You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
I remember standing right across from me, wait smelling lost mine. I remember the old man.
Next to me.
Mommy mantra, Eric Ossardo did it again? KFI AM six forty. Yes Later with Mo Kelly.
We're live on YouTube, iHeartRadio, app and Instagram and Michael Monks, kfi's own Michael Monks joins me right now to give us an update on Metro.
Michael, how are you doing this evening?
I'm better now that I've heard that little Bob Clay leaping into this place.
It slaps, doesn't it? It slaps? It kind of does.
All jokes aside, Metro is aus issue on this show. We know that a budget was approved today. What do we know about what's in the budget.
Well, let me ask you, if you don't mind me turning the tables a little bit here. I know you've been a pretty staunch critic of Metro, and rightfully so in many many ways. If I told you Mo Kelly on Later you got nine point four billion dollars with Metro? What are your top three priorities?
Uh?
Safety number one. All jokes aside safety number one. When I say cleanliness, i'm talking about make it less unsanitary. That is a health issue as well for everyone. And I would say, as an extension of that, homelessness.
No, absolutely, it's almost as if you wrote the memo yourself. And the La Metro Board of Directors today approved a nine point four billion dollars spending plan for the new fiscal year, which starts on July first.
That's two percent more one.
Hundred and eighty point nine million dollars more than they budgeted for this year. And some of the areas that are seeing more money this time around are in fact public safety, cleanliness, but also of course extending the lines. I was talking to Towala before I left the building and headed back down here to the KFI Worldwide headquarters downtown that he was miserable sitting in traffic for a couple of hours. Yes, we're all miserable sitting in traffic in Los Angeles.
And it's like, you.
Know, if only the system were a little cleaner, felt a little safer, and reached more parts of the city, we'd be in business.
Oh not only would we be in business, I would be on it and I would gladly write it because I know the potential of the system. But if you can't help me feel better about safety or lack thereof, if you can't somehow guarantee me. And I know it could be done, because I see the subway system in Washington, DC, for example. If you can't keep it clean, free of homelessness, and also somewhat safer, then I can't get on.
But I know other cities have.
Done it, far more important cities than Los Angeles, so I know they can do it absolutely.
And it seems as though in a way, these Metro board members are getting the message, but they won't come out and say it the way you or even somebody who's I don't know nicer about the criticism. Perhaps I'm not saying that you're wrong, but you know, if you were approaching them in person and and just gave them some honest feedback as some constructive criticism, they're getting the message,
but they're not saying exactly what the problems are. They tend to talk in what I would call activists speak right. They talk about care first, and that is I hear the term care first at a lot of government meetings in southern California, but especially at Metro, the La County Board of Supervisors, the City Council in Los Angeles, And I don't know what that means. I mean, I know there's a definition for it, but I don't think the
public generally cares about that term. But that's what you when it comes to dealing with some of these vagrants, as we heard in the song Booping on the Metro that starts here. First, yeah, don't just kick them off and kick them out of the station and ban them for life. It's make sure that they're being connected to services and all that, and it's all very righteous. But at the same time, how many resources, how many dollars go towards addressing that issue rather than preventing it in
the first place. And so we are seeing with this budget and increase in public safety funding while keeping in mind that this is an agency that has hired it's police chief now, or it's director of public safety as they might call him, but he's a police chief of this new internal police force that's supposed to be stood up by twenty twenty nine.
But they're starting to do that.
But in addition to that planning, they're expanding a lot of these additional safety measures they put in place. They're putting up taller faregates in places, they're doing weapons detection, They're trying to keep the bad guys off. They've also up the money for clinic cleaning. There's going to be about ten million dollars spent this fiscal year on sprucing up various train stations because some of them are just dank and kind of scary to go it.
And if you don't want to poop on the.
Metro, they're gonna put some bathrooms in some of these places.
It's about time on board because I remember when I was riding the Metro, there was no place to go to the bathroom, and it wasn't like now in I use Washington, DC as an example because I rode the subway there for many many years, and I go back to DC every year, so I have a point of comparison. Most of the stations have a bathroom, and I know that's an added expense because you have to have it clean and so forth.
But La Metro there are no.
Bathrooms, and you're just kind of sol don't pun intended if you have to go to the bathroom. And I'm not surprised that you don't, that you don't have actually more homeless people defecating and urinating all over the place. But let me ask you this that would be a fear. Let me ask you a very very serious question. You've seen this budget and all the line items. Was there anything in there which would give you the indication that there is money set aside for a statue of me?
They offered the public an opportunity over the previous months to submit some feedback on what you'd like to see, and I would like you to know that again on KFI letterhead, huh I submitted a request for this very line item and suggested that the Studio City location would be the best spot for you, whether we're going across to the theme park or heading down. I know you had some wild times in Studio City and when you were sowing your wild oats, but it did not make
the cut. I'm afraid to say this time, but we'll keep bobbing. This is the thing which really really girds my loins. As they say, with Metro, we try to reach out to them. We try to have them on the show so they can explain their side of their incompetency. We try to bridge this gap of lack of communication. We try to ask them about what they're doing beyond what I think they're doing, so we can present a more complete picture of Metro and what may be going
on behind the scenes that I don't know. I don't profess to know everything, but I try to offer a space where they have a voice here.
And this is the thanks that I get.
Absolutely nothing, not a statue, not a shout out, not an interview, nothing, not even like you.
If you can't get a callback, you're definitely not gonna get a statue yet. But one of the things we've talked about this mo, I mean, you rode the Metro back in the day. I'm a user of it currently as frequently as I can. In spite of itself. It's it's frustrating because on paper it's mostly good. I mean, this is a city known for its car. It's not as good as it could be and maybe will be someday. Doesn't go to as many places as we need it to. But where it goes now, on paper, it's a decent system.
I mean, you can I'm downtown right now. It could go to Long Beach, I can go up to a Zeus. I can go to Santa Monica, I can go to Pasadena, you know, and not have to worry about driving or parking and the traffic and all of that.
It's much better than ten years ago. Michael, you are not here in so out of the California ten years ago. It's much better now as far as stations into places that it offers to take you than ten years ago.
But it's gonna get better.
I mean, yeah, there's a lot of allocations in this new budget. They are going to be continuing their expansion, and they've budgeted for some of the work that's already in progress the lax Metro transit system. There's going to be a light rail plan in the San Fernando Valley that's got a lot of money budgeted for it. I mean, they're trying it. And we know the d line is closed right now. It's the old Purple line that would run from downtown to Korea Town. It's closed until July
because they're expanding it. I mean, within a couple of years we're going to be able to get on that thing and go all the way to Westwood from Union Station. That's good stuff, it is, but you really need these folks on the board to stop using that activist speak and come out and tell people who are hesitant or have had a bad experience on it and say they'll never get on it again, and say we've got a zero tolerance for the bad stuff that's been happening on
this train. Forget the violence, you know, it's the unquantifiable stuff, the sitting next to you know, somebody who's having a breakdown, next to somebody doing drugs, next to somebody who's just generally making you scared, not because you're a racist or because you're an elitist, but because they're making strange.
Noises and they're looking at you wrong.
And until you can have a sense of security across this system, people are not going to get on it. And what sucks about that is it is our best answer right now that we have to combat this awful traffic.
I would like Metro, and I know that they're listening because they listen to the show every single night, evidently because they've internalized everything I've said. I would like Metro to know that I'm the customer that they should be speaking to. What I mean is someone who wants to
use Metro, who would benefit from using Metro. Who is willing ostensibly to get on Metro, but because of the perception of the crime, the homelessness, and the unsanitary conditions, I won't, but I would want to, and I'm willing to. But they're not speaking to writers like me or potential
writers like me as it were. And I think if they can change how they present themselves to your point, the language that they use, the priorities that they state and acknowledge, the truths that we all can see plain a day, the perception of Metro I think would be considerably better.
A lot of these folks need to confront their own biases. They've been biased towards a lot of that activist language. And until they can say that, maybe these approaches haven't worked, even if it's just superficial, it's not. But even if it is, even if it's just perception, their strategy has not worked. Now the writership has rebounded almost entirely from pre pandemic, but the track is better since then. I mean,
it should be growing substantially. Again, it's our best answer right now to this not awful traffic we deal with, and why they don't champion it as such is just something I can't understand.
There is a Metro stop park and ride less than a mile from my house.
It would be in my best interest to ride Metro.
And when I was living in Harbor City, I would take the Blue line to the Red Line and get off the Universal City and catch the one fifty eight bus, a one to fifty five bus from Universal City and stop right in front of KFI and iHeartMedia Studios. If they could ever clear that up, I would. I would love to do it again, because I'm even closer now. I would just take the Green line to the Red line.
I would do it. You can take it all the way to airport now just about hello.
I'm telling you, Michael, if they get that statue up from me, I will.
Go hard for Metro or the world mine. Michael Monks, KFI, thanks so much, always a pleasure.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty