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ChineseRapid Rapid?
Wilshire Boulevard has emerged as again a candidate for a subway to the sea. It is the busiest bus corridor in Los Angeles County, and also has the busiest Metro Rapid line.
The subway may be two decades away, but if local and Rapid service isn’t enough, Wilshire will get … Rapid service. Again.
This PDF contains a motion by county supervisors and MTA Board members Yvonne Burke and Zev Yaroslavsky to “develop plans to implement a new hybrid “Super-Rapid” service for the Wilshire Corridor. … [From] either Wilshire/[V]ermont or Wilshire/Western during morning peak periods and carry them west to key centers with only 4-stops - Mid-Wilshire/Miracle Mile area, Beverly Hills, Westwood and Santa Monica. Such a Super Rapid might also contain an Eastward reverse-commute for the evening peak hours, as well.”
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
so long as they do this while building the subway to replace the insanity of the wilshire corridor i’m all for it.
It sounds like a fine idea, but I hope they but some real thought and planning into it, and don’t use it as an excuse to avoid a subway.
And what is this “might also contain an Eastward reverse-commute for the evening peak hours”? Why the hell wouldn’t it? And why, if this is the busiest corridor in Los Angeles, would this “Super Rapid” only run during rush hours? Let’s propose to have it run all day and all night.
I was baffled too by the reverse commute in the afternoons. It’s pretty much a given that a commuter service, even if it ran one direction only during a peak period, will run the opposite direction in the other peak period. Otherwise, it would be a school-tripper or a surplus run (a route, used by small agencies with little money or buses to spare, that runs between a garage and the start of another route in revenue service instead of deadheading all the way there).
My solution to the Rapid Rapid proposal:
I see problems with picking just four stops that would be effective enough to ease the burden on crowded Rapid service, especially when it’s intended for subway transfers and not for interstitial traffic. Plus, the intent seems to be to get riders to the Westside as fast as possible.
In that case, make these services Metro Express runs with blue buses. (MTA’s buses are a darker blue than Santa Monica’s periwinkle and there should be little confusion. Also, the runs should run something like the A/B express services on San Francisco Muni lines 1, 9, 16, 31 and 38. There, the express routes cover the outer halves of a route and run non-stop to the central business district.
There would be three of these routes. They would all originate at the Wilshire/Vermont station. One would run non-stop to Westwood Boulevard and only stopping at the VA Hospital, Bundy Avenue, 20th Street, 14th Street and Santa Monica Boulevard and 4th Street.
The second would run nonstop to La Cienega Boulveard and serve Beverly Drive, Century City, Wilshire and Westwood Boulevards and UCLA.
The third would be a bidirectional service, running nonstop to Fairfax Avenue and looping at Fairfax/3rd Street, La Cienega/3rd Street and returning via San Vicente to Fairfax/Wilshire and back to the subway.
I do not see the Rapid Rapid service as a dodge to avoid subway construction. Despite the clamor, and even the studies showing it is safe, there aren’t billions of dollars available to even extend it to Fairfax yet. And Zev’s Law bans county funds from being used to expand underground service.
This proposed service is a seat-of-the-pants plan involving a few peak runs, which is not a big deal in an agency as large as MTA.
It’s about time they started to move on with Wilshire/720. It’s very greyhaired and needs help. See, it was the first Rapid line and has been a ridership success since 2000. But for the last 6 years, it’s been running over capacity. So the MTA has tried itty-bitty patches: Step one was more buses. Step two was bigger buses(the “compo bus”). Step three was even bigger buses (the articulateds). Step four:?? The baby steps they take barely make a dent. Riders have been sardines on the 720 since day one.
Unfortunately, I don’t think these Super-Rapids are going to be big time savers. Westbound, Wilshire/Western is your last big AM boarding stop. It’s mostly discharge west of there. If you run from there to 4 stops, you’re cutting about 11 stops out. How long does a stop take? I’m guessing no more than a minute. So an 11 minute savings. Eh. Not great.
That said, I’d ride it. I’m one of the AM suckers who boards at Wil/Western and usually has to stand until Wil/Beverly or Wil/StaMca.
This shouldn’t be thought of as any threat to the Purple Line extension. (It’s now officially the Purple, I believe) That train is at least a decade away from operation, and if they don’t keep innovating with the tremendous loads on Wilshire in the interim, people will be miserable.
11 minutes is a lot when you’ve been standing for 30 if you ask me. So yeah, it may not be our dream, but if it can reduce the insanity of the 720 even a little bit i’m for it. and if you’re going all the way to SM riggedy it sounds like it’d be perfect for you. the first time you ride, count how many rapid 720’s you pass and i’m sure you’ll agree its a good move. though yes, its only a patch on a gushing cut.
Riggedyroar, 720 is a very old line, one of the first limited-stop lines in Los Angeles.
Before the great renumbering, it was 83L. After, it was 320. Line 320 once had 7-day service, but Sunday service was eliminated sometime in the early 1990s. In 1996 it was shortened to Wilshire/Western station a few months after the Red Line opened.
The Whittier Boulevard leg is considerably younger. Line 720 replaced Line 318. Line 318 was a replacement for former express services Line 470/471, which took SR-60 to Garfield Avenue and ran locally on Whittier to Brea Mall or Puente Hills Mall.