MetroRiderLA

[tags]los angeles, griffith observatory, la weekly[/tags]

The Griffith Observatory: You can’t get up here from down there unless you hike or take a shuttle bus.
Credit: Dave Bullock (eecue) (Creative Commons license)

LA Weekly tore into the Griffith Observatory’s arrangement of keeping cars down in the flats and forcing patrons to pay $8 for a shuttle bus — each way — that has been taking as much as an hour to make the climb.

Writer David Ferrell has been chronicling horror stories from first- and last-time users of this busing arrangement. One rider paid $32 total for a family excursion. An LA Weekly editor made the hike up, but wanted to take the bus down at night. She couldn’t, and she found her car ticketed and locked up for the night in the Greek Theatre lot.

The city may look to scrap the shuttle bus deal entirely. It has already canceled the Hollywood & Highland shuttle, so there’s no access from the Metro Red Line. The only stop now is near the zoo, and the only transit connection is the … urk … contract-operated Line 96.

An historical note to make here: there was public bus service up to the Observatory before it was closed for renovations. LADOT operated Line 203 from the Observatory, down Vermont Avenue to as far as Beverly Boulevard. And yes, local riders can ride on Vermont without having to go to Griffith Park, and they enjoyed a low 75 cent fare. It was one of a very few local bus lines LADOT operated, so it charged the fare of the RTD at the time the line was taken over, and not a quarter like the DASH. The route exists today as the Los Feliz DASH, but it no longer goes to the Observatory.

[tags]los angeles, transit oriented development, curbed la[/tags]

This condo complex replaced a large outdoor courtyard at Wilshire Boulevard and Vermont Avenue.
Credit: Andrew Hurvitz, Here in Van Nuys

Curbed LA had a plethora of links to various developments occurring on or near rail stations. Here’s a sampling:

• The skinny Sunset+Vine tower has its advertising wrap removed, and “It’s like looking at Nicole Richie disrobed … all bones.” There’s also an ad for a downtown L.A. development at the site.
• Elderly gays can look forward to living to in the award-winning Triangle Square at Ivar and Selma avenues.
• NoHo14, the huge tower next to the North Hollywood Orange Line station (and Red Line across the street), is going to be ready to be lived in. “You can almost see into parts of Los Angeles where people want to live,” said jwilliams.
• Arquitectonica issued a press release congratulating itself for building the condos above the Wilshire/Vermont subway station. The site is in Flash, and the firm, which does work predominantly in Florida, has the condo project listed in transportation.
• See the progress of Solair, the high-rise atop the Wilshire/Western Purple Line Station. It has links to an older update and construction for a shopping center across the street.
• Here’s an item that’s not situated near the subway. In Anaheim, trouble’s a’ brewin’ at Angels Stadium, where the baseball club’s owner does not want housing on the grounds of the ballpark. The stadium is also the city’s Metrolink and Amtrak station. Orange County Register has the details, along with shock and awe from the OC Keyboard Warrior light infrantry division in the comments to the article.
• Last week, KTLA-Channel 5 put up its historic Sunset-Van Ness studio up for sale. This week, it traded its number one (living) anchor to former next-door neighbor KTTV-Channel 11 for reruns of “Family Guy.” Damn, Tribune must be really hard-up for cash.

[tags]los angeles, downtown los angeles, mta, public transit[/tags]

Here’s some more chum for the fantasy map sharks. It’s a paint program, though, not Google Maps.

This one was found in the Transit Coalition’s forums in the Downtown Connector folder’s “Suggestions, Routes” thread.

User Rayinla plots out the proposed Downtown Connector as a loop through downtown. The Metro Blue and Gold lines would form the circle, serving Bunker Hill, the Civic Center, Little Tokyo and industrial southeast downtown. Ray also proposes a circle line that would stay within the loop. The Expo Line would be linked up with the East L.A. half of the Gold Line.

Conventional versions of the Downtown Connector expect the route to form a mirror image of the subway between 7th Street/Metro Center and Civic Center stations. The Blue and Expo lines would run north, then east and connect with the Gold Line. This would allow for Long Beach and Westside trains to continue to Pasadena or East L.A. After 2010 this second subway would go beyond good idea to operational necessity as heavy ridership at 7MC would lead to operational bottlenecks, and overcrowding on the subway in downtown. It would also attract ridership as the subway transfer would be unnecessary and the destinations along the connector including the concert halls, the Civic Center and Little Tokyo would generate new trips.

Rayinla, though, wants no industrial area left behind. Parts of these areas are turning into lofts, and the remaining warehouses and factories are still important work destinations. This is only the minimal version. Rayinla also drew a denser, figure-8 shaped rail network that call for new lines to Montebello and Whittier.

[tags]los angeles, red line, purple line, public transit, henry waxman[/tags]

Alan Mittelstaedt, known better as L.A. City Beat’s L.A. Sniper, has in his cross hairs Rep. Henry Waxman. While commending Waxman’s work on environmental legislation, the Sniper doesn’t forget and doesn’t forgive the congressman for helping to stop subway construction before it got a chance to tunnel through his district.

From this week’s Sniper piece (no pun intended):

… So here’s a proposal to consider until we get the leaders who will stay focused on the fight for a subway running the full length of Wilshire. Let’s rename Line 720 the Henry Waxman Limited Vision Line. … Seizing on the methane eruption [at the Ross Dress-for-Less in 1985], you got your colleagues in Congress to ban the use of federal dollars paying for any tunneling west of Fairfax; a ban tinged with your constituents’ racism that, to your credit, you finally lifted this year.

Waxman represents Hancock Park and the Fairfax District, wealthy and historic areas that were bubbling tar pits of opposition to rail. Residents were worried about “crime” (read: poor, dark-skinned transit riders) coming to the neighborhood. However, serendipity in the form of the Ross Dress-for-Less methane explosion in 1985 provided Waxman with a cover story — public safety — that gained bipartisan support for a federal subway tunneling ban.

It was after 20 years that Waxman reversed his opposition to subway tunneling after a study showed construction through methane zones can be done safely. Also, the steam rising from motorists’ and bus riders’ frustration over having to endure congestion could no longer be ignored.

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[tags]california, urban planning, paul shigley, downtown[/tags]

Pasadena’s City Hall.
Credit: Lush.i.ous via Flickr (Creative Commons license)

The California Policy & Development Report provides us with two items on Labor Day. The second follows up on editor Paul Shigley’s subjective rankings of the state’s best and worst big-city downtowns. Los Angeles came in fourth, with San Francisco and San Diego tying for first and Long Beach placing third. MetroRiderLA followed up Shigley’s blog with “We’re number four!” and “How we stand in California“.

Now he wants to follow it up with a ranking of the best and worst downtowns of mid-size cities. Shigley recaps the discussion the first ranking generated, but does not mention what is the minimum population for a mid-size city. The population ceiling is 300,000.

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

The war of wits between Bill Fulton and Joel Kotkin continues. Their feud was meme-checked in “Pasadena, not Manhattan,” and the background links are on that post.

Fulton volleys with part two of a three-part blog, “De-Kotkinizing the planning debate.” He starts with praising Kotkin’s earlier works, including “The City: A Global History“. Then Fulton continues to jab Kotkin, this time criticizing him for becoming increasingly careless as he has taken his urban planning medicine show to the masses through op-eds and speaking engagements.

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