subscribe to this page
MODERN LIFE Guerrilla gardener movement takes root in L.A. area
BRIMMING with lime-hued succulents and a lush collection of agaves, one shooting spiky leaves 10 feet into the air, it's a head-turning garden smack in the middle of Long Beach's asphalt jungle. But the gardener who designed it doesn't want you to know his last name, since his handiwork isn't exactly legit. It's on a traffic island he commandeered.
"The city wasn't doing anything with it, and I had a bunch of extra plants," says Scott, as we tour the garden, cars whooshing by on both sides of Loynes Drive.
Scott is a guerrilla gardener, a member of a burgeoning movement of green enthusiasts who plant without approval on land that's not theirs. In London, Berlin, Miami, San Francisco and Southern California, these free-range tillers are sowing a new kind of flower power. In nighttime planting parties or solo "seed bombing" runs, they aim to turn neglected public space and vacant lots into floral or food outposts.
'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.
...
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.
the origin of farmers markets in the US.
The idea that shook the world
Straight from farmer to customer, with no middleman? The very best fruits and vegetables in low-income neighborhoods? Twenty-seven years ago these were radical notions. My, how things have changed.
By Steve Hymon
Times Staff Writer
August 6, 2007
In November 2004, voters in the Denver metro region went to the polls and, much to the surprise of some political observers, decided to tax themselves to begin the nation's largest ongoing expansion of mass transit.
If all goes as planned, the Denver region is expected to build 119 miles of light rail and commuter rail by 2016. Among the projects are six new lines from Denver to the suburbs, including one to the airport, the extension of two other light-rail lines and a new rapid transit bus line.
It's a relatively unusual approach. Constrained by a lack of money, most cities build one or maybe two lines at a time. In Denver, they're betting the entire system can be built at once.
As with any massive public works project, there are reasons for skepticism. The projected cost of the program — called FasTracks — has grown from $4.7 billion to $6.2 billion because of rising construction costs, before construction has started. Transit officials and politicians continue to insist that each of the new lines will be built, but cuts will have to be made, perhaps in the form of smaller stations or lines that have only one track.
If you can afford it. The condos cost about $700 a square foot, meaning a nice two-bedroom condo -- with windows on two sides and great views -- runs about $1 million.
A few evenings later, I found myself in the cramped living room of a single-family home in a suburb of Ventura, one of about 180 houses built a decade ago for buyers with annual incomes of about $50,000. Because the original development was federally subsidized, the homeowners can sell their house only at a restricted sales price of $300,000 to $400,000, which is 20% to 40% below the market price.
The cap on the selling price, the homeowners told me, has brought some changes to their neighborhood. It allows the working poor to afford these houses by teaming up to buy them. Realtors say four, five, even six people are listed on mortgage titles to qualify for financing. Seven, eight, nine cars are parked in the driveways and on the streets in front of the houses.
What's going on here? For a century, people in Southern California moved to the suburbs as they got richer, leaving the more "urban" parts of town to poor people. Now that pattern has reversed itself. Affluent people are leaving the suburbs to live in the city, while the working poor -- people who have jobs but don't earn enough to exceed the poverty line -- are doubling and tripling up in the suburbs to buy houses.
The migration of the affluent to the inner city has gradually increased in the last three years. According to a study by the Downtown Center Business Improvement District, the household median income of downtown residents with a least one earner was about $99,600 a year in 2006, roughly $28,000 higher than that of Beverly Hills. Nearly half of those surveyed reported annual income of $100,000 to above $250,000.
In the first week of a rental program, officials report 45,000 rides and counting.
By Marjorie Miller, Times Staff Writer
July 22, 2007
PARIS - The Tour de France hasn't arrived yet, but the bicycles have. Paris is awash in two-wheelers, thousands of taupe bicycles that are part of a plan by City Hall to get people out of their cars and onto more eco-friendly transportation.
The bicycle rental service still has some kinks to work out, but the first week of the Velib program was a big hit with Parisians. City Hall reported 45,000 rentals a day and counting.
"It's superb," said IT engineer Olivier Lemaitre, 35, who rode a bike from Les Invalides on the left bank of the Seine to La Madeleine on the right. "I used to come by Metro, but it's better to be outside."
"It's healthier and the weather is beautiful," science writer Sophie Antoine, 29, said, taking her purse out of the metal basket on the front of the bike.
TIMES SPECIAL REPORT
A not-so-welcome mat
Antelope Valley neighbors are behind a crackdown on subsidized housing
By Jessica Garrison and Ted Rohrlich
Times Staff Writers
June 17, 2007
THE anonymous tip came in over a special hotline: Someone was smoking marijuana on the balcony of Rachel Baker's government-subsidized apartment.
On a recent morning, Lee D'Errico, a Los Angeles County Housing Authority investigator, bounded up the stairs of the sprawling two-story complex in Lancaster, half a dozen armed sheriff's deputies on his heels.
D'Errico rapped on the door of Baker, a 28-year-old single mother of three. She took one look at the group on her stairs, ordered her children into a bedroom and moved aside.
Then the officers, who had no warrant, searched the home. Within minutes, they discovered a half-smoked marijuana cigarette under a couch cushion - enough, D'Errico told Baker, to terminate her subsidy under the federal Section 8 program.
"What?" Baker said, sobbing. "I didn't know it was there. Otherwise, I wouldn't have let you in."
It was another fruitful investigation for the housing authority in the Antelope Valley, where officials have launched one of the most aggressive campaigns in the nation to stamp out unauthorized or illegal behavior in federally subsidized housing.
In the Coachella Valley, hundreds of trailer parks house desperately poor Latino workers amid burning trash, mud, contaminated water.
By David Kelly, Times Staff Writer
March 26, 2007
THERMAL, CALIF. - Like most of their neighbors in the sprawling, ramshackle Oasis Mobile Home Park, the Aguilars have no heat, no hot water. On cold nights, the family of eight stays warm by bundling up in layers of sweaters and sleeps packed together in two tiny rooms.
Bathing is a luxury that requires using valuable propane to boil gallons of water. So the farmworker clan spends a lot of time dirty.
Bus carrying officials is tagged during tour to show off new stop closer to campus so students can avoid gang area.
By Angie Green, Times Staff Writer
February 27, 2007
The two-block walk from the MTA bus stop to campus has often been a frightening ordeal for students at the Santee Education Complex just south of downtown Los Angeles.
Some have complained of gang activity and being harassed or robbed - including one student who was held up at gunpoint. The area was branded by Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. David L. Brewer as "one of the worst blocks" in the area.
Eliminating subway and bus fares could put local mass transit on the road to success.
By D. Malcolm Carson, D. MALCOLM CARSON, an attorney and urban planner in private practice, is a member of the Los Angeles Board of Transportation Commissioners.
February 25, 2007
CLOSE TO HALF the travel time on most L.A. bus routes is spent at the curb. Bus riders know the frustration of waiting to board while someone coaxes a floppy dollar bill into the fare box. Likewise, plenty of irritated local drivers have been stuck behind that bus in the right-turn lane. Oh, and the despair of the train rider left struggling with an uncooperative ticket vending machine as the train pulls away.
So what would happen if, instead of hiking MTA fares as is currently under consideration, we made all the buses and subways free?
Eliminating transit fares is the logical flip side to the anti-congestion pricing schemes so favored by economists. London, for instance, charges a daily fee equal to about $15.60 to drive in the traffic-chocked central city between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. weekdays. Just as such fees on cars supposedly discourage driving, eliminating fares could encourage public transit use.
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.
A dedicated bus lane for the Metro Rapid Line 720 would cost less in time and money than digging a subway to Santa Monica.
By Michael Woo and Christian Peralta, MICHAEL WOO, a former L.A. city councilman, is a member of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission and teaches urban planning at USC and UCLA. CHRISTIAN PERALTA is managing editor of Planetizen.com.
November 18, 2006
THERE'S NO question that we need alternatives to sitting in L.A. traffic, and the Wilshire Boulevard corridor is as good a place as any to start.
While the continuation of the Red Line subway along Wilshire championed by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and others is a worthy goal, the project's $5-billion cost is staggering. Even if the money is found, the 10 years it would take to construct is too long to wait for a solution to our worsening congestion there. Why not improve what's already working on Wilshire: Metro Rapid Line 720, which boasts about 50,000 boardings a day between East L.A. and Santa Monica?