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ChineseDaily Transit Links Roundup
Contributed by Fred Camino on February 14th, 2008 at 10:44 am
The sceninc lounge on an Amtrak Southwest Chief.
- City Beat takes a look at Damien Goodmon and his plan to fix… or halt… Expo
- Cops defend their case in the Koreatown Pedestrian Crackdown 2008
- CBS News takes a look at the growing popularity of Amtrak and its funding challenges versus highways and planes (video)
- The Mayor waits for a 720 and transfers to the Red Line
Discussion
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
It would be a lot better for Amtrak to pump money into congested short- and medium-haul corridors like LA-SD and DC-Boston than for it to keep wasting money and energy on long-haul rail ridden only by railfans and people with low values of time. In particular, there’s an awful lot of consumer surplus accruing to the former; why not charge them more for the privilege?
I agree Pete. The long haul stuff just isn’t viable. For example, I’m going to New Orleans in March, and I love rail and find air travel to be quite hassle, but I don’t have 2.5 days to plod across the country. It’s unlikely that any of these corridors will ever be turned into high-speed rail. Most, if not all, of Amtrak’s growth is happening in those short- and medium-haul corridors you mention. The Acela one used as in example in the video comes to mind. I used Acela to go from NYC to Rhode Island in a few hours and it was great.
That City Beat article is infuriating.
Build the sucker already!
As posted in another forum:
The claim that Fix Expo wants the entire line to be a subway is one of the larger inaccuracies in the article (including the number of semesters I spent at Harvard - which for me - knowing how fricking hard and EXPENSIVE it was, really makes me angry! :-)).
The request is now and has always been to extend the Figueroa trench, in either trench, cut-and-cover or bored tunnel with open cut stations to La Brea, using the existing budget and building to and beginning operations to temporary termini of Vermont, Crenshaw (or further if resources allow). Extending the trench to Vermont can be done with very little modification, since the “extended underpass” has already been cleared in the EIR to Watt Way. As I constantly explain to people, the most frustrating part of all of this, at least when dealing with the politicians, is that there are ways to give all parties what they want.
Back to the specifics about the South LA below grade alignment, Trousdale to La Brea is a distance of 4 miles and an additional cost of about $200-250 million. I’d bet at least half of that has been already been lost with the legal effort, as was explained to the author of the article, followed by a statement like, “There’s a cost to ignoring community complaints for decades.”
In general, the article is a great example of why it’s not possible to have a civilized discussion/debate about the issues of light rail safety, traffic, transit planning, grade separations, environmental impacts, and yes, the Expo Line’s disproportionately placed environmental impacts through the majority-minority communities (i.e. environmental racism). Simply, people want to be distracted by personalities, and many are too caught up arguing against straw men (”Cheviot Hills racist”) and using take it or leave it language and fear with comments like “would kill the project” and “would cost $100 million.” Certain people scream “NIMBY” to any person that just might have a concern about safety, traffic impact and other environmental concerns, like George Bush-apologist scream “freedom-hater,” whenever someone questions the logic or legality of some of the administration’s actions in the War on Terror.
The author was presented some 20-25 documents from MTA, LADOT, LAUSD, and City of Culver City that were summed up with one sentence in his long article, “Goodmon speaks passionately and draws from a sheath of documents to make his points, most of which are against the Expo Line in its current state.” Objective readers might have wanted to know about some of the content of those documents, but apparently CityBeat thought talking about “a Cheviot Hills racist” would sell more papers. We talk for 45 mins and the second to last question (at the 44th minute) about “a Cheviot Hills racist” who might approve of our actions, told me where he was going with the article. Such comes with the territory when dealing with the media.
For all that don’t already know and which some here can attest, Westside activists interest in Phase 1 became heightened when first, they found out we existed, and second with our Phase 2 Scoping Letter that said succinctly, the project would violate environmental justice laws that would shut down the Expo Line if Phase 2 is built to a higher standard than Phase 1. Additionally, in answering a question publicly from me, Zev, in a room of about 200-300 Westside Homeowners said, “I will not support any mitigation measure for phase 2 that wasn’t implemented from phase 1.”
The interesting, and of course unreported component of the quote I gave regarding Westside activists (including Light Rail for Cheviot), was that Cheviot Hills residents, like residents all down the line want essentially the same thing we do, but many just don’t trust the MTA to do it. And after dealing with the Expo Board and staff in one way or another for 15 months I can definitely say I don’t trust them to build a two lane road in the middle of the desert without screwing someone and then lying about it.
Regardless of my perspective on the issue, I don’t think the City Beat article was anything even close to “balanced”. The headline itself set the tone.
I think it is fair to say the City Beat article wasn’t balanced. But I don’t think it was trying to be.
I agree with Fred and Dan, and repeat my statement that if Damien gets what he wants, it is likely to either kill Expo entirely or use up the existing resources, shorting the phase one construction, so it ends up being a rail line to nowhere. (In which case, I would advise that Damien avoid Culver City for the rest of his lifetime.)
We’ll have to agree to disagree (as we frequently do) Kymberleigh.
It’s easier to expand a shortened but good project, than it is to completely reconstruct a bad project. That’s especially true for the Exposition portion of the Expo Line.
And isn’t SOCATA a member of the Subway to the Sea Coalition that’s working on identifying and directing new resources to rail construction. How sad would it be to pass the measure in ‘08 and ‘09 and then build something to a lower standard than had to be to operate for the next 100 years.
Additionally, MTA programmed the high estimate for phase 2 (1.6 billion for a combined 2.5 billion!!!) in their LRTP. That’s about 250 million a mile. There’s some extra dough in there or Metro is planning to operate the Expo Line in Phase 2 on gold-plated rails.
Part of the reason we’re not suggesting the Flower Street portion be redesigned:
1) To allow the project to begin being built and begin operations to at least Vermont. (Again, with very little modification to the EIR this is not only feasible but realistic).
2) The hope that with either the Downtown Connector project or Crenshaw Line, the Flower Street portion will be then grade separated.
3) It will be pretty clear the day the Expo Line begins operations that at least the shared track portion will have to be grade separated.
This is correct but misses the point. I’ve said for a dozen years, yes since 1996, that Expo had the air of inevitability but that that air would cause supporters to choose bad designs. I said the reason for this was overreaching. Building Expo correctly would cost too much and faced with the choice of building incorrectly or not building the advocates would push the build.
Gosh can I offer a “compromise?” Give the Expo line the same consideration given the Valley Bus Corridor?
I’m not sure what that means. What kind of compromise? Does giving it the same consideration mean turning the Expo into a busway like the Orange Line? Please clarify.
If it is, that’s not a compromise. That’s giving the BRU and Cheviot Hills NIMBYs a major victory.
The designs of Expo seem to match current designs of the Gold, Blue and Orange Lines and I see no need to delay this project any further.
The main reason to build an extra crossing is political expediency, not safety. For the money they’ll spend, why not relocate the High School?
You miss the point though that the advocates don’t think the lack of grade separation is “incorrect”. I stand firmly by that. If/when people get killed, it will not be because the line was designed improperly, it will be because of motorists breaking laws. Look at today’s Morning Commute to see how many law-breakers threatened their lives and the lives of others in a 3 hour period in Santa Clarita. Like I said before, even quad-gates are an over-design, built simply to try and prevent blatant law-breaking by motorists. They exist to prevent a driver from consciously driving around a single closed gate. There’s no “design flaw” in a single closed gate. It’s just we cater to illegal motorists because we know they will break the law. Requiring quad-gates for safety is like requiring people to wear bullet-proof vests all the time to prevent murderers from killing them. Building a line underground for safety is like requiring people to get around in armored tanks to keep them safe from murderers. It ignores that fact that the murderers are the ones doing wrong.
And that’s all I’m going to say about that.
Norm on the Transit Coalition Forum made a great point about this very thing, I will post his comment here:
Couldn’t it be argued that they are of course both intelligent and to assume that Dorsey High students are less intelligent is the real “racism” or at least “classism” here?
Simple; effective grade separation. There were the usual new traffic pattern accidents but they’ve dropped considerably. Contrast that with the Houston Wham Bam Tram which continues to rack up the wreckage. Expo is more the latter than the former.
Yes, and if you want to halt global warming you can pass laws that people cannot exhale carbon dioxide too. The traffic control laws around these at grade conflicts are not reasonable. Sorry, but that means people will get caught and others will ignore and others will get confused. Our response is usually to cane people for gum chewing but it doesn’t fix the conflict.
How do you reconcile the quad-gate issue Rob? Quad-gates exists to prevent motorists from consciously driving around a closed gate. They are not there because drivers get caught, confused, or even ignore the gates. The are there because drivers with their own conscious brains decide that it’s better to drive around the physical barrier and cross the tracks in front of an approaching train than to wait a minute or two for a train to cross. I don’t see how this can be equated to gum chewing? I think a physical barrier in front of a grade crossing is pretty “reasonable”. Four gates is a gift.
Damien,
Have they even figured out which route they’ll take for Phase 2? Will they take the more expensive fully elevated Venice/Sepulveda or will they stay on the Right-of-way and save a over half a Billion dollars thus making the costs per mile comporable to Phase 1.
Dan, that was a great point. That was something I was thinking about, when I remember Mayor Villarai-pose-a’s school takeover.
AB: I dunno, but given the fact that Damien sold out to the racist NIMBYs, I’m sure that he’ll be out there shilling for the Venice/Sepulveda route. Afterall, you can’t very well bite the hand that feeds you.
I just want to state the obvious that it is as least as important, if not more, that we contact our elected officials and write letters-to-the-editor on these matters as post on these sites.
NIMBYs make themselves heard. Last week, I called Congressman Henry Waxman’s office and expressed my gratitude that he worked to repeal the drillng ban on Wilshire and to ask that he get out in front of funding and vigorously pursue federal funding for both the Wilshire and Santa Monica Blvd. proposed subway alignments.
The woman on the phone responded, “You’re calling FOR the subway”? She was not being critical. She was just clarifying because NIMBYs and obstructionists make themselves heard. Waxman sought the initial subway drilling ban because NIMBYs were loud and clear.
If we do not want NIMBYs and obstructionists and opportunists and even just people who are misguided from delaying and potentially sabotaging this and other rail projects in the future, we MUST make ourselves heard.
Do not wait for or expect someone else to do your advocacy for you. Write and call your elected official today.
In particular, with the Expo Line, let the elected officials from Congresswoman Diane Watson down to your local neighborhood council know that you think Dorsey High School students are at least as smart as the high school students with schools near the Gold, Blue and Orange lines, and that this project should be expedited, and these NIMBYS should be marginalized.
It cannot be stated enough. Do not expect someone else to do your advocacy for you. Write/call your elected official today. The NIMBYs and obstructionists and opportunists seeking to delay/sabotage the Expo line and other projects no doubt will.