The one thing that I will add, is that because all 14 miles of this busway is at-grade unless Metro eliminates the signal priority the lowest headway that can be produced is every 3 minutes.

That, unfortunately, is LADOT’s doing, not Metro’s.

Or is it expensive because it demands too high service levels (30 minutes instead of 50-60) on unproductive lines?

In a word, yes.

I could understand with your argument below, but this statement is very troubling.

If I read you correctly, you are saying 1/13 of the Metro board lords over this project and micromanages standards of service. This service is within Los Angeles city limits, and four L.A. members serve on the board and must defer to Zev.

This is a crisis.

The other problem is that … the additional hours that this would require (I did a quick calculation and your throughrouted service would use more revenue service hours than the present Orange Line) is an absolute killer.

Can you e-mail me a spreadsheet (if you did it) along with the cost figures for the Miami Option lines?

What has me curious is where Metro came up with the service hours for the Orange Line in 2005. It was a heavy service burden heaped atop the local service grid. Since it was a bus service, these hours can be rearranged and allocated to the local services.

Or is it expensive because it demands too high service levels (30 minutes instead of 50-60) on unproductive lines?

And, if you saw the Google Map, I was mindful of not eliminating the Ventura Boulevard connection to those local lines. The only other way to keep Ventura and Orange Line service is to dogleg routes — first hitting Ventura, turning around and then getting on the busway — but I don’t see how buses can turn around.

This is an issue for 242 and 243. If there’s a way a bus can stay on Winnetka or Tampa avenues without having to touch the other street, that could save time.

All other routes except 236 and 237 would cover the full Orange Line route, and only 245 would lose a direct connection to Ventura (part of Topanga Canyon still has 150).

You might also save money by breaking off the Fallbrook Avenue part of Line 152 from the more important Roscoe-Vineland route.

There’s no possible way that Metro is going to build a rail line so near the Orange Line when there’s so many places in the service area that don’t have any rapid transit service. Why don’t we get united and go after a rapid transit line between the valley and West LA? It boggles my mind how such a connection never comes up in the Metro Long Range Plan.

Will never happen (because the busway is Zev’s baby and he won’t ever let a mix of services on it), but interesting.

The other problem is that, with Metro’s continuing budget problems after ten years of the consent decree burning through reserve funds, the additional hours that this would require (I did a quick calculation and your throughrouted service would use more revenue service hours than the present Orange Line) is an absolute killer.

And, as a governance councilmember, I would be hiding under the table during all of the angry public comments at the required hearing before the restructuring, because — despite your reassurances — I don’t see how you would make this work without diverting the 236-237, 242-243, and 244-245 away from Ventura Blvd. connections.

Like I said, interesting, but a no-starter.

Oh, and a comment for Zach: When 750 was introduced in 2000, it did run until late at night, but there wasn’t enough ridership to support both it and the 150, so its hours were cutback about a year later. (That also says something about the viability of a subway under Ventura Blvd., for those who have hijacked this discussion into that direction.)

There are so many factors that go into the ridership of a line and population and existing bus ridership (which is what I assume you mean by “ridership density”) are only a couple…albeit important.

Consider the Wilshire Corridor, which only has two patches of mid-high density between Koreatown and Westwood. The bulk of the corridor in this portion is surrounded by R1. Yet there is loads of ridership, because of the offices, shopping/tourist attractions and regional trips via the corridor.

The same is true for the Ventura corridor, which along with Van Nuys Blvd has the highest concentration of employment in the SFV and connects several major centers. That’s where the ridership is.

Additionally, a drastic increase in ridership can be found by extending a Ventura Blvd line east of Universal City. The Gold Line of the Get LA Moving Plan connects all of the major economic centers north of Hollywood – Downtown Pasadena, Downtown Glendale, Burbank Studios, Universal City, Sherman Oaks, Encino, Warner Center, etc. That is a line with plenty of regional trip draws. I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest it would smash the 50K riders/day benchmark for grade separated rail out of the water.

Additionally, the most expensive aspects of tunneling are upfront cost and stations. Lengthen the projects and we benefit from economies of scale, but that lots of dedicated capital we don’t currently have. Nonetheless, in this respect don’t blame the mode, blame our financing structure.

With respect to the stations the station boxes, at $35-100M each they are the bulk of the cost in tunneling, not the actual tunnel which typically comes in at about $35-45M/mile. So one possible way to reduce cost is to reduce the number of stations, which incidentally reduces travel time and MAY actually increase ridership on the line, since it parallels the 101.

By the way, I’m not pulling these numbers out of the sky these are actual MTA construction costs for the past two tunneling projects: Eastside Gold and MOS-3 Red.

And the discussion of cost savings in single-bore tunneling and open cut stations for another post.

Finally, with the the cost of light rail now going through the roof (project Expo Phase 2 cost: $985M) at-grade LRT’s primary benefit (reduced cost) is nearly eliminated.

I agree that the population and ridership density is not there on Ventura Blvd., but if a subway came, would those two items follow?

Not necessarily.

L.A. is not Portland. Metro has no power over land use, so it wouldn’t receive a density “upside” from operating a service.

I’m not particularly bullish on the prospects of added Ventura density. The Valley’s most powerful homeowner’s associations are very close to Ventura, and are remarkably effective at blocking change. They had almost gotten away with blocking the Orange Line, but Zev effectively mobilized the Valley by framing the busway as a “fair share” issue.

And I could name other examples of the imbalance between transportation and land-use changes:
1. The Blue Line managed to become a ridership monster, quadrupling in 15 years, yet all but the extreme ends of the line remain depressed. Long Beach remains oblivious as to how the Blue Line revitalized its downtown, and could have had a linear corridor on Long Beach Boulevard, but instead keeps the street as a zone of decline.
2. The Green Line is similar, but the land uses around a freeway attract automotive, rather than pedestrian, amenities. And it’s even amazing that the Green Line does so well even though it misses more important destinations than it serves — and I don’t mean LAX, either.
3. The subway revitalized areas it ran through, mainly because construction nearly destroyed them. But the high ridership is no surprise, since it was connecting neighborhoods that already had the highest transit usage in the county to begin with.
4. The Gold Line is a contrarian example. The existence of the train line has seen the most rapid and appreciable returns in property values out of the four lines. Look at the prices for a house in northeast L.A. or South or regular Pasadena. It’s common to boast proximity to Gold Line access. Yet not only has the Gold Line failed ridership expectations — badly — but no other rail line has seen ridership stagnate this long.

Only the Harbor Transitway has seen such a major transit investment do so little. But the latter has the stigma of local buses, the same economically depressed conditions of the Blue Line and the same freeway-as-land-use-imbalance of the Green Line. So there are mitigating factors. The Gold Line did most things right and failed.