funny you say that. i walked up to his tent in the early part of the afternoon. he asked me to buy one of his pieces while he was counting a thick wad of dollars. i presume it was from the sales of that day. no modesty whatsoever. not even for show. lalo turned me off. i still like his work though, but his personality is lacking. i guess i like my artists humble.

First, some idiots at Little Tokyo Station: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj6trcQp-gk

And here’s Indiana Station. Notice the woman and the kid knew what to do. Not everybody is stupid. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HBOP_76m3s

But I wouldn’t call those intersections unsafe. Trains move pretty slowly around those corners. The school there (Ramona) is a high school, right? Those ‘kids’ are old enough to pay attention to slow-moving trains.

If the turns along Indiana Street are anything, I’d call them inconvenient. The delays are too long. But not unsafe.

I am familiar with the intersection depicted in the photograph and I do not think it is in any way, shape or form dangerous.

“Can you just admit that it’s possible a child might run out into that street and not see the train coming around the corner, without assuming the child to be abnormally stupid for his or her age, or a product of poor parenting?”

The child may run out into the street and be hit by a train. They might be hit by a car. They might be hit by a bus or a motorcycle or even a cyclist in rare cases. Those are all realities regardless of parenting and regardless of stupidity. If the kid gets hit by a car and dies, and the driver stops and wasn’t drinking, nothing happens except a dead kid.

You really need to take care of yourself and your kids out there no matter what form of transportation we are talking about.

If we’re going to improve safety, I think we should work on traffic calming before we work on light rail safety. That’s where I think you get the biggest bang for your buck. Let’s get some speed limits down. Let’s get some drivers educated. Let’s get drivers on mass transit instead. Let’s close *some* streets to traffic and make them pedestrian and/or bicycle-only streets. I’m not looking to get rid of cars completely, but I think cars having a monopoly on streets is kind of retarded.

But listen, if you want my honest opinion, I think the current configuration of the Gold Line is safer than if you put up gates and more signage. Think about it. When Metro puts up gates and signs and all sorts of things in, they’ll feel like they can operate the trains more quickly. Since people go around gates and jaywalk *anyway* they are definitely going to get hit because trains can’t stop at higher speeds.

Right now trains go slow enough that they can stop. In fact, signals aren’t even timed right so the trains have to stop anyway. The Gold Line is just as slow as a bus right now. After those safety features go in, watch for speeds to increase depending on what they ultimately install.

Anyhow, Spokker, your sarcastic safety lectures aside, are you willing to at least admit that the particular part of the route we’re discussing (the picture above, the school), is dangerous? Can you do it without personally insulting potential victims? Can you just admit that it’s possible a child might run out into that street and not see the train coming around the corner, without assuming the child to be abnormally stupid for his or her age, or a product of poor parenting? If you can just admit to that, Spokker, you have my utmost respect, and I’ll assume all of your points made in this argument were for the better good of society, and not part of an agenda to downplay the message of organized efforts to make the train safer, or to bait such people into an argument for your own personal amusement.