No one would describe the people and government of Los Angeles as far sighted and progressive.

In case you wondered who was paying for this, it is not the people of Los Angeles.  As far as I can tell, it is the Federal government, at least for the Purple Line extension.

Still, it is amazing that a working system from downtown to Santa Monica is nearly there .... that in and of itself is a miracle.

________________________________________________

Exposition Transit Corridor, Phase 2 to Santa Monica

http://www.metro.net/projects/expo-santa-monica/

Metro Breaks Ground on Purple Line Subway Extension
http://la.streetsblog.org/2014/11/07/metro-breaks-ground-on-purple-line-subway-extension/

North County Transit and the Kindness of Strangers

A few nights ago, I came back from Los Angeles by train to Oceanside and discovered that I had left my car keys somewhere else. It was 8:30 at night and I was roughly 20 miles or $90.00 by taxi to get home.

It turns out that I got home by spending $6.00 on local transit and $10.00 for the final 3 miles. It took a few hours, but was otherwise pleasant and educational. But it would not have happened without the help of many of the other people on the poor trail home.

The North San Diego County Transit Authority (NCTA) runs all the buses and trains in the North County. Believe it or else, there is a light rail system that connects Oceanside (pop 180K) to Escondido (150K). How is it possible that these two communities are connected by train when in Los Angeles they can not connect Santa Monica to Los Angeles? Well I am here to tell you that they act that way down here out of fear, fear that they will turn out to be Los Angeles, that hunk of vile stinking shit, if they are not careful.

But even a train does not do people much good if it is not run and the fact is that all good white people in North County are home in bed by 8 PM in order to be able to get up at 5 AM when the rooster crows and they have to start plowing the back forty. And except for Friday night when they run it late for their teenagers, the last train east is at 8:33 PM.

So here I come wandering up at about 8:40 PM and all I see is an empty train station and one black guy hunched over his bike. So I say to him, I think we missed the last train. He looks at me. I say, I think we missed the last train. He says, where you going. I say Escondido. He says so am I. We have to take the 302/303 and then connect to the 305, he says. It takes about two hours.

Now I had been living in this here part of the world for a few years now and I can tell you that I had never been able to figure out the buses. I had not tried all that hard, it is true, but I had tried a few times to figure it out and I could not make heads or tails out of it.

But with some discussion with my new friend and his bicycle these are the things that I have learned which I write here so that the knowledge may not be lost. And to encourage others to use the system when it fits their lifestyle or circumstances.

1. Although the train stops about 8:30 PM, major segments of the bus system continues until about 11 PM or so on weekdays. After that, I think you are either walking, taking your bike, or staying over in a local motel or hotel lobby.

2. All the buses that I saw were new, clean, did not seem to be pumping out diesel or other shit, and were driven by nice people who spoke English, whatever their first language may have been.

3. Every bus I saw that night had room for two bicycles on a rack in the front. I do not know what would happen if a third bicyclist showed up, but that did not happen.

4. It is not self-explanatory, but once you know, you realize that the 302 bus goes from Oceanside to Vista. And that the 305 goes from Escondido to Vista and, although it does not say so, back again. And furthermore, that the 305 arrives at Vista a few minutes after the bus from Oceanside arrives at Vista.

5. Now, armed with that knowledge, and with the knowledge that the buses of the NCTA actually run on time, at most a minute or two late, you can take two buses and arrive at Escondio transit center.

6. But even better than that, I noticed that the bus to Escondido also stopped at Nordahl & Mission, which is several miles closer to my house.

7. Now I have to admit that the 302 in particular seemed to go in circles and that not everything was as speedy as it might be. It took about an hour to go the 7 miles from Oceanside to Vista but it took about 30 minutes to go the 12 or so miles from Vista to Escondido.

8. On top of that was a very nice, young, hip security guard at the Vista station who was extremely helpful.

9. I was also impressed that everyone was looking out for my interests, moneywise. Unlike my experience in Escondido where you are expected to pay like you were living in Manhattan or Beverly Hills, the people of the NCTA and their passengers made no such assumption, and worried whether I would have the 2 * $1.75 fare to get home.

Then as a footnote to all this, when I arrived at Nordahl & Mission expecting to have to walk the 2 plus miles home, I ran into a taxi cab, which never happens, and he took me home for $10 including one stop at the local mini-mall.

So there you have it.  It is not speedy, and the routes seem to be quirky as hell, but it does get you there and the people are very friendly.  Be prepared to walk the last mile or two, of course.

I really have to get over my “I hate buses” thing which I developed living in LA where the buses are dirty, slow, unfriendly and made me sick from the exhaust fumes.

Armed with my spare set of car keys, I am now setting off to walk to the train and see if my car is still there in Oceanside.

Report on the Overland Train Route to Disneyland

In Southern California, we take any efforts to build a mass transit system personally. How dare the swinish scum-sucking politicians use our tax money to build a system that does not use the holy automobile! The most pure are the politicians of Los Angeles who will sink to any level to obstruct or destroy anything in the public interest such as mass transit.

But the city of Anaheim is not at one with the body of Christ in Commerce for they are failing to obstruct mass transit. These do-gooding, tree-hugging, business hating lefty swine think that they can build infrastructure for the public good. I laugh at their pathetic efforts here in Southern California. Don't they know that the Republicans will rise up and destroy them?

Nevertheless I am here to testify that I have personally taken the train to Disneyland from Oceanside and it worked very well. Furthermore, Anaheim not only makes this convenient, they have built a whole new transit center / train station / bus station / etc. to support the activity. In other words, they appear to want people to use mass transit. Crazy, huh?

Anaheim Station from a distance

Interior of Anaheim Station

The ticket to/from Anaheim from Ocanside is roughly $20 each way by Amtrak, and perhaps 1/2 that by Metrolink. The trains via Amtrak run about every two hours. I would think that the main application here would be to/from LA and I do not know what it costs, but I can tell you that it takes roughly 40 minutes by train to get from Union Station to Anaheim station.

Once in Anaheim, you have the option of using some sort of bus system to get you to Disneyland, but I opted for using the taxi cabs that were provided in a taxi stand right outside the station. How amazing and unique, what a concept, a taxi stand. There are no taxi stands outside stations in LA other than Union station. The taxi fare is about $15.00 each way, and it takes about 10 minutes.

One thing to keep in mind is that the taxi stand at Disneyland is convenient, but the whole transit situation outside Disneyland at 10:00 PM or so is so confusing that you might want to ask directions rather than just trying to make your way back by memory as I did.

I also tested whether one could see an evening show of some sort, we saw Fantasmic or something like that, and still make it to the final train Southbound from Amtrak which arrives at Anaheim about 10:50 PM. If you do not make that train, then you are stuck overnight or must have some other plan. Even though I decided to stay overnight at a local hotel, I did verify that I could easily make the train after the show. One must not dawdle however, one must push on and get to your train as there is quite a delay walking out of the park with everyone else.

Not only did the transit work very well, but I decided to reduce stress by staying overnight, and I was able to get a very reasonable hotel room at a local Motel 6 at 100 Disney Way, conveniently located, and reasonably priced at $100/night. A short bus or cab ride from Disneyland, one could probably even walk it if one were ambitious.

The new Anaheim station opened (a soft open) the day I returned to Oceanside, and it looks rather Saudi Arabian, which is to say large and futuristic. It seemed very nice to me as I ran though it trying to make my train.

In short, it is completely possible to use the train to go to/from Disneyland from LA or San Diego. It is convenient and probably not all that more expensive than driving and parking.

Red Line Madness

Some things mortal man was not meant to understand. 

I had occasion yesterday to test an assumption I had made about the Red Line, that the part of the Red Line that went to North Hollywood was indeed a different spur. After all, Downtown LA to Studio City is basically right over the hill through Hollywood.

No, when you get on the part of the Red Line marked for N. Hollywood, it still goes all the way around the LA basin and then extends your crazy ride a little further from Hollywood to N. Hollywood. That would make a 5 or 10 minute trip a nice 30 or 40 minute trip, underground, at high speed, with very loud screeching as the train tries to make up in time what it has lost in distance.

What you can't really see from this map is that the whole 7th Metro to Hollywood Highland is completely in the other direction from N. Hollywood from downtown LA (e.g. Union Station).   Oh well.

I can tell you I would not want to do that commute every day from N. Hollywood to downtown via the Red Line. That would be incredibly annoying. What are these people thinking?

Its like going between Washington DC and New York via Boston. Or from LA to San Diego via San Francisco.

Crazy man.

I guess it saved them some money or something.

Furthermore, I learned something about light rail vs heavy rail, which is that light rail is infinitely preferable to heavy rail.  Infinitely.  Not only is it less expensive to install and maintain, but it is also, generally speaking, less noisy and above ground, which means that it has better air and much better light.  You can see where you are, and see, for example, the Museum of Science & Industry when you go by USC, etc.   Heavy rail, e.g. the Red Line, is noisy, unpleasant and expensive.  Light rail for me!  

We should be grateful that LA has mass transit at all, and not worry too much about whether or not it was well designed (or not).   I suppose.

The Red Line on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Line_(Los_Angeles_Metro)

Second Case Study of Mass Transit in Southern California

We have a second case study here of the mass transit system in Southern California. This time the itinerary was Escondido to Los Angeles, to Culver City, then up to Pasadena and back to Escondido.

As before, the experience was generally quite positive and as before where the system exists all is well. But when you fall off the edge of the different individual systems, when you fail to fit their profile as it were, then you are thrown on the mercies of the normal non-transit transit system of Los Angeles and may God Help You because you are doomed.

It is always important to remember that in Southern California in general and Los Angeles in particular, there is a well defined status system in place that is based on the automobile. Those who do not drive are untouchable, unclean, and are the despised dregs of society who deserve nothing more than a quick death.

But when you are on these new, partial, discontinuous transit lines, then things are pretty good. I used five different train lines on this trip: the NCTD Sprinter, Amtrak, and the Los Angeles Metro Red, Expo and Gold lines.

The Sprinter goes to/from Oceanside/Escondido and it is $2.00 each way and runs every 30 minutes. It is such a surprise to see this train, and it is so much better than what Los Angeles had anywhere in its system until recently.

The Gold line goes from Los Angeles to Pasadena and again it is very nice. I am not sure how often it runs, but often I think. The stations took me very close to where I was going and it even had a place by the curb for people to park temporarily to pick up and deposit passengers.

But getting from the Culver City Station to Beverly Hills requires descending to the brutal, traffic infested nightmare that is Los Angeles in the new century. It took an hour and $25.00 to get about 3.5 miles. What a piece of shit. The whole trip from San Diego to LA costs $26.00, so a cab ride for $25.00 for a few miles is not rational. Nor is the traffic rational.

In other words, if you get stuck in LA without a car, you are fucked.

The final problem is an interesting one and it is not clear to me what they should do about it. The way Amtrak works is that you have exactly two trains southbound to San Diego from Los Angeles, the 7:30 PM and the 10:00 PM. That is it until dawn. The later train arrives in Oceanside at least an hour after the last Sprinter has run inland. We live in the country out here and people go to bed early. The point is that if you need to take a taxi from Oceanside to Escondido it will cost you $70.00 and that is in the middle of the night when there is no traffic.

In other words, all is well until you diverge from their system, and then you should expect to pay through the nose to get home.