Google & Valley Metro
While rambling through yesterday’s blog entry I wrote about a desire to be able to click transit and see how to get somewhere in Phoenix. The lack of this feature to the city’s transit system was part of the underlying cause that led me to rent a car (at $60 wasteful dollars per day) just to get anywhere in town. 30 Minute frequencies on a bus aren’t so bad when you have an idea of where the bus actually is, without a mechanism to track, or plot logistically the bus is almost entirely useless except for the most desperate of users. Well, to my surprise, there are talks between Valley Metro & Google as I discovered. I just have one last comment on that, “HURRY UP VALLEY METRO!” It is services feeds, this isn’t a hard process, I could integrate and make the service feeds needed for Google available in under a month – ALONE, pending I had access to Valley Metro’s Servers. So hire some software developers, I can provide references for a couple in the area that are awesome, and GET IT DONE! :) K, Thx.
Density & City Facts, Portland, LA, and Phoenix
I was curious about densities, size, sprawl, and other tidbits between the three main cities of the trip I’m currently on. We started in Portland, so I’m including it in the stats, and then headed down to LA and then Phoenix. Here’s how each ranks.
| Stat | Portland | Los Angeles | Phoenix |
| Population: | |||
| Metro | 2,159,720 | 12,872,808 | 4,281,899 |
| City | 557,706 | 3,833,995 | 1,567,924 |
| Size: | |||
| City | 145.4 sq mi | 498.3 sq mi | 517.17 sq mi |
| Density: | 4,288.38/sq mi | 8,205/sq mi | 2,937.8/sq mi |
Phoenix is a lot larger than the last time I checked. But this is the beginning of my analysis of densities and such between the cities. Los Angeles has really kicked off further interest to understand that city. Simply, I knew the reputation LA has wasn’t accurate, but how did the city get to be known as a sprawling catastrophe of a city? Was it because of movies like “Escape from Los Angeles”? I am still not sure, but am going to start digging up more information.
That’s it for now. More analysis of Phoenix to come later.