As you may or may not know, Friday September 25, 2009 was a day where the city of Los Angeles and the surrounding areas in the basin suffered from some of the worst air quality due to a refinery explosion in Wilmington, CA. Communities around Wilmington, San Pedro, Gardena, Del Amo and many others literally became ghost towns due to the toxic levels in the air, schools were mandated to keep their students and staff inside to prevent ingestion of the chemicals that have been spread around. However in San Diego, the only concern to those who live there is whether or not gas prices can stay the same. In the September 26, 2009 Los Angeles Times business article, the only concern to people’s health is the pit of their pockets.

As of Friday afternoon, the severity of the fire was still being assessed and the refinery was operating at reduced levels, Tesoro officials said.

“Before this fire, the price was about to drop like a rock,” said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service in New Jersey. Kloza said the Wilmington incident and a smaller fire at a Chevron refinery in Richmond in the Bay Area were particularly ill-timed for California consumers.

“Instead of falling sharply, the price will go back up,” Kloza said.

Another price expert, Bob van der Valk, said retail costs in California would jump by an average of a nickel a gallon in the short term, and perhaps more. But he also predicted a collapse in retail prices by the Thanksgiving holiday that he said would be brought on by low demand and increasing supplies.

“The national average will be around $1.75, and even California gasoline will be under $2 a gallon,” said Van der Valk, who tracks fuel prices for 4Refuel, which helps companies buy fuel more economically for their fleets.

Concerns over the magnitude of the fire damage also kicked oil higher during the trading day, but much of that earlier gain was lost. Crude oil futures for November delivery closed up 13 cents at $66.02 a barrel.

I hate to sound shallow but, the cost of a barrel of oil or gas could mean less right now, many others such as myself suffer from periodic symptoms of allergies and in Los Angeles you can experience an allergy attack 4-5 times each year. So at the end of the day you will not suffer the most from paying a few more dollars for gas, you will suffer due to dirty and polluted air as I did this past weekend.

In the Los Angeles Sentinel, there is an article called ” Councilmember Wesson Introduces ” Invest in a Green LA” Initiative.” In this article it basically talks about how a greener LA can make a big difference, especially in the poverty and low-income areas of Los Angeles. It will help create many more jobs for the unemployed workers. In the article Wesson points out four good facts on how this project can help: 1) preserves our environment, 2) restores our natural landscape, 3) promotes green construction job training, 4) establishes a plan to remove blight from utility wires in the city of Los Angeles. With a  Green LA it will help our economy move forward on a positive note.

As Wesson said ” This is a precedent-setting package of legislative proposals that would make Los Angeles a national pioneer and a model in making the Green economy work for the city and its residents.”

With all this being said, Let us all go Green not just because of the jobs, but because it is the right thing to do, and it will make our world a better place.

First time on the subway in Los Angeles

The first time I took the subway in LA was with greenRELAY’s youth training program this summer. After living in New York City for two years my expectations where high, and to my surprise, the LA subway blew me out of the water. I was genuinely impressed. It was clean and spacious with fabulous art pieces; the trains came on time (and had scheduled times in the first place!); each station has an escalator, and it was cheap! The fare in NY is twice as expensive, the service is awful (I’m not sure that a schedule exists), the stations reek of urine and body odor, are crowded, dingy, dark and filthy. Few stations have an escalator or elevator to make traveling easier or transit more accessible for the handicapped. A friend and I even have a ‘How many rats’ game to pass the time while waiting for the trains. Despite that, nobody that I know, except for people who can afford cabs or monthly parking, hesitates to take the subway. Its a staple, and even though its pretty gross, it works.

I take the subway everywhere in NY. I would never drive there; it would be suicide. However, when I’m in LA my mindset totally flips. I never take public transportation, which is a major glitch in my relatively environmentally friendly lifestyle. So I’m making my transition to mass transit easier by going on random adventures with friends on the LA Subway. It has forced us to leave our Westside routine and explore many underrated parts of LA. My best friend and I decided to take the Purple line to the Red line to Hollywood last week. Because it would have taken too long to take a bus to the purple line on Wilshire, we drove 20 min to St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, greenRELAY’s home base, and parked, walked 10 minutes to the subway stop at Wilshire and Normandie and transferred to the red line. It took us about an hour total, but would have been much quicker if the different systems were more efficiently connected.

The whole time I was thinking about how perfect it would be if LA had decided to spend more money on subways than on freeways. This already decent system would be so much more expansive and maybe actually reach its potential. As of now it isn’t that useful because it is only accessible from so few places in LA. I personally would like to see more subways put in. Hopefully this would be done equitably, which, apparently, is asking a lot of the MTA or the DOT. Increased mobility would do wonders for minorities and people dependent on public transit. More subways would make Jobs more accessible, could potentially relieve some of the effects of ghettoization, such as highly concentrated poverty and environmental abuse, and will reduce car ridership. I realize that buses are cheaper to install, operate and maintain, but I admit that I am partial to subways because they’re faster, they are more predictable in terms of scheduling because they don’t have to compete with cars for road space or stop at street lights, and admission is prepaid. A better hybrid system that increases completely grade-separated rail, improves bus efficiency with innovations like Bus Only Lanes, decreases freeway construction and expands bike paths would be an important first step in minimizing environmental injustices in LA because it would reduce the vulnerability of minorities.

As we walked to the Walk of Fame, we overheard someone say, in reference to Hollywood Blvd, ‘this is like the Manhattan of LA’. While I could list a host of reasons why he was very wrong, I think his point was that public transportation was easily accessible and there was a high density of walkers, both of which are common in NY and foreign to a lot of Angelinos. I would definitely like to see LA become more pedestrian and cyclist friendly, particularly in minority communities because it would combat the higher levels of diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure. Better transit would reduce LA’s crippling  dependency on cars, and make it a healthier, cleaner and safer place to live.