Or sometimes I stick to things that are obviously absurd. So I intentionally try to ridicule things that are clearly bad moves by a transit agency. GC: I am pro-transit and I want it to get better. It's almost an hour by car too, but it's way more stressful to drive down the 10, so mentally it ends up being pretty even. I take one bus down Cesar Chavez, then the Purple line to Wilshire and Western, then the 720 bus to Beverly Hills. So I used to collect them to see how many symbols of the little punch-things you’d get. Each conductor had his own ticket puncher that made a unique shape. GC: Yeah, from the Boston-area transit systems. I used to collect the little punch tickets. My dad worked in Boston and my grandparents lived there. SB: Where did you first begin to suspect you had this affliction? Okay, yeah, now that I'm running the account I guess I've earned the credit of "transit nerd." At some point I just had too many ideas and jokes not to do it. GC: I had the idea in my head for a couple of years. SB: Just a little bit? You run a whole site dedicated to making fun of it. GC: Yeah, I'm a little bit of a transit nerd. I also ended up following a lot of YIMBY housing people with my personal account and their activism points out flaws in zoning around transit and flaws with the frequency of service. With the whole BART San Jose extension there’s just a lot there. And it's the place in America with the most NIMBY people trying to mess with everything. GC: The Bay Area transit systems provide a lot of material. Why are you picking on a Bay Area project? GC: It's based on a real rendering with four or five escalators. SB: It seems you started with a real rendering of it in fact? But yes, it's a parody of the San Jose extension. Although once I tweeted it, people responded about a proposed subway in Seattle that's also ridiculously deep. George Coffey: That is what it’s parodying, yes. Streetsblog: So I assume the 300-foot-deep subway is a spoof of VTA's ridiculous BART extension plans? Streetsblog thought it'd be fun to have a virtual sit down with Coffey and find out what inspired him to start the site, what it says about real transit, and how he became a transit nerd in the first place. The reason: "After feedback from multiple local businesses that Metro construction may inconvenience them, we've completed a new design for the central Downtown station! Building 300 feet below ground ensures the least disruption while adding less than 15 minutes to each rider's travel time."Īs with most good satire, the plan for this fictional subway wasn't far off from reality: several readers of the Tweet took it seriously and were outraged by the proposal to build so deep because one or two local business owners "were still uncomfortable with the possibility of losing street parking for three weeks." That's why he built the website and social media feed " Local Metro." Streetsblog first became aware of his work after seeing a Tweet about a new subway being planned that would be ten stories below the surface. Los Angeles-based comedian George Coffey decided laughing was better. Sometimes transit planning and the state of streets get so ridiculous, one doesn't know whether to-as the saying goes-laugh or cry.
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