MetroRiderLA

Damien Goodmon, transit advocate and founder of FixExpo.org, presents a series of articles defending his position on the controversy surrounding the Metro Exposition Line. The thoughts presented in this series are those of Damien Goodmon and Fix Expo and do not necessarily reflect the views of MetroRiderLA, its contributors, and/or readers.

The Expo Line controversy: At-grade rail. Dorsey HS. LAUSD. CPUC. Environmental racism. Fix Expo. Expo Communities United. And Damien Goodmon.

Many still don’t understand how or why I became the driver of the entity most critical of Los Angeles’ newest light rail line. And so for the next couple of weeks, I’ll write the Exposing Expo series, with the belief that by bringing to light the many interactions, information and uncovered documents, more can get a clearer picture of the 600 pound guerilla that is the Exposition Metro Line Construction Authority, an agent of MTA.

Because the process, fellow transit advocates, is very revealing and rather interesting. Indeed, what has become a tenacious brawl, began rather innocently and with the best of opinions of Expo staff.

“Work with staff,” I was told.

“Just ask questions and they’ll be honestly evaluated and fully answered,” I was led to believe.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

What will be illustrated is an arrogant and willfully ignorant Expo Board that continues to downplay the safety issues, mounting public pressure and pending legal actions that if unaddressed will derail the largest public works project in their districts.

What will be revealed is an unethical and snide Expo staff acting defensively and immorally under the crisis of transparency.

What will be exposed are actions of people who claim they’re transit advocates, which are more in line with that of agency apologists and public relations front men.

I will never disclose the contents of private conversations, and I legally can’t mention anything discussed in mediation, but pretty much everything public will be made available for the world to see.

Important questions will be answered, such as:
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Whew! What a trip it has been. A four-day vacation in the Bay Area led to a bumper crop of material for MetroRiderLA, allowing for a 10-part miniseries. It was a joy to write; hopefully MetroReaders enjoyed reading the series.

Exploring San Francisco and Santa Rosa was tremendous fun. Four days was not enough to see and experience all of what just these two cities had to offer. Even an extended vacation would still show a mere fraction of all what the Bay Area has to offer.

With dozens of bus systems, three urban rail services, several commuter and tourist ferries and three busy train services, the Bay Area shows Elhay where Southern California what we are supposed to need. Right?

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[Note: The entry's time was set too early and it was released incomplete. The time is reset to reflect the complete version.]

BART is a two-rail monorail.

The thesis is cold but succinct, but its simplicity is apt for a rapid transit system that is more complex, more complicated and more burdensome than it has to be. Even BART’s successes and strong points must be couched with qualifiers that almost cancel out its merits. BART is a true regional network serving four counties, but it’s a special district that has prerogatives different from — and usually in conflict with — the communities it serves. BART’s ridership demonstrates its success, but expanding service using its proprietary equipment — from its broad gauge to the one-of-a-kind cars and automated control system — is unnecessarily expensive. BART can command a premium price for service and boasts a remarkable farebox recovery of over 50 percent, but the logic behind the prices is twisted to incomprehensibility (demonstrated below). BART is often held up as a model for how a comprehensive mass transit system should be built in the future, but the farsighted designs of space-age planning are now considered archaic and impractical.

Might as well build the guideway as a monorail at this point. BART has much in common with monorails — way too much. BART, with two rails, is working proof of the folly of monorails. BART was conceived and designed by engineers with no reference to other disciplines and dynamics of passenger transportation. It was very much a product of the then-contemporary fashion of the scientific community: The past is a closed door, and the future begins today. Everything about BART seems to emit an aura of public transportation of, by and for people with utter disdain for it. It’s a train meant to make all other vehicle before it be eaten, digested and defecated by history. The engineers and planners were given free rein to reinvent the wheel and the stone age while they were at it. Rights of way were plentiful, but the new cars could not run on them, so virgin guideways were built. The Transbay Tube is a testament to ingenuity, but it replaced an equally effective and comprehensive streetcar system that ran above the water on the Bay Bridge. Plus, the whole point of the wider gauge was so the trains could cross the Golden Gate Bridge, which was later ruled to be impossible physically and politically — Marin County opted out of the BART district when it had the chance in 1962 and even four decades later maintains the Bay Area’s worst public transit. The district itself reflected a “the good is the enemy of the perfect, but the good-enough is the enemy of the good” compromise, where a new agency was created because none of the existing systems at the time would merge or cooperate to bring BART to fruition. So a separate entity was created parallel to available bus and train systems, but the prerogatives of BART and transit agency managers were different and in direct conflict.

Sir Peter Hall cited BART as one of five examples in “Great Planning Disasters”, published in 1980. Almost 30 years later, BART is 104 miles and has a weekday ridership of over 300,000. That’s a catastrophic success.

Go, go gadget bahn.

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Twilight descends on the Bay Area Diaries. The penultimate journey was admittedly brief, and was done primarily to get another stamp on the Bay Area Diaries’s multimodal Sanfran passport. Metaphorically speaking. (A literal passport does exist; it’s sold by Muni in 1- 3- and 7-day increments and gives a discount on Ghirardelli chocolate.)

For the third time, the scene is Fourth and King streets. The arrival to and departure from Sanfran was via Megabus. The second time was returning to the glass sliver station for afternoon voyage on “Old Ironsides”, the 145-years-young and still-useful-to-society rail corridor known today as Caltrain.

What is the dream and ambition of BART planners and foamers — getting the space-age train to circle the Bay — old-fashioned 19th-century technology said, “Thanks, but no thanks. Now let us get back to work.” Caltrain, handling the western flank, makes the San Francisco-to-San Jose leg spoken for.

The future is here and now, and has been under the Bay Area’s nose for seven generations. Between the Bay Area’s two largest cities, Caltrain goes everywhere. And stops everywhere, too. The abundance of stations make Caltrain slow going. The Baby Bullet, which is the focus of this entry, pulls out all the stops — well, most of them — and makes a rush hour commute between the two cities a contender.

On paper, anyway. The January 17 journey on Train 362 was very fast. Then again, this trip didn’t cover anything south of Millbrae. Had there been more time, this 10-part miniseries would have been a Greek epic, with the transit odyssey including entries on the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s bus and barren light rail and the ruins of the once vast samTrans duchy. Any transit agency rebellious enough to begin its name without capitalization is worth a write-up.

All aboard for this quickie commuter expedition.

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The Bay Area Diaries takes a noticeable departure from the usual quality and tone brought to the entry on Muni’s bus operations.

The Diaries, and L.A.-oriented Ride Reports published on MetroRiderLA, takes pride in copious attention to the fundamental details of the ride. What time did the bus arrive, what was the number and make of the bus, what line is ridden and how many passengers were aboard. The pedantry’s message: We care.

There will be no effort to maintain that level of detail for Muni buses. Muni earned heaps of well-deserved scorn from San Franciscans for management and operations that seemed to have been mailed in — by Pony Express. If a transit agency, through concerted inaction or lazy inaction, could treat its riders this way, the Bay Area Diaries’ feedback loop senses that it can act the same way with its readers. And will.

Fortunately, this entry is going to be lightly patronized since it’s about buses and most people couldn’t give a crap about them in the first place. Rail’s another matter. That attracts a lot of attention and very passionate viewpoints, so commentary must tread with caution. Muni buses, though, get the tritest of all literary and discussion devices: A Top 10 list. Unroll your eyes for a second and click below for MetroRiderLA’s Complete Muni bus Info and Rider’s Guide.

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The Bay Area Diaries is over the hump of the blog entry arc, and the focus is now on transit services within the city of San Francisco. Ahem, The City of San Francisco.

Since Part VI deals with San Francisco proper, and rail in particular, expect more people to start showing an interest in the series. San Francisco Municipal Railway’s three rail services get some play: Muni Metro, the F Market line and, of course, the cable cars. All this and a celebrity appearance.

This $11 Muni passport is free with the click of the “continue reading” button.

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