Where Does This Los Angeles Exist, And When Can I Visit?
You know how you hate L.A.? Hate the three hour traffic jams, the impossible maneuvering on the roads, the ineffective transit system, the horrifying gridlock, all in the hot 90 degree summer air? Well, young guns in your government are trying to inject dreams into these auto-honking nightmares.
Some transit advocates attend meetings. Others write letters. Some even picket outside subway stations.
Numan Parada makes maps.
At a time when a subway-to-the-sea along Wilshire Boulevard is still far from a reality, he is plotting it on a map anyway.
With the click of a mouse, he puts a notch next to the Getty Center on the rail line he envisions branching off Wilshire Boulevard to follow the 405 Freeway corridor to the San Fernando Valley.
“That’s a good place for a station,” he said. “It’s an obvious traffic generator.”
In the same way, he has mapped out on his computer nearly a dozen other rail stations along light-rail and subway lines that don’t exist, from La Habra to Chatsworth.
He and other amateur cartographers are re-imagining public transportation in Los Angeles by crafting ambitious conceptual maps that depict the county blanketed with an East Coast-style rail network.
Their transit networks look convincingly like the stylized, color-coded visual aids posted in city buses and trains.
..
Matt Barrett, head librarian for the Metro library, who helped Goodmon access studies he used to lay out his map, acknowledged that the amateur proposals were fantasies, but suggested that their idealism might help keep government from becoming complacent.“There’s always been gadflies that come through and have ideas for exactly what we should build and how, but these are young, motivated people who have new tools available to them,” he said. “Technology allows people to make more credible pitches.”
And we’ll keep on dreaming…because until this mythical dream comes true, we’re staying as far away from LA road as we possibly can.
Actual map [The Transit Coalition]
Map of a notional LA subway based on the London Tube [Boing Boing]
Fantasy maps re-imagine public transit [LA Times]
(Image from Craphound)
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2 Responses to “Where Does This Los Angeles Exist, And When Can I Visit?”
May 26th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
have you ever actually been to LA? Are you from Nor Cal? LA driving is way better than Bay Area driving; the place is designed for cars. LA drivers know how to handle the traffic.
May 26th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
Driving in California in general pretty much sucks. But at least in the Bay Area the BART helps to cope with the traffic problem and allow us to not worry about cars. We don’t really drive anyway.
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