German
Spanish
French
Italian
Portuguese
Japanese
Korean
Russian
ChineseWestside Extension Transit Study Corridor picture report
[tags]los angeles, public transit, southern california transit advocates, transit coalition[/tags]
About 60 people attended Metro’s Westside Extension Transit Study Corridor meeting at the Wilshire United Methodist Church in Windsor Village on Tuesday night. Only about 15 people signed up to give public comments, limited to two minutes.
According to Metro staffers and the transit advocates attending the other series of meetings, this had the smallest attendance so far. The Emerson Middle School and Pan Pacific meetings drew closer to 100 each. [Note: See comments below for Metro's tally of attendance.] Metro’s anticipating more comments coming in by mail and e-mail.
In this meeting, as in the past two, sentiment is very much in favor of extending the subway to the sea. And this is the meeting closest to the neighborhoods that have provided the wealthiest, most concentrated and unabashedly racist opposition to public transportation.
A few of the homeowners’ associations representatives appeared here. A couple of them expressed concern over construction impacts, and opposition to bus-only lanes. One person was opposed to building a station at Wilshire and Crenshaw boulevards.
Dana Gabbard of the Southern California Transit Advocates gets up to speak. He spoke for himself, not for the group. He lives, works and relaxes on Wilshire Boulevard, and stated in his comments that heavy rail is necessary because of the speed and capacity advantages.
He did not recruit guests to Socata.
Not so for Bart Reed. The Transit Coalition’s executive director was there as an observer, not a speaker. He was actively networking with the crowd and handed out copies of this month’s Moving Southern California.
Another Transit Coalition official representin’ was Jerard Wright, the group’s vice president. He’s also affiliated with Metro, as a member of the Westside/Central Service Sector Governance Council. He, though, was here in the role of citizen.
He suggested a few corridors to study besides Wilshire, including interfacing the Crenshaw/Prairie project with a Purple Line extension.
And another interesting transit advocacy/Metro connection: architect Anthony Loui was a Socata member who’s now, per his business card, project manager of transportation development and implementation at the agency. He stands by project maps showing satellite images of the areas studied. If anything gets built, Loui will help draw up blueprints.
Discussion
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
I was particularly amused by the local homeowner that vehemently asserted that LA is, and should remain, a “horizontal” city, implying a subway has no place here.
I’m curious how these scoping meetings and comments influence the built projects…
It sounds like the scoping meetings are going well and the attitude has done a complete 180 from the ’80s and ’90s.
Metro has been keeping count of the attendees and speakers at each of the community meetings for the Westside Transit Corridor Extension Study. The meeting on Tuesday, October 16 at Wilshire United Methodist Church was actually not the smallest of the 3 meetings held so far. 71 people signed in at that meeting and 17 provided verbal comments. At the meeting last Tuesday, October 9 at Emerson Middle School in the Westwood area, 86 people signed in and 21 provided verbal comments. At Pan Pacific Park on Thursday, October 11, 56 people signed in and 18 provided verbal comments. There are two remaining meetings. Tonight, October 17 at the Beverly Hills Public Library, and Thursday, October 18 at the Santa Monica Public Library. Both meetings are at 6:00 PM.
The deadline for providing input for this stage of the study is November 1. Anyone who is interested can find out more information about the meetings, or how to provide comments online at http://www.metro.net/westside.
Jody Litvak
Metro Community Outreach Manager for the
Westside Extension Transit Corridor Study
I should have mentioned the Transit Advocates, at least for identificatioon purposes. We support the purple line extension (and have been holding corridor meetings to build support–next one will be Oct. 29 6 p.m.-8 p.m. at El Rey Theater in the Miracle Mile). I am not great at schmoozing so didn’t hand out material (but if someone asked I would have had a flyer I could give them).
I was glad Anthony Loui could attend. he is about to join a TRB tour of rail in the northwest (Seattle/Portland). Luck guy!
I’ll be staffing a SO.CA.TA booth at the alternative transportation expo Fri.-Sat. (Oct. 19-20) at Barker Hanger near Santa Monica airport. Drop by and say hi.
This address didn’t work:
http://www.metro.net/westside.
Try this address:
http://www.metro.net/projects_programs/westside/default.htm
I am happy and relieved sentiments are running in favor. A sea changed has happened.
Did Bart Reed get the usual reaction from the audience (thanks for the newsletter, but no to you getting my money)?
My experience is that people will look at literature that is available on a table, but don’t want to be “pushed” into looking at it … and if they want to join an organization, they will do it without being “schmoozed”.
Hope to see many of MetroRiderLA’s readers at the October 29 meeting Dana mentioned above.
I was at the Santa Monica meeting tonight.
Nobody was opposed to rail of some sort. I was surprised at how many wanted to see a monorail. What is the main argument against the monorail?
I support a subway both for both the Purple (Wilshire) and “Pink” Line (Santa Monica).
But whatever rail is better than no rail.
Glad no BRU types were there.
Dan,
Wad wrote a great article about why the monorail as best reserved for tourist attractions and the minds of sci-fi writers here:
You Can’t Spell Monorail Without “Moron”
The main point being that a single track offers no economic or functional improvement over the traditional two-track rail. Essentially it’s just something people are attracted to because of Jetsons age visions of the future and Disneyland, but in the end it’s no more practical or affordable than traditional rail.
Advantage of monorail: none.
Disadvantage of monorail: higher design/construction costs due to reinventing the wheel (no pun intended).
I attended the Santa Monica meeting as well. I counted four people for monorail - all from the same group. One of them made false claims about the L.A. subway. He said that when the Red Line was built there were constantly underground explosions.
I was born in Seattle and still visit my family there every Christmas. The monorail built during the World’s Fair could have been something. It’s a nice ride from the Seattle Center to downtown. The proposed route went to Ballard, not to any of the rough transportation corridors.
However, it is obvious to anyone living up there that the main transit clogs are from Seattle to Univ. of Washington to Redmond/Bellevue where Microsoft is and from Seattle to Sea-Tac Airport and Redmond/Bellevue to Sea-Tac Airport. As a public transit buff, it’s exciting watching the rail to the airport being built when leaving the airport.
Seattle has a terrific bus system too. Any rail system we re-build here, and I a big advocate of rebuilding a comprehensive one, needs to also have a great bus system too. New York, London, Paris, Berlin all have dynamic bus systems as well.
The Seattle Monorail for the World’s Fair is effective as giant theme park ride with one stop. The Disneyland monorail too. The Vegas monorail fails because it is too costly to ride and doesn’t go either to the airport or downtown. But, the tram from the Mirage to Treasure Island is popular. However, these are basically theme park rides too.
A monorail for the Westside is fundamentally flawed because it will force people to get out of one mode of travel to another in the middle of their journey at Wilshire/Western and Hollywood/Highland. It’s not even like a direct transfer within a station.
Let Orange County, who opted not to have a line with LACMTA build one for themselves from Disneyland to the Beach and try it out for us.