I don’t know if anyone has pointed any of this out to you yet but we’ve been following ^[1] your live chats ^[2] about the transit system here in LA. We’ve been following it because we care. We’ve been to other cities and seen how a good working transit system adds to the city and enables the residents of that city. In the last 8 months I’ve personally ridden trains, trams, and metro lines in San Francisco, Tokyo, Yokohama, New York City, Toronto, Washington DC, London, Vienna, Berlin, Cologne, Amsterdam, Dublin and Chicago. (really! here’s some photos ^[3]) After every one of those experiences I returned to LA excited about public transit only to be saddened by the state of things here. All these other cities can get it to work, why can’t we?

From an casual glance these “live chats” of yours seem like a step in the right direction. Talking directly with the people in the city and working together on a solution. Except that’s not what is really happening is it? I’m sorry to say but you aren’t fooling anyone here and these publicity stunts filled with canned answers and non information aren’t helping at all. In fact it makes things worse because the people like me, who care about this stuff, are just getting more annoyed and more frustrated at the complete lack of actual interest in making things better. It seems like the main concern is putting on a good public face, forget actually improving the transit system. Am I wrong? I’d love to be wrong. Please tell me I’m wrong.

And you know what would be a great way to do that? Take part in a TransitCamp ^[4]. Take a look at what they’ve done in Toronto ^[5], Vancouver ^[6] and the BayArea ^[7]. Of course this requires face to face communication and answering real questions with real answers, without moderators. The flip side to that is it actually gets things done. What do you say? If you are in I’m in, and I’ll do everything I can to get more people who want to make a change in the same room and we can actually take some real steps towards giving LA a transit system it’s residents can be proud of.

Related posts:

1. Today’s "Dear Abby" online is a fraud! ^[8]
2. Dear Culver City, This can’t be safe. ^[9]
3. Dear Sarah Miller / Axis PR – Pretty please, stop spamming me. Please? ^[10]
4. Dear Phish-Heads ^[11]
5. Dear LA Food Bloggers: Please Do Not Shut Down ^[12]