Does Metrolink make the grade on ‘8 habits …’?

[tags]los angeles, metrolink, commuter rail, citizens transportation coalition, overhead wire[/tags]

Panoramic photo of Metrolink locomotive and trainset at Union Station.
Credit: The Bucky Hermit via Flickr (Creative Commons license)

Curbed LA picked up an interesting item from The Overhead Wire, an interesting rail and transit-oriented-development blog, linking to the Citizens’ Transportation Coalition’s “8 habits of highly successful commuter rail lines.” Whew. That took quite a bit to trace the origins of the post.

Curbed’s take localized the commuter rail angle to Southern California’s Metrolink service. Curbed points out that Metrolink cost $2 billion to deliver 388 miles of train service, carrying 39,500 trips. Christof Spieler, of the Houston-based CTC, penned “8 habits” and clarified in the Curbed post that he did not intentionally confuse our commuter rail system with Houston Metro’s light rail line. The intent of “8 habits” was to see if metropolitan Houston would be appropriate for its own commuter rail service.

But, how would L.A.’s service stack up if we used Spieler’s criteria? Let’s break each down and use letter grades for each one. These are purely subjective, and are meant more than anything to provoke heated arguments.

1. The ideal commuter rail line improves on current transit options.
Grade: B-

Metrolink was not a new service entirely. Many Metrolink trains ran along in corridors where existing freeway express bus services were previously operating. However, Metrolink rejuvenated corridors where similar bus services were stagnant or unproductive to the point where they needed to be canceled. Riders familiar with the RTD would remember that during the bus only period, RTD used to operate an extensive express grid that complemented local service and ran to downtown. Most of these buses ran empty, and whatever was not taken over by LADOT or Foothill Transit was canceled and the bus hours used to provide much-needed local or limited-stop service.

There was also the Inland Empire Connection, a joint service by Omnitrans and Riverside Transit Agency that provided a slow intercity operation between downtown Los Angeles and the Inland Empire, a holdover of when RTD was once the local carrier for Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties.

Initially, Metrolink only provided peak hour, peak direction service. Very slowly, it added reverse-commute and off-peak service. Even with the bare-bones non-peak service, in many cases it added to transit options. The biggest loss was cancellation of several peak-hour express lines, but many commuters who had abandoned the buses would drive to a Metrolink station and take a train. The level of comfort provided by the Bombardier bi-level cars was unusual for public transit, and the business-class amenities are Metrolink’s strongest asset.

2. The ideal commuter rail line makes use of unused rail capacity in a corridor where highway capacity is scarce.
Grade: A-

A right-leaning individual reading this would quickly seethe and go to the “old reliables” (Reasoners, Cox, O’Toole, et al) and would retort that not only could we build more highway lanes, but we could buy every Metrolink passenger a luxury car with all the money saved.

These battles have been waged elsewhere, remain unresolved and will never be resolved until the battle is taken to the one arena where it counts: public opinion. What matters: Metrolink is here, it is building ridership every day, and it will be up to the general public to decide whether it would be expanded, stay the same or dismantled. Period.

Now what about hhighway capacity? Metrolink excels here, especially within Los Angeles County. Even adding one mixed flow lane will mire a simple widening project in years of litigation and red tape. Worse, the Century (105) Freeway set a precedent that makes L.A. highway builders scared of their own shadows. Communities in the path of the freeway were able to get a consent decree, that among other things, brought in money for local street improvements, forced preferential community hiring and required a mass transit component that ultimately became the Green Line.

Also, development around highways makes property condemnations and local street improvements makes a widening project as expensive and complex as a subway to the sea, a dozen times over.

Orange County managed to widen highways, but it also will run up against well-developed highway corridors that make future widenings more challenging. It, though, will become the first county to make Metrolink run at clock headways in two years.

The Inland Empire has more elbow room around its freeways, and for right now, reasonable enough property values to make widening possible. Yet it has the most popular Metrolink service, and it would like to see more train service once freight bottlenecks are cleared.

Ventura County, well, Rob Dawg will come in and say his piece about his hometown.

3. The ideal commuter rail line serves more than commuters.
Grade: C-

Metrolink came so close to getting a D here. An F would be too harsh, but at least Metrolink is cognizant of having to beef up fast-growing non-traditional peak service. However, it is constrained by busier freight schedules and severely hampered by equipment shortages that affect the rest of the country.

That’s not an exaggeration.

For over a decade, commuter rail services around the country have come to expect one thing: if they purchased Bombardier bi-level cars, Los Angeles will come along and mooch. As it is, Metrolink often operates with 0% reserve fleets — transit agencies are encouraged to keep 10% to 20% of working vehicles in reserve — and has to borrow cars from around the country. Seattle’s Sounder commuter rail system purchased a complete fleet of trains for an incomplete network, and were able to lend Metrolink its spares. And for many years, Metrolink hung on to old Toronto GO cars. Other systems, though, are increasingly reluctant to lend L.A. spare locomotives and cars.

Besides the car shortage, Los Angeles County is challenged by having so many transit needs Metrolink must compete with. Most rail expansion money is tied up in urban rail projects. Discretionary funding is tied up in bus service expansion. Los Angeles is the primary destination, but the county cannot fund its part of expansions at this time.

Orange County, though, is upgrading tracks to allow for 30-minute Metrolink service within the county. The Inland Empire has the keenest interest in expanding service, but it would not fund L.A. County’s share of transit. Plus, local bus expansion will compete for rail expansion in those areas. Ventura County has no locally funded transit tax, so chances of expansion are nil.

4. The ideal commuter rail line has a city at each end.
Grade: B+

Sprawl is Metrolink’s best friend. In California, only the wealthiest cities can afford to be pure bedroom communities. It is also rare for cities to specialize in a single land use, as seen in Vernon and Industry. Proposition 13 forces California cities to rely on sales taxes; consequently, many cities diversify their land uses. Not only does Metrolink have a city at each end, Metrolink has cities in the middle of lines as well.

And it was the railroad, not the freeway, that made many of these cities inhabitable in the first place. In many cases, train stations are at the heart of cities’ commercial and civic centers, or relatively close to them. The big drawback, though, is that Metrolink is a commuter service and parking spaces often come at the expense of tranditional transit- and pedestrian-oriented amenities. Plus, homeowners have a vested interest against accommodating growth, since a scarcity of housing keeps property values high.

5. The ideal commuter rail line offers good connections to multiple employment centers.
Grade: D

While railroads helped build many towns the tracks run through, commuter rail in Los Angeles is only 15 years old. Railroad tracks are unpleasant neighbors, and typically cities zone their industrial armpits near the trains. Metrolink is very effective for commuters working in downtown L.A., and somewhat effective for the job centers in Orange County, but for a reverse commuter or non-downtown-bound rider, station siting is crucial to what’s near the station or what kind of connecting transit is available.

6. The ideal commuter rail line serves long trips.
Grade: A

If it weren’t for long trips, Metrolink wouldn’t even exist. Long trips are Metrolink’s bread and butter. Smart growth advocates maintain this is an irresponsible use of transit and land. But, the suburban sprawl came first and Metrolink is playing about 30 years of catch-up. Second, in order to have smart growth, cities and residents must voluntarily agree to let developed cities contract. That just will not happen.

The Southern California Regional Rail Authority — Metrolink’s official agency name — is not a land use agency; tying land use to the transportation service it provides is not in its official duties. What cities do with the trains that serve them are still municipal matters.

7. The ideal commuter rail line connects to local transit.
Grade: D-

Metrolink deserves an F here, but there are marvelous examples of a few intermodal stations, namely in Oceanside and Oxnard. On its face, Metrolink meets habit 7, with most stations having a local transit connection. However, in practice, the connections do not provide a service mutually beneficial to both trains and buses.

The best connections, by far, are at Union Station — with some large qualifiers. A transfer at Union Station involves very long walks. Transfers are unpleasant, but are offset by high-frequency urban rail and local buses. And the long walks are just for the transit that enter Union Station property. The Patsaouras Transit Plaza was one of many systemic debacles courtesy of the 1990s Metro. It was supposed to be the hub where every downtown bus would stop. The problem was that for lines that did not terminate at Union Station but would continue through-trips — namely the services presently on Cesar Chavez Avenue outside the statin — serving the plaza and returning to the route would have added as much as 5 minutes to every trip. Most lines would have had to add buses to maintain existing service.

Most stations, though, lack high frequency (15 minutes or faster) local bus connections. Other stations, particularly in Orange County, have feeder buses to go between station and key city points but have very limited service. Several cities have used the stations as “free land” for bus transit centers, but these are done to facilitate transfers between local buses, not bus<->train connections.

Metrolink is also notorious for “station cars”, but not the term used for car sharing. The phenomenon started in southern Orange County but is prevalent systemwide. Suburbanites would buy and squat a cheap beat-up car to drive between the station and their homes or offices. The squatter cars take away space from park-and-ride cars, or station redevelopment.

The big problem here is several agencies not being on the same page. Metrolink cannot compel local agencies to serve a station. Metro, while funding Los Angeles County’s share of Metrolink, only has the power to route its own buses to stations. And often, when there is a bus that could and should serve a station, the biggest hang-up is the conflict between Metrolink and the transit agency over compensation for bus transfers.

8. The ideal commuter rail line has stations you can walk (or bike) to.
Grade: F

Most suburban stations have industry zoned around train tracks. Industrial land uses create uninviting pedestrian environments, and much of the industrial real estate is tied up in warehousing or similar uses that consume a great deal of land yet provide few jobs. Many cities have often prettied up the stations, but this cosmetic enhancement often does not carry over to the surrounding neighborhood. And often, the biggest enemies to transit-oriented redevelopment around stations are the cities themselves.

Developers know there’s gold near them thar tracks, but city councils are held at bay by angry residents who don’t want more residents or are train riders worried about losing their parking spaces. And SCRRA, as mentioned earlier, has no authority to usurp land use from the cities it serves.

Yet even with oceans of parking around the stations, Metrolink serving stations with untraditional — or even antitraditional — land uses does not go begging for riders. And with local control issues that could be the precursors to civil wars, SCRRA does not want to upset the apple cart.

Adding up the 8 habits, Metrolink gets 2 As, 2 Bs, a C, 2 Ds and an F. With 5 of the 8 rating above average, and three below, Metrolink overall would be a C to C+.