MetroRiderLA

[tags]los angeles, mta, san fernando valley, orange line, bus rapid transit[/tags]

Metro began testing the NABI 65-BRT prototype in service on the Orange Line on Monday. Right now, bus 9495 is the only 65-footer in service, but Metro has pledge to buy 10 units.

The buses had L.A. abuzz.

Coverage:

• Los Angeles Times Bottleneck Blog: ‘Superbus’ stops at Valley
• KCBS-Chanel 2/KCAL-Channel 9: ‘Supersized bus’ starts operation on Orange Line (with video)
• KNBC-Channel 4: MTA tests supersized bus (with video)
• KABC-Channel 7: Metro Debuts Longest Natural Gas Bus in U.S. (with video)
• LAist: LA, Home of North America’s Largest Natural Gas Bus

Also on MetroRiderLA:

• Attack of the 65-foot artics
• The Miami Option

[tags]los angeles, urban planning, bill fulton, joel kotkin[/tags]

Pasadena’s beautiful City Hall is one of many beautiful buildings in a city that arguably is the one to be emulated by urban planning. Find more images in Flickr’s Pasadena photo pool. 
Credit: Lush.i.ous via Flickr (Creative Commons license)

It only took a week for Bill Fulton to rebut Joel Kotkin in the same pages of the Los Angeles Times that L.A. is not “Manhattanizing,” but more, umm … “Pasadenaizing.” Kotkin chided Los Angeles for, gasp, too much density and it spawned a small dust storm of a meme.

Fulton, who maintains a blog on the California Policy & Development Report web site, is president of Ventura-based Solimar Research Group, a senior scholar at the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development and most famously, author of such books as “The Reluctant Metropolis” and “California: Land and Legacy”. In this week’s op-ed, Fulton points out that L.A. has multiple centers stemming from a planning vision in the 1970s to disperse small high-density commercial centers throughout the city. And density clustering like barnacales on a ship outside of the city’s general plan had to do with developers subsidizing City Council races in exchange for building “outside of the box.” Even other municipalities are growing up with low-rise buildings and walkable communities, with Pasadena serving as the prototype.

In the past week, here’s how the Fulton vs. Kotkin meme evolved:

1. Kotkin: Why the rush to Manhattanize L.A.? (linked above)
2. Fulton: It’s time to de-Kotkinize the planning debate
3. Curbed LA was burning up with this feud
   • Joel Kotkin: What you’re for, I’m against
   • Joel Kotkin defenders UNITE!
   • Friday morning linkage on August 24, 2007 plugging to our site’s two cents.
4. Fulton in the L.A. Times: “We’re Pasadena-izing” (linked above)
5. LAist: How LA became, well, LA — A Partial Planning History

In the current issue of The District Weekly (Long Beach’s alternative independent weekly) has a cover story about its future vision for Long Beach. Perhaps as a response to the City’s own visioning plan for the year 2030.

Among its descriptions of a vibrant theater district, a family-friendly amusement center, and a gloriously restored waterfront is the “Blump” or the “Blue Whale Trolley,” which connects downtown Long Beach to Los Angeles and Orange County.

Of course, the article is meant as satire, or as a statement that for its future, Long Beach should look to its past. The last page of the issue shows historical photos of Long Beach’s past, such as its theater district, the Pike amusement center, the Rainbow Pier, and (of course!) the Red Cars, or “Blimps.”

So what’s the take-home message of this article?
-Public transit was part of what made Long Beach a great city. Destroying it in the 1960s has seriously damaged Long Beach’s heritage and identiy.
-Public transit must be part of Long Beach’s future. It’s the glue that holds together the City’s efforts at rejuvenation and integrates it with its northern and eastern neighbors.

The article is not yet online–it usually gets posted a few days after the paper hits the streets. Check it out, at least for the pretty pictures.

Wad’s post about LA having the 4th best downtown got me thinking about how we rank in terms of public transit.

So I looked up the 11 cities in California with populations over 300,000 (the cutoff used by Paul Shigley), and looked up a wee bit about their public transit options.

OK, so here are the cities in CA with populations over 300,000 (in decreasing order). (For your edification, I put the name of the rail service provider, if there was one). (Source for most of this info came from Wikipedia’s entry on light rail. It’s woefully out of date, but I don’t have the wherewithall to fix it.)

Los Angeles (Metro and Metrolink)
San Diego (Trolley)
San Jose (VTA)
San Francisco (Muni and BART)
Long Beach (Metro)
Fresno (none)
Sacramento (SacRT)
Oakland (BART)
Santa Ana (Metrolink)
Anaheim (Metrolink)
Bakersfield (none)

In terms of ridership (according this article in Wikipedia, unless otherwise specified), here’s the ranking of our cities:

SF/Oakland BART (320,000 riders per day) (source)
SF Muni (145,000 rpd) (SF Muni’s webpage says 700,000, but this includes the busses as well as rail)
LA/Long Beach Metro (128,100 rpd) (Metro’s webpage says 275,000 for Red, Green, Blue, and Gold lines)
SD Trolley (96,700 rpd) (SD Trolley’s website says 75,000 rpd)
Sacramento RT (49,800 rpd) (SacRT’s website says 14 million/year, or 39,000 rpd)
LA/Santa Ana/Anaheim Metrolink (32,000 rpd) (source)
San Jose VTA (29,800 rpd) (VTA’s website says 27,000 rpd)

I would love to hear what the Metroriders think of these in terms of public transit. Who’s the best?

[tags]transit, google maps[/tags]

Google Maps has been a great tool for citizen planners to draw routes on street grids, such as the diagram used for the Pink Line threads and Chris Gerstle’s “Dodger Blue” subway.

Now, another tool can be used to take transit geekdom to new levels — in small steps, anyway. Behold, the distance measurement tool. It is a line that can be drawn between two points, or several points to plot out a trip. This can be a very practical tool for citizen transit planning. The tool could be used to calculate the average travel speed of a line. It can also be used to plot for a time point that is not listed on printed schedules.

With the distance calculator and that high school algebra most of us stuffed away in some distant corner of our minds, here is how both can be used.

(more…)

[tags]los angeles, rail, google maps, laist[/tags]

A Dodger Blue subway loop? With Google Maps, you can. Shot snagged from LAist.

LAist — yes, we are well aware that we have incessantly shilled the site in the past few days since Fred was guest editor for a day — points to a Google Map of suggested transit services, this one by a Chris Gerstle.

Gerstle is an unknown name among the Los Angeles transit geek community, but drawing a map qualifies him for admission. Welcome, Chris.