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ChineseDaily Transit Links Roundup for 7/1/08
Contributed by Fred Camino on July 1st, 2008 at 9:27 am
Image courtesy of kla4067.
- Villaraigosa says we might be 3.5 years from the start of a new subway.
- Amazing first-hand story of what happens when a Red Line train breaks down… for good.
- The Metro Mole returns with more scathing critiques of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority aka Metro.
- Another perspective on last week’s big transit circus at the Taj Mahal.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
3-1/2 years? Ugh. That means Century City by 2015 and Santa Monica by 2020.
After the Northridge earthquake, the 10 Freeway was rebuilt sooner than anyone thought possible because there was the will to do it.
I can’t help but think if there is sufficient will, this can happen sooner. Perhaps not in a year, but sooner.
“I can’t help but think if there is sufficient will, this can happen sooner. Perhaps not in a year, but sooner.”
Imagine… building everything faster. Haha, imagine indeed.
It was also because the freeway was already there. Crews were not building a road from scratch.
Same thing with Metrolink. The extension to Palmdale and Lancaster was expedited because of the collapse of the 14 freeway.
Please be aware that most of the large subway systems of the world were largely constructed before our lifetimes.
Imagine living in 1940s-1960s Los Angeles when the freeway network consisted merely of work crews and endless strips of vacant land.
If you really do not have the patience to wait for the Subway To The Sea to be completed, then seriously consider investing in cryrogenics.
In all seriousness, the STTS and all the other forthcoming lines are meant to be investments for the future, something the instant-gratification society of today fails to even consider.
LA’s first rail system was in constuction from 1873-1924, 51 years. Conversions to bus took from 1925 (the first five of seven lines in Pasadena went bus that year) until 1963, 38 years. The return to rail in LA began in 1986 (Red Line groundbreaking), so we’re only 22 years in and we have 512 miles of commuter rail and 73 miles of urban rail - practically a miracle in a place the rest of the world considers the capital of car culture.
We can have Santa Monica by 2015 if the bickering around Expo stops; then we can worry about a speedier rail line from Santa Monica 15 - 20 years after that in the form of the Purple Line extension. Expo was conceived in the early 1990s due to the tunneling ban on the then former Red Line (by which the title was given to the more popular portion of the Red Line going to NoHo). Expo, at the time of the tunneling ban, was the Westside’s only hope for a rail line. Apparently, it took so long for Expo to come to reality that by the time we are constructing the first phase to Culver City, the Purple Line tunneling ban was lifted and now a Wilshire subway is not an impossible dream, but we have yet to even get Expo to Santa Monica.
An aspect that is too often forgotten is that subway and el systems in the U.S. were private enterprises that were later appropriated by government. Prior to the advent of the private motor vehicle, mass transportation was for more than the working class, and so there was a desire to make it work.
TonyW79SFV: Before the Valley bus line, the Purple Line was originally called the Metro Orange Line and despite the tunneling ban, a route was planned to circumvent the much-feared methane gas zone. But it diverged too far from Wilshire - where the ridership is - and perhaps delaying that (making way for a Wilshire route after all) was good in the long run.