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ChineseMetro Wastes $27m of Taxpayer Dollars
From the LA Times:
The Federal Transit Administration announced today that it would award $23.3 million over the next two years to help fund bus lanes on a portion of Wilshire Boulevard through the heavily congested Westside.
The lanes will be used during the morning and evening rush hours and would stretch from the Santa Monica-Los Angeles boundary to Valencia Street, which is just west of downtown Los Angeles.
At which point our resident anti-rail ideologue promptly starts cheering. But wait, my dear ideologue friend…
The project does not include the part of Wilshire that traverses the city of Beverly Hills.
That funny noise you may hear is me banging my head on my desk. As basically anyone who has taken the 720 or 920 down Wilshire can tell you (and probably at a fairly high decibel level), at least as between the Pacific and Vermont, the part through Beverly Hills is by far the worst, by far the slowest, and, along with the 405, the source of the delays along Wilshire. Whether or not it’s the fault of BH or Century City is open for debate but irrelevant. The worst traffic along Wilshire is in BH, and if you don’t have them along for this project, then you’re wasting money. Bus-only lanes won’t solve the 405 on-ramp problem, and the lanes don’t go through BH, which is the 20-series’s choke point.
Metro, take your $3.7m, put it in the piggy bank, politely return Washington’s funds and either (a) shelve the project and build the subway, or (b) wait until you have Mayor Delshad along for the bus ride.
Discussion
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Hahaha, incredible. I agree with you. A complete and utter waste.
The previous bus only lanes on Wilshire in Brentwood lasted about 30 minutes before public pressure from single-occupancy motorists with sense of entitlement and small businesses had them repealed. While I support them in theory, bus lanes won’t last. Motorists will not stand for pavement they cannot drive on.
It’s better to put that money into extending the Purple Line quicker.
Hooooooold on there, Babaloooey!
Unless my feeble memory is wrong, didn’t that same news release mention that local funds were already in hand to cover the Beverly Hills portion, and the Feds money will fund the rest?
The article implies that the local funds were in place for the rest of the project (to cover the part that Washington doesn’t cover), and also states that BH hasn’t even been consulted yet.
My takeaway from that is that BH is not on board with this. Metro hasn’t seemed to put their own information on their site. So I don’t see anything indicating that, but we’re not exactly swimming in information here.
Until Beverly Hills comes on board, nothing will happen. The argument used to shut down the bus only lanes in Brentwood was, “we’ll do it when all of Wilshire does it.”
I actually support bus only lanes and think we should have them on Wilshire, Santa Monica, Western, Vermont, Pico, Lincoln and Ventura. However, politically they are impossible. Also, bus-only extremists use them as an alternative to building rail lanes and they are far from that.
One other thing, express buses will pass local buses, so there will still be weaving into non-bus lanes.
There is only so much political energy and money to spend, and I’d rather see it spent on something that will both help and will last, like extending the Purple Line to Santa Monica via Century City and UCLA.
My understanding, from all the memos I have seen over the years, is that Beverly Hills has always wanted to do something about improving bus speed on Wilshire, but that they have been unwilling to do something on their own with the city of Los Angeles dragging its feet.
Now, with LA on board and the feds willing to allocate funding, it is likely BH will be given the same three options as the LA City Council considered: (1) dedicated bus lanes; (2) speed improvements at intersections, such as turnout pockets and signal queue jumping; or (3) nothing. Given BH’s past attitude, I doubt they will choose #3.
What worries me is that somehow LA will screw up their ends of the project and the federal funds will get forfeited as a result.
Thanks, Kymberleigh, good to know from someone in the know. Hopefully they pick up the ball and run with it. I agree, Dan, the Wilshire subway isn’t going to stop frequently enough (and shouldn’t stop that frequently) such to eliminate the need for bus service on Wilshire (although it will probably drastically reduce said need), and I’d be glad to see these go forward in full, subway or no.
Great article!
And yes, I totally agree – this money would’ve been much more useful if it would have been allocated towards subway Purple line extension!
Let’s finally build the subway!
Enough waiting!
Alek
Let’s do a reality check.
It’s going to be 4-to-5 years before the EIR/EIS is accepted and any digging begins.
It’s going to be a minimum of 10-to-12 years before the next phase actually opens.
Wilshire is in horrible need of repair.
[Have you ridden a 720 or 920 lately?] [The jolting ride is horrific!]
$27 million is a drop in the bucket. That would build 1/10th of a mile of subway.
Wilshire needs to be repaved right now. This project would see to it that it does.
Well, Wilshire does need repair. I have ridden on the 720 Bus in the back section and seen people thrown out of their seats because of some of those potholes.
Bob: I agree. I just think that doing this without BH on board defeats the purpose. All of the problems this aims to solve are at their nadir in BH. But Kymberleigh has indicated that BH Council may be brought on after funding comes through, which would negate those concerns.
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