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alexdavistransit.bsky.social
alex davis
@alexdavistransit.bsky.social
600 followers 160 following 1.7K posts
Transit service planner 🚏
Fare enforcement enjoyer 🎫✅
Proudly car free in LA 🚌🌴

My statements =/= my employer's

-Being wrong lets you discover new things.
-Being naive lets you dare to try.
-Being cringe lets you change the world.
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alexdavistransit.bsky.social
Here's the now public clip of LA Metro CEO Wiggins and Chief Bill Scott at the 11/20 Ops, Safety and Customer Exp Meeting responding to our LA Daily News article [How LA Metro quietly stopped enforcing fares]. Let me respond to the key quote:

Source:
metro.granicus.com/player/clip/...
November 22, 2025 at 6:22 AM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
What do you make of this Pew study showing 42% of Americans want to live in a place with smaller homes and most stuff in walking distance? That's a VAST reservoir of demand.

www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...
November 20, 2025 at 7:10 AM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
Well that was a very rapid deletion! Here's the post I was responding to. I don't mean to antagonize the guy! It's just for the record.
November 19, 2025 at 1:22 AM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
@whstancil.bsky.social is technically right that right now, a small majority of Americans say they want to live in the suburbs.
But in a country where only 16% walked somewhere for transportation in the last week, this is a strange, irrelevant point to push on. Walkable cities are vastly underbuilt.
Pew research study from 2023 showing that 57% of Americans surveyed want to live in houses that are "larger and farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away" https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/02/majority-of-americans-prefer-a-community-with-big-houses-even-if-local-amenities-are-farther-away/
November 19, 2025 at 1:16 AM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
This website lets you monitor California's reservoir levels and see how close we are to running out.

Thanks to all this rain, we are like Scrooge McDuck with the money pool, except with water instead, so actually just a normal pool. This analogy is breaking down.

cdec.water.ca.gov/resapp/Resco...
November 16, 2025 at 9:29 AM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
If they invade Miracle Mile, we'll just be like "Hey, I think there are some mexicans hiding in that pond over there that is definitely made of water."
La Brea Tar Pits
November 11, 2025 at 6:33 AM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
How to spot a transplant from the East Coast:
November 11, 2025 at 2:43 AM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
Chonky Los Angeles squirrel
November 9, 2025 at 5:25 AM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
Patsauraus Bus Plaza from the busway bridge
November 9, 2025 at 5:18 AM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
Parody of Zohran Mamdani campaign sign that says "Paying for the bus is good"
November 9, 2025 at 5:13 AM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
Slide from 2024 internal LA Metro presentation documenting a 46% fare evasion rate.
November 7, 2025 at 4:29 AM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
Guys, I think I found VIA Rail's employee handbook.

Simple Sabotage Field Manual 1944:
www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184
(6) Transportation: Railways (a) Passengers (1) Make train travel as inconvenient as possible for enemy personnel. Make mistakes in issuing train tickets, leaving portions of the journey uncovered by the ticket book; issue two tickets for the same seat in the train, so that an interesting argument will result; near train time, Instead of issuing printed tickets write them out slowly by hand, prolonging the process until the train is nearly ready to leave or has left the station. On station bulletin boards announcing train arrivals and departures, see that false and misleading information is given about tralns bound for enemy destinations. (2) In trains bound for enemy destinations, attendants should make life as uncomfortable as possible for passengers. Sec thal the (ood is especially bad, take up tickets after midnight, call all station stops very loudly during the night, handle baggage as noisily as possible during the night, and so on. (3) See that the luggage of enemy personnel is mislaid or unloaded at the wrong stations. Switch address labels on enemy baggage. (4) Engineers should see that trains run slow or make unscheduled stops for plausible reasons. (b) Switches, Signals and Routing (1) Exchange wires in switchboards containing signals and switches, so that they connect to the wrong terminals.
November 2, 2025 at 4:56 AM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
Do you support bringing fare enforcement back to Los Angeles?

I need your help with something in DTLA on Nov 14th. DM me if you want to help!
October 31, 2025 at 6:09 PM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
Imagine the level of bus detouring required to accommodate these martial law mutant virus barricades.
October 30, 2025 at 11:26 PM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
Long Beach is on the hook for some big crimes when they find out this type of smart, walkable, mixed-use neighborhood is illegal to build today.
Promenade and 3rd St in Long Beach Pacific Av A Line station in Long Beach
October 29, 2025 at 8:29 PM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
Okay, well this is where I lived during the pandemic and this general up and back down again of crime is what I experienced. There's huge geographic variability.
October 27, 2025 at 3:56 PM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
I'm not going to pretend I get zero pleasure from this image. But the transit industry does need a fallback plan with fewer molotav cocktails.
October 26, 2025 at 6:40 PM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
You're right. They do have a list of four places to call, so that's good. I'm wondering also if there will be an effort at LAWA's board meeting on November 6th.
October 24, 2025 at 5:44 PM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
impeccable
"Air traffic control: The LAX-pressway must be stopped" www.torched.la alex davis: What's the most direct, specific action I can take to help stop the LAXpressway? Nate is waking up: Probably driving on it. It's going to be stopped most of the time.
October 23, 2025 at 10:37 PM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
Thank you @jimspeedy.bsky.social for singlehandedly stopping this Atlantic author from churning out another libertarian fever dream about magical free market innovation choo choos.
www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
At one summit event, I chatted briefly with Jim Mathews, the president and CEO of the nonprofit Rail Passengers Association, who thought the Brightline project was interesting and in some ways laudable. Still, he said that Brightline's Florida strategy was not repeatable. It had been a quirk of history that its parent company owned the right-of-way on those old railroad tracks, and it would not be in that situation again anywhere else in the country. Plus, Brightline lost more than $500 million in 2024 while serving only six stops, he pointed out. Amtrak, often regarded as an albatross around taxpayers' necks, lost more-about $705 million-but serves more than 500 stops, including many that a private enterprise would never bother with and that a public one is obligated to serve.
October 22, 2025 at 4:40 PM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
We are different then.
Walking 2 miles to the nearest town after our Greyhound Bus broke down and after 3 hours there was still no rescue bus on the way because Greyhound. Passengers salvage the marooned bus in 105° heat.
October 21, 2025 at 4:41 AM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
I think it's a story of people being trapped, given no information and reacting exactly how normal people would.

On the (sort of) bright side, I think Sound Transit is about to get their customer back.
With no income and no savings, she stopped paying her rent, credit card bill, student loans and, finally, her auto loan. She still owes $16,000 on her car but can't sell it because it is now worth much less. "I would rather be a financially solvent person," she said. "My reality is that I am not."
October 21, 2025 at 4:02 AM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
Here's a picture of the incident that made a 48 y/o Sound Transit rider end her life-long car-free streak and buy a Subaru Outback. We shouldn't be surprised.

www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...
A harrowing image from the Nov 26 2021 incident where passengers in a stalled Sound Transit train used the emergency door releases to escape the train and walk down the tunnel after more than half an hour waiting for rescue.
October 21, 2025 at 2:02 AM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
Los Peñasquitos Lagoon as seen from a Surfliner train on the NCTD Surf Line.
October 21, 2025 at 1:44 AM
alexdavistransit.bsky.social
Also, this view I'm expressing isn't elite projection. In surveys, Metro's predominantly low-income riders consistently put security as a higher priority than transit operations. That should really tell you something about what's been happening onboard LA Metro.
October 17, 2025 at 8:16 PM