3010 Wilshire Blvd. #362, Los Angeles, CA 90010
213.388.2364
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Southern California Transit Advocates is a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion, development and improvement of public transportation in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
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Street Closure, Vehicle Location and Bus Detour Resources Links to resources to determine street closures for special events, detours due to street closures, and real-time bus locations. The following Metro Bus Lines will be impacted intermittently by the I-405 Sepulveda Pass Widening Project for the duration of construction, currently scheduled for completion in 2013. These bus lines are:
Click on the date of issuance of Construction Notices to get details on any bus lines affected: http://www.metro.net/projects/I-405/construction-info/ The City of Los Angeles Dept. of Transportation has a page on special events that entail street closures. You can also inquire regarding special events and street closures in the city of Los Angeles by calling 323.913.4653. An automated announcement of special events can be heard at 323.224.6534. Inquiries about events entailing the posting of temporary parking restriction signs can be made Monday through Friday from 5 a.m. to Noon at 213.485.2298. For locations in the city of Los Angeles by registering with the Los Angeles Police Dept. E-policing program you will be informed via e-mail when street closure permits (among other items of interest) have been approved that impact the address you register. Hollywood Property Owners Alliance provide a page on their Navigatehollywood website with street closure information. They also provide a form to sign-up for alerts via email or SMS text messages sent to mobile phones. A hazard of living in our area is disruption of bus service due to film production. Film LA coordinates and process permits for on-location motion picture, television and commercial production on behalf of various public and private entities. It has established an email notification service for film shoots in key areas of Los Angeles that allows you to get a notice a few days before the shoot occurs. And forewarned is forearmed! http://www.filmla.com/enotifications.php Metro has a page with Metro Rail service information, arrival information for Metro Rapid lines (note that this only works for the portions of the routes in the city of Los Angeles as it draws data from the Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control (ATSAC) System of the Los Angeles Dept. of Transportation), and will e-mail notices of rail and bus service notices by registering via this form. Bus detour information is not currently posted on the Metro website. Metro currently is in the "beta" stage of posting alerts on Twitter. The Source, Metro's blog, outlines the status of the initiative and some of the challanges in implementing it Metro has introduced a beta version of NexTrip, which offers real-time notices of bus arrival times to web-enabled cell phone users (much like the existing system for Rapid Bus information noted above). A link to NexTrip is discreetly tucked away in the top right corner of the Metro Advanced Trip Planner. Clicking it opens a pop-up window containing the NexTrip interface. Metro also provides some detour and service disruption notices but due to the widespread nature of its bus service not all detours or disruptions are posted (oftentimes, a detour or delay will clear before there would be time to generate the notice). Nextbus provides online vehicle location information for Glendale Beeline and several public transit systems in Ventura County. Gold Coast Transit also provides updates via Twitter. OCTA provides rider alerts on its website. They also have a Twitter feed and offer bus arrival time information via text messaging. Long Beach Transit has live bus tracking and rider alerts on its website Riverside Transit Agency has live bus tracking and rider alerts on its website, as well as a Twitter feed. The July/August 2006 issue of Transit California reports customers of Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus can call customer service staff at 310.451.5444 Monday - Friday 8:00am-5:00pm for real-time information on the location of the bus they are waiting for. Testing has commenced of next bus information display screens. In the first phase they have been placed at major bus stop locations, including in downtown Santa Monica and at UCLA. The automated phone response system for real time information is not yet available but is still being planned for eventual implementation. Their website also usually has the latest service notices posted on its front page. Full details of Big Blue Bus' stop redesign program is also available at their website. Signup for e-mail service updates for Santa Clarita Transit is via this form. Santa Clarita also offers text messaging of urgent changes to commuter routes; details are here. Signup for e-mail service updates for Foothill Transit (including text messaging to cell phones) is via this form. The minutes of the June 25, 2010 meeting of the Executive Board of Foothill Transit notes the addition of "the Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) feature, a useful tool for dispatchers and customer service representatives in locating coaches and estimating bus arrival times for riders..." The phone number for the aforementioned representatives is 800.743.3463 Monday through Friday, 7AM-9PM, Saturdays from 10AM-8PM, and Sundays 11AM-6PM. Omnitrans will e-mail when notices have been issued by applying to be on a list by using this form. They also have a Twitter feed. Metrolink now offers detour and other service notices via Twitter. LADOT also now has a Twitter feed for service notices. They also offer a webpage that shows the location of all buses on the downtown DASH route network. You can also call 213.785.3838 while standing at any downtown DASH stop, key in the stop number when prompted, and get the arrival time for the next bus(es) at that stop, or you can text "dtdash ####" (where #### is the four-digit stop number) to 41411 to receive the same information. (This photograph by transit fan Eric Richardson shows where the stop number appears on DASH signage, just above the LADOT logo.) There are also Twitter feeds available for the Santa Barbara MTD, Pacific Surfliner and Beach Cities Transit. |