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ChineseMetro Pink Line?
[tags]los angeles, red line, purple line, west hollywood, boi from troy[/tags]
Click on map for description.
The momentum behind extending the Metro Purple Line to the sea is moving slowly but surely — just like the new “Rapid Express” Line on Wilshire Boulevard.
But Boi from Troi doesn’t want a Wilshire subway to be straight — in more ways than one. The blogger points out that West Hollywood would be the only Westside city to not lay any track. Hopefully, that’s not “code”. Instead, taking directly from the post:
… [W]hy not consider taking to subway to places people want to go? How about building the Subway to the Grove, then to Cedars Sinai/Beverly Center/West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, UCLA, Brentwood then Santa Monica, linking in with the new Exposition line?
The plan is not as ridiculous as it sounds. In fact, it just may be a better plan than a direct route under Wilshire. Such a route would be about 10 minutes longer, but that would be offset by as many as 20,000 to 50,000 additional boardings on such a corridor.
The idea is not new, either. Back in the days of Usenet, where transit geekery was confined to genuine geeks, Tom Wetzel made the same proposal years ago. The West Hollywood deviation has become known as the Wetzel plan. Search la.transportation posts on Google Groups.
One of Wetzel’s posts, dated October 22, 2000, he wrote:
I personally have advocated, as you may remember, that, if the
Red Line is extended west of Western, that it be put in open
cut from La Cienega & Burton Way to Century City and then
on the ex-PE right of way, possibly ramping down into a short
subway under Westwood Blvd. to Westwood Village.Now, I was thinking that it would also be possible to build a line
that would share this alignment between downtown Beverly
Hills and Westwood & Santa Monica, and which would continue
east in a trench in the median along Santa Monica, going
into a subway at Holloway Dr.[...]
I think it is true that, in general, the Wilshire and Santa Monica
corridors have more employment concentration and more
population than the Expo corridor route. For that reason,
it should really have been a higher priority. And of course
it was historically the number one rapid transit priority
for many years.
Wetzel described two plans here. One that would build the subway around Wilshire via Burton Way and Santa Monica, and another now-dormant plan to connect the subway in Hollywood to the Westside. The plans can be combined, with the subway continuing about a mile north to West Hollywood and heading southwest toward Beverly Hills and Century City via Santa Monica.
The drawback: it would make a trip between downtown L.A. and Santa Monica about 10 minutes longer each way. However, a subway through West Hollywood has the ridership and community characteristics to justify the routing — and cost — of tunneling.
The Wilshire corridor west of Fairfax Avenue is mostly high-rise office space and professional services. A Wilshire subway offers relief for the agonizingly slow surface commutes. Even a 920 can take 40 minutes slogging through Beverly Hills. Plus, a downtown-to-Santa Monica ride be about as fast as a wide-open 10 freeway drive.
Yet, this is a problem. The Purple Line is a 21-hour system committed to solving a 6-hour problem. The bulk of ridership would be coming from rush-hour work trips. But the offices generate very little activity during mid-days and virtually none on weekends. A general purpose transit service tends to have the busiest rider activity in the middle of the route, not at the terminals. The smallest segment of ridership is traveling end-to-end.
West Hollywood would consign Wilshire to traffic misery, but it would help more riders. First, WeHo solves the “21-hour” problem. Santa Monica Boulevard does not have yet the office density of Wilshire Boulevard, but a WeHo route generates a more balanced peak/off-peak travel ratio because of the trip generators that rely less on 9-to-5 jobs. The Red Line can link Wilshire to West Hollywood via San Vicente Boulevard or Fairfax Avenue, and then turn via Santa Monica to head to Beverly Hills and Century City.
WeHo has numerous commercial centers catering to business during the day and at night. While these would be classified as recreational trips, these businesses also provide jobs, so a lot of the subway riders would be going to work. And since WeHo is not known as a place where parking spaces are vast and bountiful, a rail line would be a very popular option.
WeHo, to its credit, has shown that it is ready for a major investment. Besides the miserable traffic, WeHo has multiunit residences, heavy pedestrian activity and some of the heaviest bus patronage in the county. WeHo would not need to be altered to become “transit-ready”. Beverly Hills, on the other hand, sees minimal pedestrian activity along Wilshire Boulevard. What pedestrian activity does occur is along the touristy diagonal boulevards connecting Wilshire and Santa Monica. So, if the subway were to go through WeHo first, it would actually deliver pedestrians closer to these streets via Santa Monica than Wilshire.
Beyond Beverly Hills, the consensus is for the subway to run via Santa Monica to serve Century City rather than continue along Wilshire through the condominium row between Santa Monica and Westwood Boulevards. But beyond Century City, another fight brews: what should be the western terminal of the subway? We say the sea, implying that the train should reach downtown Santa Monica. But, would Westwood be a station, a spur or the western terminus? That’s a fight that should be waged only when the train runs west of Western Avenue.
Besides, Wilshire versus West Hollywood has the makings of a good blatherfest on its own. So, let’s get it started.
Discussion
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
WeHo is also a magnet for weekend drinking, and weekend drunk-driving.
A late night subway to and from WeHo would be a boon for public safety, I think.
I think it’s a great idea. You make a great point about a 21-hr system being devoted to 6-hrs of ridership. An investment like a subway has to be a multi-use transportation solution, it can’t just be for commuting. As we know, the majority of car trips these days are not for commuting, but for errands, recreation, and other such nonsense. I personally think adding 10 minutes on a car-free subway commute should be no big deal and would add immensely to the Purple Line.
Oh ya, nice to see you easing yourself back into the mix Wad. We’ve missed you!
I dunno… One of the biggest inconveniences with transit in LA is that it can take much longer than driving, even under heavy traffic conditions. 10 minutes may not sound like much, but it can have a big impact, at least on the commuting experience.
Maybe I’m just speaking from the feeling I get that a 10-minute wait on paper is typically a 20-minute wait on the ground. Or underground, as the case may be!
On a tangent, wouldn’t it be lovely if Metro had express service, like NYC does? I dream of being able to go from downtown Long Beach to downtown LA stopping maybe twice along the way…
Au contraire…Ever been on the Red Line during the weekends? It’s not unusual to run into some SRO trains.
I don’t dig the route though. It should effectively link the Hollywood/Highland Red Line with the Purple Line somewhere.
Why not create an offshoot from the Hollywood/Highland station that stops at Sunset/LaBrea, Santa Monica/La Brea (hello Target!), Santa Monica/Fairfax, Santa Monica/La Cienega, Santa Monica/Robertson, Santa Monica/Beverly, then hook up with the Purple/Wilshire line at Santa Monica/Wilshire?
Then, there should be some type of streetcar or (dare I say it?) monorail as a local circulator in the Hollywood/West Hollywood area in between.
Since we are talking hypotheticals, why not go for it?
My idea is for Beverly Hills and West Hollywood to build a FAST STREETCAR route along Santa Monica. Most of the route has the median for it (which originally held PE Red Cars). It would connect the Purple Line along Wilshire, to the Red Line at Hollywood/Highland.
The most important fact about this type of system is that it is SO CHEAP in comparison with building a subway, or even light rail, that the cities of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood could probably scrape the money together to build it themselves.
This is about a 7-8 mile route along Santa Monica Blvd., then turning up Highland and ending at Hollywood Blvd. Could be built for about $15 -$20 million per mile. Mostly in mixed traffic, so it would be slow, but it would be affordable.
If you wanted, you could underground it along Highland, which is only about 1.5 miles.
Ok, I’m going to start entering the realm of fantasy and suggest what I’ve always wanted to do with Santa Monica Boulevard: Let’s get rid of the whole damn thing.
When I moved to LA, I expected West Hollywood to be like the other gayborhoods I was familiar with (SF’s Castro/Mission, New York’s Chelsea, Boston’s South End, etc.).
I was wrong.
Those other neighborhoods are compact and have a strong neighborhoody, community feeling to them.
West Hollywood has a freeway running through it. What is it? 6 lanes of traffic? It’s like the 405!
I can’t see how anyone could possibly imagine a real community thriving around THAT.
There is too much area devoted to cars (high speed cars, or cars stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic). It’s deadly to pedestrians, and it’s deadly to a sense of community.
I would love to see cars removed (or at least restrricted) from Santa Monica Boulevard, and replaced with public transit, bike lanes, and parkways.
Like most of you, I really just want to see cars put back in their place, supporting (not supplanting) people.
OK, that’s my rant.
The reason SM Blvd. is like a freeway is that there was supposed to be a freeway there, but it never got built!
First of all, let me say, yay. Thank Heaven it was never built. But there was a Beverly Hills Freeway planned back in the 50’s. It was an extension of the 2.
The 2 would have continued south from its current terminus, pass the 101 where an interchange would be, and then continue on until it hit Santa Monica Blvd, which would be replaced by the freeway. This would continue down Santa Monica Blvd. until it met with the 405.
Taking it north on San Vicente with a stop near Division 7/Pacific Design Center has always been a good idea. The train needs to serve Cedars, and as shown by the number of Rapid stops, there is not much ridership along Wilshire there. I also think that the stop spacing is way too much and there needs to be a subway stop at Masselin along the Miracle Mile, like the old 320. It does slow the trains down but it serves more people and provides greater access.
If we build a subway either through Wilshire or through West Hollywood, the long term effect would be to CHANGE the nature of employment patterns and destination entertainments. The current attractions that seem to need a transit link got that way without transit, and might not survive if it were built, due to the transformative nature of transit on the areas it serves.
Right now, downtown and Hollywood are densifying at an amazing rate. I don’t believe that would have happened had the Red, Gold and Blue Lines not been built. It is probably a matter of time before growth in employment follow, as a result of the demand generated by a transit-friendly environment.
What we really need are multiple lines intersecting to link all of the nodes of the region. We need to stop thinking that it has to be cheap, and that we can’t afford (or don’t deserve) to spend what is needed to really provide serious mobility in this city.
None of this happens overnight. The Red Line is an investment in the next 100 years. It should take 25 of those 100 years to see its full effects.
You know, all of these are going to be considered, because Metro is required to look at the entire corridor during the alternatives analysis.
An option to branch at Hollywood/Highland is one of the options, as is the alignment via Pico/Rimpau Transit Center that was put in place some 15 years ago when Waxman created the legislation that essentially took Wilshire through the Miracle Mile out of contention.
However, I should point out that the City of Beverly Hills hired their own consultant to look at all the possibilities, including a deviation via Santa Monica Blvd., and they concluded that Wilshire was the corridor with the highest ridership potential. That is likely to carry a lot of weight, since it comes from a city in the corridor, that spent its own money to study the routings, rather than an idea from one individual who has nothing but his opinion backing it up.
WeHo had its chance to weigh in on transit options when Santa Monica Blvd. was torn up and reconfigured; why did they not take steps to protect the former Red Car right-of-way in the median then?
A Wilshire subway would have large all day ridership, as experienced by mid day and weekend ridership on #720. Wilshire/Westwood, Wilshire/La Cienega, and Wilshire/Rodeo would all be expected to draw tourists and shoppers during non rush hours. Even Century City has a mall; and Century City would be the most peak hour dominated station.
Adding a diversion to West Hollywood would add an exorbitant amount to the cost, and while more people might be expected to ride with additional stations, this is likely to be counteracted by fewer people getting on at stations west of West Hollywood due to the additional time required. People really need to learn to ride buses for short distances in the area on streets like La Cienega, San Vicente, Fairfax, etc. I would imagine service on these routes would be significantly bumped up when a subway opened. While it would be convenient to build a direct rail connection between Hollywood/Highland and, say, Wilshire/Fairfax, it’s not that inconvenient to transfer between the two at Wilshire/Vermont. Additional money needs to be spent in other corridors. As for late night passengers in WeHo, unless Metro decides to run subway service beyond 12:30 AM, which is unlikely due to the need for overnight maintenance, these reveller are not going to be riding any new Pink Line.
The irony here is in their own study, Beverly Hills basically opened the door for a diversion up to Cedars Sinai/Beverly Center area because it has more Current AND Future density, ridership and development potential then the narrow lots and single family with a few multi-family dwellings behind Wilshire/La Cienega.
Just a diversion there to Beverly/Cedars with Pedestrian improvements would get West Hollywood in the loop and walla West Hollywood is connected.
In addition if a straight Wilshire Blvd route is ultimately chosen then Bus only lanes on La Cienega, Fairfax and La Brea about a mile north and south of Wilshire will be absolutely needed to act as appropriate feeders to nearby destinations that will be tied into this Subway line.
Santa Monica Blvd. really needs its own line, running from Downtown to Wilshire (at least).
Keep the Purple Line on Wilshire.
So then based off that analysis, the Purple Line shouldn’t divert to Century City?
If the only barrier were community opposition, I’d be all about two lines. But right now, it’s going to take every ounce of political will on hand simply to ram the Wilshire subway through.
I think that long-term planning will lead to the conclusion that Santa Monica Blvd needs some kind of rapid transit. Whether that involves a LRT version of the 704, or full heavy rai, or a spur from the Hollywood subway, is an interesting question, but it’s merely academic. It’s something that should be considered for long term, but between now and the time it’s actually built, Downtown and the Westside will have changed so much that today’s assumptions will be of little use. Unless Metro hits every lottery in the nation all at once (and then some), we’re not going to build two Westside subways in the next 15 years.
Personally, I’m pretty firmly attached to the Wilshire route. UCLA can solve their own problems (Santa Monica busses run highly frequently between Wilshire and campus, and will continue to do so indefinitely - the Purple Line isn’t going to usurp their purpose), the Grove can solve their own problems (my guess is that the DASH Fairfax would suddenly become quite popular), and about the only deviation I think should get serious consideration is Century City - that place is a serious PITA to get in and out of via transit, and is a primary cause of the Westside traffic nightmare. Busses in and out of CC aren’t going to make the problem any better, either.
Perhaps the most realistic solution to the Century City mess is to place the station at Wilshire/Santa Monica, like it would be anyhow, and then condition future Century City development on CC building their own blasted people mover, maybe something so simple as an underground version of the Skokie Swift, or something as space-age-y as the Atlanta airport subway. Miami’s Metromover provides an interesting concept, but I have no idea if they’re actually solvent or not ;p. But Century City is a primary cause of this problem, and they’d better be thinking about how they’re going to help fix it.
Maybe Century City wants to build that much-ballyhooed monorail above Avenue of the Stars.
“The current attractions that seem to need a transit link got that way without transit, and might not survive if it were built, due to the transformative nature of transit on the areas it serves.”
I don’t buy that argument because if that is the case then the office buildings in most parts of Wilshire aren’t permanent either! And then Historic Preservation Zones in some neighborhoods along Wilshire came be considered for eniment domain.
If you’re spending $5 Billion dollars to create “future” destinations rather than highlight the ones we do have near the route and densify THOSE (Ain’t that Smarter growth) then trying to add more to the system will be a harder sell. By linking those current centers and expanding their parameters for denser smart growth we are killing two birds with one stone and we would really have a usable transit system that will people will use and grow more in an organized fashion from dy one!
Washington DC learned that lesson by 1979 and it’s now the second busiest network outside of NYC.
Taking the route directly to those destinations will get people to clamor for more of it!
This suggestion of “Oh the people can transfer onto shuttles or other buses due north” is silly since the North-South crossing traffic on Wilshire is worse than Wilshire itself making those destinations right near Wilshire downright unattractive to transit because of this distance/transfer/trip time factor thus reducing the benefits this subway would have considering the network and where a good chunk of riders on the Wilshire Corridor will travel a long distance.
This is a factor that must also be in consideration when building this kind of infrastructure.
“So then based off that analysis, the Purple Line shouldn’t divert to Century City?”
In all transit planning, we have to balance speed and directness of route with accessibility. The fastest subway in the world is of little use, if no-one can get on and off near where they need to go.
These decisions are often shades of gray, not black and white.
In considering the Century City diversion, sure, we probably should go ahead and serve one of the larger employment centers in the county, as opposed to a country club and a residential area more or less indifferent to transit. (I think going through Century City might be a shorter route too, if tunnelling costs are an issue)
Going through Beverly Hills on San Vicente and Burton, that’s more of a middling thing. Is serving the Beverly Center, Cedars-Sinai and the Beverly Hills Civic center more important than serving Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills AND providing a faster, more direct ride for people riding through Beverly Hills?
Or should people going north of Wilshire just transfer to a bus for a relatively short ride? It’s a fair question to ask, although the costs of tunneling may well end up speaking the loudest as to which route to use.
But when we get into going all the way up La Cienega to Santa Monica, then down to Westwood Blvd, then a couple of sharp curves to get back on Wilshire….now we’re talking about trying to be all things to all people, and eventually not serving anyone particularly well. That route would cost more, take longer to build, take longer to run….You’d discourage the longer distance commuters running all over the place.
These other corridors really deserve their own lines….and yes, it will not be financially possible to build them all at once. But a Purple Line flopping all over the place in order to get “more bang for the buck” reminds me of Bill Cosby’s bit about the Chinese Hot Mustard….he poured it all over his food in trying to “get his money’s worth”, and ended up with a bad experience indeed!
Let’s also add, the number of potential transfers to those route for the short and time consuming bus riders north may overload the connecting buses. Another factor, increased sidewalk widths perhaps in those future stations already clogged with congestion of both pedestrian and auto that also has to be factored in.
Personally, I believe this Purple Line Wilshire West corridor should only veer away from Wilshire Blvd at only two areas, Beverly/Cedars and Century City this could still serve the heart of the Beverly Hills to Wilshire/Beverly.
This corridor if and when it’s carefully analyzed and planned can gain a lot of riders all day long and serve that backbone to build future connecting lines and extentions.
What’s also missing from the conversation with this Subway is the large overall master plan as to what will feed what and having connecting lines and auxilary modes if neccessary.
All the suggestions of a separate Santa Monica Blvd line are well and good until it’s realized that there is no offical plans for it on any Long Range Planning once that gets into that scope with the connecting lines feeding Wilshire then this case can be made, until then it’s still all in teh air.
If only the Wilshire subway were part of a larger comprehensive planning effort to evaluate travel and housing needs instead of political wants…
Alas, the piecemeal planning continues.
Jerard, if the Wilshire subway takes 75 minute instead of 45 minutes to get from Downtown to Santa Monica, that’s going to be a pretty useless subway. Think how long the turn at Wilshire/Vermont takes, and then do that a whole bunch of times, along with zig-zagging across the Westside. I don’t think the “let them take a bus” option is perfect; in fact, you’re right that it’s not going to attract as many people to transit. But I don’t see the amount of money lying around that would permit us to do what should’ve been done 50 years ago. Look at Boston’s Orange Line, or better yet, the miserable “Silver Line,” for an example of half-assing it in hopes of pleasing everyone. In the end, you build crummy infrastructure that pleases nobody.
There’s just too much going on with Wilshire itself to justify all of these diversions. You could make a strong argument for Century City and a credible argument for Wilshire/5th rather than Wilshire/Fairfax (I don’t agree with it, but it’s at least credible), but aside from that, there’s just no way to please everyone. Wilshire/Westwood has a great deal of business and residential there, and while UCLA is the prettier destination, Westwood has enough going on to justify its own stop. To divert all the way up to UCLA and then cut sharply south is going to make a construction mess, increase costs greatly, require pacifying more neighborhoods, decrease speed, increase mileage, and probably won’t accomplish too much at the end of the day.
Most other cities with successful transit were built around transit, or not built around our grid-ish system, which doesn’t lend itself to rail transit too easily. So we get the fun of shaping the transit around the city, instead of the other way around.
At the end of the day, it can’t be all things to all people, we’re going to have to pick a single, fairly straight route and make do. DC, at the end of the day, is a fairly small and enclosed place, and doesn’t make for good comparison.
Aaron, I ‘ll check with my cousin there when I visit her often that I don’t know DC and how it’s layout very well and how the Metro was planned and how it functions and how the two relate to each other. I guess with my planning and architecture background I can’t understand the differences between cities in it’s layout’s and forms. It’s only compact in it’s government center area the rest outside of that is polycentric and laid out very similar to LA.
Besides you’re taking an extreme number of a 30 minute difference which will not be the case for two small but neccessary stations off the straight line (Century City and Beverly/Cedars) path for a trip that will add at most 4-5 minutes tops but we add close to 25,000 more riders, I think it’s worth it.
A thing to consider is how we are building this corridor. If this were an elevated where a straight path is essential I would understand your point entirely, but it’s not it’s a bored tunnel.
One further point to make is that we’re not even building the subways in a fashion that will make it tangible “urban” use, we’re building an urban-like subway with suburban stop spacing of 1.0 mile or more. Plus the way it’s constructed with the bored tube construction makes adding future infill stations costly and difficult (not impossible though).
It’s these intagibles that can make a difference as to what we can or can’t do. Besides, if we want to REALLY get into this discussion someone explain to me why our Red Line from Hollywood to Downtown makes that dip down to Wilshire? Based off these arguments this subway should have been a straight line from Union Station to Hollywood via Sunset Blvd, but it was decided to divert 2.5 miles out of the way to Wilshire Blvd, why is that?
It would not be a 21 hour system devoted to 6 hours of ridership. At most times of the day on the Wilshire Corridor there are plenty of riders lining up to take the 720. Last night I counted 45 people at 11:40 pm at the Wilshire/ Westwood stop. Maybe those who actually use the system should comment on its potential benefits. There is heavy ridership demand all day long on the Wilshire Corridor.
Tho julie’s impplying that wad doesn’t ride the system, a false accusation, she is completely right. A Wilshire subway is most def not just a 6 hour a day need. I’ve been on 720s and 20s at all times of day, from 6am to 10pm to 2am and those busses are always full.
Julie, did you noitce where these people at Westwood got off at?
I used Google Maps’ new distance measurement tool and plotted out the potential Purple Line if it went under Wilshire.
Using back-of-the-envelope calculations, I assumed a 20 mph operating speed and rounded up to the next minute to account for acceleration and station dwell. Keep in mind operating speed is the average real speed of the subway, accounting for acceleation and dwells. The trains can go as fast as 70 mph. This also assumes a diversion to Century City between Wilshire/Santa Monica and Wilshire/Westwood.
A Wilshire Purple Line would likely take 45 minutes from Union Station to the sea.
Here’s the distances I measured with likely stations and times between them in minutes.
Western-Crenshaw 2
Crenshaw-La Brea 3
La Brea-Fairfax 2
Fairfax-La Cienega 2
La Cienega-Robertson 1
Robertson-Beverly 2
Beverly-Century City* 4
Century City-Westwood** 4
Westwood-Wilshire 2
Wilshire-Sepulveda 1
Sepulveda-Barrington 2
Barrington-Bundy 1
Bundy-26th 2
26th-14th 2
14th-Ocean 2
Also, adding a station would add 1-2 minutes. Deleting a station would save 1 minute.
*-Century City station assumed to be on Constellation Avenue anywhere between Century Park East and Century Park West.
**-Westwood Boulevard and Santa Monica Boulevard.
Fully grade separated rail operating at roughly 55 mph between stations spaced at 1 per mile = 29-32 traveled miles per hour.