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ChineseDaily Transit Links Roundup
Contributed by Fred Camino on March 10th, 2008 at 12:30 am
Photo courtesy of savemejebus.
Note: I will be out of town for the next three days, so expect light to non-existing posting until Thursday. Here’s some tasty morsels for you to talk about in the meantime.
- The BusTard takes an in-depth look at the transportation mess that was the L.A. Marathon.
- Gold Line to Ontario? Think again after reading this detailed report.
- Omnitrans whoops Miss Traffic! Omnitrans will award $1,000, a laptop computer, and free bus rides for a year to the student who creates the best Omnitrans commercial.
- 12 miles of bus only lanes coming to Wilshire Boulevard courtesy of Arnie.
Discussion
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
There will be howls of protests from commuters to see any pavement they cannot drive on. Furthermore, the rapid buses will be weaving in and out of the remaining lanes of traffic to pass local buses, and the express rapids to pass the rapid ones.
The original Brentwood rush-hour bus-only lanes lasted about 30 seconds before political pressure started mounting to remove them.
This is not an argument not to do them. I’d bring five on-line — Wilshire, Santa Monica, Vermont, Western and Ventura.
It’s important to note and emphasize that despite BRU talking points, bus-only lanes are NOT a cheaper and effective alternative to the Purple Line extension. They have merit, but not as an alternative to the rail line that needs to be built on Wilshire to Santa Monica via Century City and the other viable rail lines.
However, I won’t be surprised if the bus-only lanes are removed within 6 months of installation due to the same pressure that saw the Brentwood bus-only lanes removed.
In an ideal world, it will create even more demand for the Purple Line.
If drivers are so against bus-only lanes, you would think that would naturally be an incentive to support rail construction. You would think. Unfortunately, I don’t have that much faith in the LA masses to give it that much thought. There are still people out there who think that widening or even constructing new freeways is the answer; of course when asked where this new freeway construction would take place, they have no answers. Why not tell these people that they have two choices for congestion relief: a massive 12+ lane freeway right through the Westside, bulldozing countless homes, business, parks, and neighborhoods…or an underground subway, completely removed from the street level, not one residential street touched. Oh but there’s the “subway vibrations” and those “unwanted people” who come with it!
What people who are hostile to both rail and bus, with learned or taught automobile-entitlement, really want is a time machine back to a quality of “car culture” we will never see again.
They want to recover an era where everyone owns a car, and is expected and able to drive and park their car anytime, anyplace, anywhere, conveniently and swiftly, with cheap gasoline to make it affordable — and that people who ride public transit would drive a car if they only could, and those who don’t or can’t are marginal and not worth worrying about - i.e. the “transportation welfare” model.
Visible rail construction and bus only lanes are visible proof this model isn’t universal.
People with automobile-entitlement intuitively know that even if they don’t use rail or bus themselves, unless we return to the old car culture sense of entitlement, their lifestyles will still change because they will no longer be able to take for granted that people will drive a car for their professional appointments (customers and employees) and personal engagements (friends, family, romance) — they will need learn to do business or socialize in a transit-friendly manner if they don’t use the transit themselves — a perceived or misperceived loss of “freedom” and “independence” they believe the car culture gives them.. Under the declining car culture model, such public tranist accommodations are never factored in, because if you are worth consideration, of course you have a car.
Even if no transit is built or enhanced, rail or bus, the quality of the “car culture” is unsustainable. NBC choosing to move TO the Red Line shows they have decided which way L.A. is headed and that the former car-only model will not be sustained in the future. Too bad the L.A. Times and the L.A. Weekly both missed the story.
So basically those people have no solution for our congestion problems other than nostalgia? They would rather rot away behind the wheel, pretending it’s still the 1950’s, than give alternative transportation modes a chance? If they would look outside of their little valley and canyon bubbles, they would realize that the rest of the world is embracing mass transit. It’s a sign of progress.
Well, I think they are dying off, moving away, or getting so frustrated with congestion and the increasing price of gasoline, that they are willing to try something different.
But, it’s one person at a time. All I knew was car life until in 1993 out of desperation with sitting on the 101-fwy downtown every day I tried Metrolink “just to see what it was like”. At a certain point, these one-at-a-times start to add up and there is a “mass consciousness” which develops when thinks move quicker — sort of like Ken Keyes’ 100 monkeys experiment.
Not everyone will be convinced. There will always be people who think freeway expansion, or god forbid, double decking freeways is the answer.
But the fact that NBC has decided that it cannot depend upon it’s clients and employees always being able to or willing to drive to their automobile-desired location is one. As other businesses come to the same conclusion it adds up. Money talks.
A change in consciousness happens one new-transit rider, one more transit-friendly business at a time.
You are right, NBC moving to the Red Line station will prove to be much more significant than the press is willing to admit. They chose that specific spot for a reason.
Please, don’t even say the phrase double decker freeway. I would have thought that the 1989 Bay Area earthquake would’ve permanently turned Californians off to the prospect of such structures. And we’re not even talking about the environmental impact. Do these people want that smog to go away or not? I know it’s gotten better since the 70’s, but it’s still there many days.
This is a bit unrelated, but has anyone checked out the new long range plan from metro? Over at curbed, Pete McFerrin has gone through a lengthy play-by-play of each line. Also, the plan identifies the Purple Line Extension as a “funded transit project”, which sounds promising in an ambiguous/noncommittal sort of way. I was stoked to see the inclusion of a Vermont subway, even if it was only at phase 2.
Thanks for mentioning the new draft of the Long Range Plan, which probably deserves its own thread.
I’ve just looked at the draft plan and the City of West Hollywood and Santa Monica Blvd. isn’t mentioned anywhere. It’s quite ballsy for the MTA to then have its scoping meeting for the Westside at Plummer Park in West Hollywood on Santa Monica Blvd. In the early Westside Transit Corridor Extension Project, the City of West Hollywood was left out of the scoping meetings. I find it ironic that they’d choose to have their one Westside scoping session for the Draft Long Range Transportation Plan in the City of West Hollywood along Santa Monica Blvd. If the MTA is planning to pat Santa Monica Blvd. alignment supporters on the head, thank them for participating, and then send them on their merry way so they can get back to their original plan of one alignment, Wilshire Blvd. only, then I guess in some perverse way they get points for the willingness to do it in person, face to face. But, I expect there will be many people attending that event to demonstrate support for SMB not being left out.
Here is a letter I sent to the MTA after reviewing the draft plan. They are accepting comment for 45 days (well, 44 now):
I realize that the Alternatives Analysis is still underway for the Westside Transit Corridor Extension study, but as the map shows a Wilshire Blvd. alignment ONLY, it’s not a mystery where they originally planned to be leaning.
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