My fifty dollar bus fare

I heard on NPR yesterday that the city plans on expanding the light rail express line by adding a connection from downtown Los angeles to Culver City. I think any new addition in the public transit is excellent, timely and integral to the infrastructure of a sucessful large city. My only question is this...why did I pay $50.00 to take the bus to work on Wednesday?

I have always been a fan of public transportation. When I'm in Paris, I take the bus or the metro. It's easy. In Pittsburgh, I took the bus for two years. The Bay Area has their lovable Bart system that glides from Oakland Airport into Berkeley and San Francisco. Berlin has a slew of options blending the slow but steady trolly left over from communist Germany with the U-Bahn, S-Bahn and all the above-ground and below-ground options Angela Merkel can afford. Public transportation isn't just a way of moving bodies. It's like a community. In Pittsburgh, I would regularly run into people going from Downtown to Squirrel Hill, and around 5pm, the bus was so packed that I often gained first-hand knowledge of all the gossip from the nurses at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Then again, there was China where I studied abroad for 4 months. Shanghai was a bustle of movement - Busses, bicycles, taxis, rikshaws, motorcycles - all of which moved faster than you could yell "xiaoxin"! (or be careful). At the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley's summit last month, someone mentioned that Beijing is building a monorail system in anticipation of the 2008 Olympic Games - Less than a year's time. In L.A., the talks of a subway to sea line has been bandied about for over 20 years. I'm sure the public officials hope that one day public transit will become so convenient that commuters won't think twice before opting out of driving. For now, that is not the case. Note my $50 bus fare.


I would have driven. But I've decided to trust the Big Blue Bus at least twice a week. My commute isn't a big deal - Maybe 15 minutes tops in the morning. It requires two buses to get there, which means timing is everything. I needed to catch the first bus at 8:21 to connect to the next bus 5 minutes later. So at about 8:20:30, I ran out of the house, fully aware that I may have just heard the bus just whiz by. I navigated in between parents and children and carpool drop-offs at the nearby school. I made it to the bus stop and waited. Ten minutes went by. I began to realize that what I heard earlier may have indeed been my bus, puzzled that it was so punctual. Needless to say, I was going to miss my next connection. Fourty minutes later, I was at work.

When you miss a bus, there is rarely one that comes right behind it and the sad truth is that the next is at the very least 15 minutes away. If I had to rely on the bus everyday to get around, I would be chronically late, and waiting a whole lot trying to make my connections. If I wanted to get from the westside to Woodland Hills, which I often do, I would need at least 3 bus transfers and an hour and a half - if everything went as scheduled.

Oh wait, the fifty dollars. So, in my haste to catch the bus, which I missed, to arrive at work on time, which I didn't, I failed to remember street cleaning that day. And my car was on the wrong side of the street. Something that would not have happened, had I driven to work. So I came home, again fourty minutes after work, with a $47.00 ticket. My actual bus fare that day was about $2.50. So if I had driven to work, well, I would still be $47.00 richer.

So much for the bus saving me money.

Traffic solution in motion at Pico and Olympic

I heard murmurings of the Pico/Olympic plan to ameliorate traffic at the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley’s summit on transportation held at the Burbank Holiday Inn. At the time, I wondered whether anything substantial would come out of gathering – hoping for less talk and a lot more action. Luckily, such a meeting of the minds and officials seems to get the juices flowing, propelling ideals to come from off the table and onto the streets. When ideas are shared in a summit or conference and is covered by the news (like I did – for the Sun Community newspapapers – http://speechspeech.net/EconomicAllianceSummit_Article.jpg) people get interested and the idea acquires more momentum. I bet this is especially true when those city officials meet with outspoken and interested community and business members who are itching for change.

I don’t know how long the Pico/ Olympic plan was in the works, but it’s a breath of fresh air. The article in the Los Angeles Times yesterday quotes a Westside neighborhood council chairwomam who wished the city took more steps in working with locals before moving forth on the project. On a past one-way street proposal, she proclaimed that it “was unacceptable because she could not have gotten ‘to my house anymore.’" With that kind of individualistic thinking, I’m glad that she wasn’t involved this time around.

If neighborhood councils and community representatives oppose and speak out about traffic solutions that can benefit drivers, workers and residents all at once, then their interests should be placed on the backburner. It seems obvious to say it, but the interest of the community on the whole should be valued more than local homeowners who like things the way they are, thank you very much.

Kudos to Villaraigosa, Jack Weiss, Yaroslavsky and those involved in the transportation committees for taking measures to improve traffic. I was very impressed with all the intelligent and dedicated civil servants, committee members and researchers who have devoted themselves to better incorporate feasible transportation solutions into our daily routines. I hope the Pico/Olympic plan is just one step in many to improve the current abysmal situation of gridlock.

Mitt Romney outlines platform at VICA forum

Article in this week's Studio City Sun
www.studiocitysun.com

Mitt Romney outlines platform at VICA forum

BY NAZBANOO PAHLAVI

Former Massachusetts Governor and republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney addressed a crowd of about 150 supporters, Valley Industry & Commerce Association (VICA) members, high school students and journalists during an hour-long “Ask Mitt Anything” talk at the Burbank Airport Marriott on November 15.

According to VICA, the appearance marked the only stop this year by a Republican presidential candidate in the Valley. Democratic candidate John Edwards visited striking writers at NBC Burbank the next day.

Romney outlined his intentions if elected president with an emphasis on strengthening the military, including a proposed increase of 100,000 troops. He also laid out his plan for a new tax rate for citizens who make $200,000 a year or less.

“My new tax rate for your savings – that means your tax on the interest and dividends, and capital gains – would be absolutely zero. Let Americans save,” Romney said.

The governor credited former president Ronald Reagan for inspiring his “Strengthen our families, strengthen our economy and strengthen our military” platform, and again mentioned the former president, to loud applause, when he quoted Reagan as saying, “‘It’s not that liberals are ignorant, it’s just that what they know is wrong.’”

Romney touted his experience in business, government, and as CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee during the 2002 Winter Olympics as measures of leadership that put him ahead of the democratic forerunners – none of whom have “ever managed a corner store,” he quipped.

Romney took an indirect stab at democratic presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton during the 30-minute question and answer session when he jokingly asked if there were any planted questions, in reference to questions allegedly planted by Clinton aides at a recent Iowa town hall meeting.

Most of the questions asked of the governor in Burbank aligned with hot-button issues such as healthcare reform, immigration, home foreclosures and global warming.

In response to a Korean War veteran’s question about healthcare, Romney outlined his current plan to secure Massachusetts’s half-million uninsured with coverage. Romney said his model works “without a government-run system, without new taxes required. We got everybody in our state on track to have health insurance.”

His plan mandates that all residents register for government-subsidized health insurance or buy their own way with lower rates and higher deductibles. “We don’t need socialized medicine, Hillary-care, or anything like it,” Romney commented.

Turning to immigration, Romney said, “We like folks coming from other nations of the world,” but “we also want to make sure that we’re a nation of laws. And that we match our needs with the people who come here.”

He denounced attempts to offer the children of illegal immigrants lower tuition for state college, condemned cities that are known as “sanctuary cities,” and derided New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s now obsolete attempt at issuing driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.

Romney’s proposed solution includes the implementation of an employment identification card for use by legal immigrants, with hopes of pushing illegal workers out of the system.

Romney also proposed ways to combat global warming by getting “on track to become energy-independent and energy secure” through alternative sources of energy such as clean and liquefied coal, and by adopting better energy efficiency strategies in homes and businesses.

When the lights in the hotel ballroom went dark for a brief moment during the Q&A session, Romney joked, “I want to make sure that you Californians are not seeing another drought or another blackout again.”

Brewer assesses first year at LAUSD helm at VICA

Article out in this week's Sherman Oaks Sun
www.suncommunitynewspapers.com

Brewer assesses first year at LAUSD helm at VICA
BY NAZBANOO PAHLAVI

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Superintendent David Brewer III spoke about his challenges during his first year in office November 14 at the Valley Industry & Commerce Association’s (VICA) monthly Newsmaker Connection breakfast in Van Nuys.

“Everybody wants to lay it on the school district or the Superintendent – that’s the wrong answer,” Brewer said, calling for a “systematic and holistic approach” in dealing with the problems of a district with 700,000 students in grades K to 12 and 400,000 students in the adult schools.

The district has improved this year, meeting 43 out of 46 assessments in accordance with California’s “Adequate Yearly Progress Criteria.” The three unmet criteria were language arts for English language learners, language arts for special education, and graduation rates.

According to Brewer, English language acquisition is especially challenging since about 250,000 of students in grades K-12 are English language learners, even though 78 percent are native born. To determine how to best address their needs, the LAUSD will sponsor a national summit on language acquisition December 13 to 14.

In response to an editorial that day in the Los Angeles Times criticizing Brewer, the retired Navy Vice Admiral said that “they’re there for selling papers” and the problems won’t be solved with a quick fix.

“You just can’t open up a kid’s brain and pour knowledge into it,” Brewer stated. “You got to work with those children and you got to stabilize them and move forward. So in essence that’s where we are right now.”

This includes working with local organizations such as the YMCA and Boys and Girls Club in order to provide on-site “wrap-around services” such as mental healthcare and after-school activities. University High School in West Los Angeles already has a YMCA on campus with the eventual goal of securing satellites on East and South Los Angeles schools first.

Wrap-around services are also vital for the 24 percent transient population within the school system, a group that is increasingly moving into the Valley, Brewer said.

Responding to a question regarding the possible creation of a distinct San Fernando Valley school district, the Superintendent said he is disinclined to do this since economies of scale would yield a redundancy of programs on the one hand, and a shortage of services on the other. He does support the Valley’s acting smaller, however, and has already funneled $11 million from the central to local districts.

Although Brewer said his goal is to “focus like a laser” on learning and curriculum in the classroom, his inaugural challenge was cleaning up the BTS payroll mess – an ongoing problem for which he has instigated contract oversight to assess and ameliorate the crisis now and to watch over the system in the future.

Although the crisis has mostly been associated with LAUSD teachers and other employees, payment irregularities have also affected businesses and organizations that contract with the school district.

Jan Sobel, President & CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of the West Valley, complained of a severe delay in payments expected from the after-school education enrichment grants secured under the passage of Proposition 49.

Brewer said that although he wasn’t aware of the problem, he would look into it.

AM Radio

I'm sad that KMozart had a slow death, from when it was moved off 105.1 FM and placed at 1260AM. Radio in Southern California has gone through so many changes recently, KMozart being one of them, 93.9FM another which suddenly changed from country to the pop music format taking us listeners, and DJS, by surprise. That one was hard to take. But then 105.1FM became Go Country. So radio is constantly changing - like when longtime Arrow FM, 93.1, was taken off and replaced with Jack FM.

The AM replacement slot at 1260AM is now comprised of news and talk including longtime British talk show host Michael Jackson. If this isn't exactly your cup of tea, the weekends are unexpectedly good. The station features a stream of classics from the American songbook.

Since KMozart left FM radio (and sadly, AM radio), listen to 91.5FM for classical music. This is USC's public station and it's important to listen, and support if you can, to maintain classical music over the radio in the L.A. area. It's a great station, and some of the DJs have a wickedly dry sense of humour.

Free Rice dot Com

www.Freerice.com

Check out this site, or recommend it to a student, and donate money (for free) to the United Nations to feed the needy throughout the world.

VICA conference forecasts the “economics of the quality of life”

Article in this week's Sun Community Newspapers (Nov 16-22)

http://www.suncommunitynewspapers.com/index.php?page=studio-city-sun

VICA conference forecasts the “economics of the quality of life”
BY NAZBANOO PAHLAVI

The Valley Industry and Commerce Association (VICA) held its 19th annual business forecast conference on the Economics of the Quality of Life at the Universal Hilton Hotel on November 9.

The half-day event included panels with elected officials, business representatives, professors and community leaders with discussions about workforce education, health care, traffic relief, smart growth, and risk management for business.

The meeting featured John Pitney, Professor of American Politics of Claremont McKenna College, who discussed the current political climate and race for the presidency. Despite Mitt Romney’s popularity in Iowa, Pitney foresees a Rudy Giuliani nomination for the Republican Party.

“This pro-choice, pro-gay rights former mayor of New York, who appeared in a video in drag, mind you, with Donald Trump, was endorsed by Pat Robertson,” Pitney said, as an indication of Giuliani’s widespread appeal.

Shirley Svorney, Chair of the Department of Economics at CSUN, addressed the need for officials to better draw new enterprise to the region.

“Jobs and wealth come from unexpected places,” said Svorney, who noted the benefit of other sources, in addition to the film or healthcare industries that she said have received past preferential treatment in the form of incentives.

Tyree Wieder, President of Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC), moderated a panel on workforce education that featured Monica Garcia, President of LAUSD Board of Education, and Senator Jack Scott, Chair of the CA Senate Committee on Higher Education.

Scott, former president of Pasadena City College, lauded the importance of career technical education in fulfilling students whose needs are unmet by traditional classes. A course in geometry used in the field of construction, for example, provides some students with a relatable hands-on framework to better understand the subject. “If we emphasize that in our high schools, we will reduce our high school dropout rate,” he said.

The panel also included Robert Sainz, Assistant General Manager for the Community Development Department of the City of Los Angeles, who, in partnering with LAVC, met a workforce need – a shortage of 400 MTA bus drivers. A curriculum and bridge program was designed which fully met the demand in about two years.

The topic of universal healthcare coverage on another panel produced a passionate debate on an issue that has created a “white hot political atmosphere,” according to Jot Condie, President and CEO of the California Restaurant Association, who in August proposed a one-cent sales tax to benefit healthcare reform.

Jim Lott, Executive Vice President of the Hospital Association of Southern California, stressed the immediate need for reform with 44% of all hospitals in L.A. County operating under a deficit.

The conference concluded with a luncheon featuring Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who hopes to make the crane — not the long-necked bird, but the long-necked machine used in construction — L.A.’s mascot.

“We want to do something about traffic and housing? Put them together…invest in this town,” said the mayor, who emphasized the need for smart growth.

Villaraigosa touted his recent victory in bringing Mexican tortilla manufacturer Mission Foods to the San Fernando Valley as an example of bringing business to the region.

The mayor also asked for support of the telephone utility replacement tax, which voters must decide on early next year. The measure will ask to replace the telephone utility tax, which puts an excise on cell phones, in the event it will lose legitimacy by the courts due to new IRS laws. The tax, which has helped yield $270 million for the L.A. budget, fuels the equivalent of one-third the Los Angeles Police Department.

The luncheon also featured Dale Bonner, Secretary of California’s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency.

Articled Mentioned on Los Angeles Mission Blog

The President of the Los Angeles Mission reffered to my Daily News article on their blog site:

Check it out here: http://www.losangelesmission.org/blog.html

So, what do you think?

What We Humans Can Learn From Cats

As a new owner of an adorable kitten, Maosie Malouse, I realize how we humans, with our advanced brains, capacity for language, nuclear bomb creation, and public relations strategies, have a lot to learn about basic human skills from a non-human 9-week old kitty.

1. Maosie is not afraid to jump to great heights. She is also not afraid to fall down from them.

2. With as much energy as they have, kittens know how to be completely still.

3. Kittens learn to keep themselves clean, innately. For us humans, it is a different matter all together.

4. Maosie know every nook and hidden enclave of her territory, better than her owner. She stayed hidden
underneath the oven before I found her there, hiding patiently.

5. Cats and kittens may seem like gluttons for affection but I don’t think they are. Maosie requires my attention for
only a couple of minutes. Any other affection she exhibits is reciprocated from the attention I give her first.

6. Cats have strong backbones. I accidentally stepped on my kitten yesterday. Apart from a possible newfound
suspicion of her owner’s love, she came out of it unharmed.

7. They are very inquisitive. They are also quick learners. In the case of cat vs. dog, they definitely have the upper
hand.

8. A cat only uses its claws when necessary.

9. The first couple days of life with Maosie, she cried at night and was fearful of her surroundings. She has now
adapted and doesn’t hide behind the oven anymore. In the case of cat vs. human, cats are way more adaptable.

10. My kitten is only 9 weeks old and she knows that crap only belongs in her litterbox.

Transportation Officials Discuss Traffic Fixes for L.A.

Published today in all three Sun Community Newspapers. Encino Sun comes out tomorrow.

www.suncommunitynewspapers.com Please leave specific comments regarding the article on the Sun site so the discussion reaches a greater net of interested parties.

Transportation officials discuss traffic fixes for L.A.
BY NAZBANOO PAHLAVI

The Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley held an INFO Summit November 1 to discuss the roles of public transportation, cargo movement and traffic in the economic development of the Valley and its 1.84 million residents.

Held at the Holiday Inn in Burbank, the Summit featured talks between city officials, planners and stakeholders. David Fleming, Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce Chair and Metro Board Member, moderated three panels.

“The public basically is opposed to change and yet they hate gridlock,” Fleming said. Proposed solutions have included one-way streets, congestion pricing, and the restriction of left-turn lanes during peak hours.

Wendy Greuel, Chair of the City Council’s Transportation Committee and 2nd district representative, remarked that such solutions had a noticeable impact when implemented temporarily during the 1984 Olympic Games. Fleming added that by staggering business hours for companies during that time, “we were able to drive 65 miles per hour during rush hour.”

Burbank Mayor Marsha Ramos said one area of concern for officials is duplication in public transportation services on the local and citywide level. “One thing we need to do better is to bring all those players at the table so that we’re using every dollar that is given to public transportation in the most efficient manner.”

Despite the $20 billion earmarked by the California Transportation Commission (CTC) for the state, CTC Commissioner Larry Zarian said California is still 20 to 30 years behind. For him – like Ramos – the problem is a lack of synergy.

“We are not coordinated,” Zarian said. “Who should be in this room today are the 53 members of congress that represent us.”

The success story of the day was the Orange Line, which runs from Warner Center in Woodland Hills to North Hollywood and provides West Valley residents with a more seamless connection to downtown.

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who worked on the project, said that riders are “voting with their feet” – during one day last month, 25,800 passengers boarded the Orange Line.

“You got to have the local leaders who are willing to stick their neck out a little bit and spend the political capital that they accumulate,” he noted.

The MTA board has directed the next segment of the Orange Line to extend from the Warner Center to Chatsworth.

Despite its success, however, bus lines have not been as attractive to policy makers as light rail, which costs $65 million per mile, or subway, which costs $300 million per mile and takes years to complete.

The Orange Line costs $15 million per mile and takes a fraction of the time to complete.

The Summit also featured report findings from the Mulholland Institute on economic development opportunities along the I-5 Corridor – the 30-mile stretch of freeway from route 126 in the north, through Santa Clarita, Burbank, and into the northern downtown area.

Officials also discussed urban revitalization plans for the neglected Sun Valley region, with hopes of reforming it into the Silicon Valley of the south by housing biotech companies.

Check out My Article in Today's Los Angeles Daily News

L.A. hits mute button on giving money

Pick up a paper copy or follow this link:

http://www.dailynews.com/editorial/ci_7399526