German
Spanish
French
Italian
Portuguese
Japanese
Korean
Russian
ChineseCrenshaw alignment that’s just peachy
[tags]los angeles, mta, crenshaw boulevard, transit coalition[/tags]
Map originally created by Metro, modified by Elson Trinidad
Getting sick of all these corridor proposals? MetroRiderLA sure isn’t.
This one is both relevant and geeky, because it involves an actively discussed corridor that is getting some money and a transit user drew his own map. Five points for effort, minus one for not using Google Maps.
The geek this time needs no introduction, unless you’ve never heard of him before, then in which case he needs an introduction. Meet Elson Trinidad: lifelong Angeleno, militant community activist and frequent user and amateur historian of L.A. public transit.
He posted this map on the Transit Coalition forum’s Crenshaw Corridor thread. The line would be a branch of the Metro Purple Line, but split off at La Brea Avenue, backtrack to Crackton, and join its rightful place on Crenshaw Boulevard through Leimert Park, then go southwest at Hyde Park to serve Inglewood and LAX.
Here’s his rationale for the line, taken verbatim from the forum:
Here’s my concept…if it’s gonna interface with the Purple Line, then it doesn’t matter where the transfer would be since the stations at that subway segment would all open at once. Making a transfer point at La Brea, rather than termnating at Western or the end of Crenshaw opens it up to a possible extension to Hollywood, Fairfax District or even West Hollywood.
Some highlights:
- Wilshire/La Brea station either surface or underground interchange a la 7th St/Metro Center.
- Vineyard/Midtown Crossing station would interface with existing bus terminal, also next to planned retail development (which would be completed by the time this line breaks ground)
- Tracks would reclaim their space along Venice under West Street Bridge like in the PE days.
- Shopping center at Venice/Crenshaw replaced with mixed-use TOD, alignment to cut through the development.
- MLK and Leimert Park stations would be the highlight stations of the line
- Alignment would join Harbor Subdivision. If possible, alignment made into 4-tracks with Metrolink Airport Express (Union Station - LAX) running down the middle or Metro Air Line (Union Station - LAX) sharing trackage the rest of the way.
I didn’t take a future South Bay extension into consideration due to the way the track interchange at Aviation was designed; any trains coming in from the northern spur would have to join the Norwalk-bound tracks due to the location of the switch.
This is one alignment to consider for Metro’s Crenshaw/Praire Transit Corrdior. There is still one more public meeting on Saturday, and Metro is taking comments through November 5. For more details on getting active for the Crenshaw project, see MetroRiderLA’s previous post.
Discussion
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
Hey, anybody who thinks Tom Wetzel is extremely anal, snooty and nitpicky is alright in my book. And using the ginormous Metro pdf map is fine, much easier to work with than google maps.
Time to recall past Expo Line predictions. What have we spent so far? A little under $200m for aquistion design and prelims? Add to the the latest estimate of $620m construction for a total of $96 million per mile. Nope, sorry. Somebody somewhere has to find some unexpected cost that pushes the price past $100m/mile before it can be built. Why? Because Darrel said $58m/mi then $61m/mi and $65m/mi and I’ve always said $100m/mi. So, with much less existing r-o-w to use how much is this peachy bit of LRT gonna cost?
Anyone who is intelligent and informed (that includes Elson) knows that rails to LAX is almost impossible. The City of LA just plain old cannot afford the tens of millions in lost revenue.
Because of terrorism threats, I think the Green, 405/Sepulveda and Crenshaw Lines are eventually going to go to a transit center with a bus terminal, just outside of LAX. I think a people mover from there to the terminal similar to JFK and Newark Airport is what we’ll see.
As for lost revenue, the lines will bring back more in economic development than they’ll cost in the short term, and the cost of not-building them is greater than the initial cost of building them.
I’d modify Elson’s line in one respect at the northern end. At Crenshaw/San Vicente, it should go north via Fairfax, La Cienega or San Vicente to Santa Monica Blvd., then cut over to Hollywood/Highland.
We need a north-south crosstown route eventually.
A people mover probably makes more sense for airport operations anyways. Light rail going onto the airport probably wouldn’t make the most sense, as it would need at a minimum three stops to cover the terminals (possibly more), otherwise bus service would absolutely be needed to fill in the travel to the other terminals. Also, LAX really needs something that runs to a central rental car terminal, lot C, hopefully a central hotel/other shuttle stop, possibly a passenger pickup/dropoff area, and possibly lot B, which would considerably reduce the number of cars that need to drive through the airport property (and I don’t think light rail where the stations would need to handle 3 cars would be practical).
As someone who lives in the area, I’d rather it link up the actually-existing purple line than some future purple line extension. Maybe a later extension can branch off and head north through WeHo, and, ideally, connecting to the red line.
Good looking line, I think that heading toward the airport would be the right thing for the Crenshaw line to do initially. It would be easier to build on the railroad grade, and a branch heading south on Crenshaw past Hyde Park could be added later. However, I don’t think an extension of the Green Line should go all the way into the airport but should turn north and eventually follow Lincoln to Santa Monica. Or the “Peach” Line for that matter, a people-mover is the way to go.
Hopefully by the time this line actually goes into construction the Purple Line extension will be well underway. Heading west to La Brea at Venice would be much better for the future system; following Crenshaw to Wilshire would leave no room for future extensions. On the other hand a northwards La Brea line would make the trip from the westside to Hollywood (via Expo or Purple Lines) much more manageable.
While I would definite benefit from and love to see a light rail line from the airport via Lincoln Blvd., I think the Green Line being extended up to UCLA and over the hill up to Metrolink in the Valley would be a higher-priority.
I think there are different version of what “to the airport” means. No one is going to get door to door service via the Green or Peach or whatever line directly to their gate. I imagine switching to a bus or people mover of some sort would be necessary once the line gets to the airport. In some airports, one checks in at one place, then takes a monorail or a shuttle to their gate. I’ve been on everything from the Air Train at JFK to the Wiki Wiki shuttle in Honolulu.
One thing that always concerns me regarding these line splits is a “Boston” problem (probably replicated in San Francisco and Philadelphia, as well as other cities where many rail lines come together). You run 4 lines into the same terminal, a train breaks down in the terminal (or things get slow due to crowds, or anything else goes wrong) and all of a sudden delays ripple, and amplify, throughout the entire rail network. You’re borrowing trouble.
It sure looks good to split the Green or future Purple lines a bunch of different ways, but then you run into a fundamental problem, and I’ll use the Purple line as an example:
OK, so you split the Red/Purple line into thirds. What do you do between Vermont and Union? Thirds seems manageable, to keep good headways on the branches at rush hour we’d have trains running downtown every 3 minutes. But that’s manageable with a heavily-controlled heavy rail system like the Red/Purple lines. What about a 4th split? Now we’re either running the branches at more infrequent headways, or we’re running trains 2 minutes together. I don’t like either option terribly, but what else can we do? Short-turn them at Vermont? The wacky construction at Wilshire/Vermont probably precludes doing that permanently, we’re having enough fun doing that right now with the blasted Koreatown shuttle that runs after 9pm right now.
Do we want to bet the farm on 2 minute headways downtown? Can a train clear Metro Center in 2 minutes, especially when you have crowds from both the Blue and Expo lines? Same for Union Station, the approaches into Union run slowly for safety reasons - can a train clear Union with Metrolink crowds in 2 minutes or less?
This is why LA is going to regret not accounting for express tracks.
In terms of LAX, the Atlanta airport subway is the brightest idea I’ve ever seen (though it’s also the roughest ride I’ve ever had on an underground train). Any rail extension to LAX probably needs to run to just outside the airport and interface with an airport subway. Honestly, I’d be just as happy if we built the airport subway to loop through the terminals and out to Aviation - same solution, different implementation, so long as airport amenities and services actually begin at Aviation rather than on LAX proper. Any green line split at Aviation will create a Hobson’s choice between screwing over either LAX (not likely) or the South Bay branch (highly likely).
Ack!
Thanks Ch…er…Wad.
I’m retracting the Venice/Crenshaw TOD cos I got it mixed up with that shopping center at Venice and Western.
But yeah, Peach Line, baby.
If LAX wants to expand its capacity, it’d better put direct rail into the airport. The LRT station at Portland’s airport is just yards from the baggage claim!
As for connecting it with the Purple Line, my rationale was that any interface with the Purple Line would have to be built as part of a Purple Line extension *anyway* and chances are the Purple Line to Fairfax extension would start construction before this one will, since the Crenshaw talk is still very preliminary, so whether you make a transfer at Wilshire/Western or Wilshire/La Brea, it’s all gonna open at the same time, so might as well build the line where it can be easily expandable.
Elson: LAX has 10 terminals. Which baggage claim would you put the station next to?
Well, you can have an LAX west station somewhere between Bradley, 3 and 4 and an east station between 1, 7 and 8. Bear in mind that the terminals and parking lots will not be exactly the same after the eventual expansion and renovation of LAX, so even if such a thing doesn’t sound feasible now it might be under a modified airport layout.
Sure there’s security concerns, but if you *really* wanted to cause damage LAX, you’d drive in and not take any sort of transit vehicle. The Flyaway buses go into the terminals currently without hassle.
Ummm, you do all know that the Crenshaw corridor is not automatically assumed to be rail, and that Metro’s Long Range Transportation Plan shows funding options both for rail and for BRT?