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ChineseThe Gray Lady Chokes
Should I be castigated as naive for expecting high quality from The New York Times?
Their article today on the Gold Line extension sure did disappoint, I’ll say that. What they got wrong was not so much what they included, but what they didn’t include. They failed to explain well enough how the Gold Line extension connects to the rest of the system. They did not show a current or future Metrorail map. And they said nothing about the Expo Line, which merited at least a mention for its help in bringing East L.A. residents to jobs on the west side, which they did mention. How are East L.A. residents going to reach their jobs in West L.A. if there’s no train going there? This riddle is unanswered by the article.
On the topic of bringing economic renaissance to East L.A., there was no mention of recently successful light rail projects in Portland, Denver or Salt Lake City, which have brought on billions of dollars in construction. The article also said that Boyle Heights was “isolated from Downtown.” That made me laugh. Actually, it is if you look at their map, which places the center of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley. What the…?
Anyway, give it a read and tell me what you make of it.
Here it is.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
As a former (and continual in spirit) New Yorker, I’ll stand up for the NYT. That wasn’t a full article, which is usually at least 2 full pages on the site - that was only maybe 30-40% of the size of a full article, and was likely only a short blurb in their Nation in Brief section of the paper. The article did precisely what it set out to do - give a brief introduction about the system for people who maybe can only barely find LA on a map. Not to state the obvious, but the East Coast is very far away ;p.
I don’t see the LA Times going into substantial coverage about the massive 2nd Avenue T line project, and don’t expect that - if I want that kind of depth, I read NYT’s City Room section instead. I’m not even sure that the LAT has ever mentioned the 2nd Avenue project, whose groundbreaking is quite frankly a hell of a lot more momentous than the East LA Gold Line - NY’s 2nd Ave extension is of the same importance as when we finally break ground again on the Purple Line.
If a New Yorker wants that kind of depth about LA’s transit system, there’s all sorts of LA news sources to read. That article didn’t try to be comprehensive, and for a brief overview, it was a pretty good one.
Having said that, someone should really nominate that graphic for BlogDowntown’s Bad Maps category. But to be fair, I’m sure there’s a lot of Angelinos who couldn’t tell Brooklyn apart from Manhattan. I gave more than a few West Coast tourists directions to the intersection of 42nd Street and 14th Avenue ;p. (I also tended to give those idiot tourists who wanted to gawk at the WTC mass grave detailed directions to Queens or New Jersey just to get rid of them - I always took great joy in seeing them dutifully turn onto the northbound FDR or the Joe DiMaggio from Canal Street).
The Expo Line was not included because it’s a year away, and there’s no direction.
As for your question about how Eastsiders get to West L.A., without a train: With buses. Many will likely avoid the Gold Line and take 720 west, as they do now, to not deal with transfers. But, if they know about Santa Monica Line 10, they’ll get on that and be from East L.A. to the beach in about an hour.
What Metro needs to do is to make Little Tokyo the primary bus hub. Union Station will continute to be a headache for transfers, but by routing more services to 1st and Alameda, this dramatically cuts down transfer times.
New Yorkers seem to be exotically fascinated with Mexicans. It’s like they can’t believe there are actually Spanish-speaking people out there who aren’t Puerto Ricans.
And since when did they name the rail line after Ed Roybal?
…no mention of recently successful light rail projects in Portland, Denver…
Which projects were these again? Why weren’t you using on time, on budget or ridership for your determination of successful? Notice I am not including SLC which is a success by those standards mentioned.
This ain’t so bad. A few weeks ago the NYT ran a piece claiming that the Minneapolis bridge collapse was the result of spending too much money on light rail instead of road repair, and cite Randall O’Toole as a transportation expert
Here’s the link, though you have to subscribe to be able to read the full thing:
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60A17FD3E540C748CDDA10894DF404482
Here’s a summary from LightRailNow (I’m not going to claim that this is unbiased either).
http://www.lightrailnow.org/news/n_newslog2007q3.htm#USA_20070815
Wad, what is your prediction for what the Eastsiders will do when 720 is broken into two lines?
Yes, Wad, I know that people here use buses. But the article failed to mention that important fact. It would have been nice to inform their New York readers, many of whom have never been to Los Angeles, exactly what was going on.
I stand by my assessment. This article raised more questions than it answered. They could have provided more context here without increasing the length of the article dramatically. Plus there were a few factual mistakes, like the map and the line being named after Ed Roybal. (Unless that’s true and nobody ever told us.) The author just skimmed the surface here and could have done better. I’ll agree that this might be due to excessive editing by some editor who said “who cares about a rail line in LA?”
Scott:
Technically, per a Metro Board decision pushed through by Gloria Molina a couple years ago, the Eastside Gold Line is named the “Congressman Edward Roybal Metro Gold Line” although it is doubtful that name will ever show anywhere but a memorial plaque at some station.
After all, Molina also pushed through a motion renaming three Gold Line stations two days before the opening … and those stations still have their original names on station signage, timetables, maps, etc.
Kymberleigh Richards wrote:
what is your prediction for what the Eastsiders will do when 720 is broken into two lines?
Consent Decree II: The Revenge.
Metro is trying to sneak this proposal to make two Rapid lines “connected by the subway” at every shake-up, and if it hasn’t learned after the first dozen times, it’s going to end up humiliated again.
And this is the agency that replaced Line 442 with Line 940, then had to resurrect Line 442 after a month of cancellation.
That crosstown route is kryptonite.
But MTA is running out of money, though, mostly due to the state budget cuts. They refuse to trim back peak hour service on the busy lines, scheduling to a 150% load factor in the peak like is done in most other parts of the country. Instead, they keep using the 120% standard that the BRU foisted on them during the Consent Decree era. The 442 thing was basically meddling by Yvonne Burke. But I think even she knows that the 442 will go after this year.