• Out of the larger cities, West Hollywood had a superlative turnout for Measure R, with 84% of the vote. But Lynwood, South Gate, Bell, Santa Monica, Maywood, Huntington Park, Bell Gardens, and Cudahy all scored more than 75% for Measure R.
• Out of the Los Angeles council districts, District 1 (Reyes), 4 (La Bonge), and 13 (Garcetti) did the best, with the Hollywood/Echo Park district of Eric Garcetti pulling in 81% of the vote. Together, these Central Los Angeles districts voted four-to-one for the measure.
• The two Los Angeles City Council districts where Measure R failed were 12 (Greig Smith’s northwest San Fernando Valley) and 3 (Dennis Zine’s southwest San Fernando Valley).
• The only city where Measure R failed to get a majority? La Habra Heights, which has more in common with Orange County than LA County.
• Even the gated cities turned in good results: Rolling Hills pulled in 51%, Bradbury pulled in 55%, and Hidden Hills with 61% of the vote. This is significant since the gated cities have little or no public roads to use their Local Return share on. Avalon had 63% say yes, while the unincorporated community of Topanga, whose only public transit operates literally two months out of the year, gave 74% of their votes to the yes column.
• The Antelope Valley didn’t all vote no. Palmdale had 61% and Lancaster 56% voting yes, while Quartz Hill voted 46% in favor for the measure. Santa Clarita pulled in 53% for the measure, and Castaic turned in 54%
• Cities served by the Gold Line turned in about 60% for the measure, while cities served by the Wilshire subway pulled in 76% (Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and LA Council Districts 4, 5, 10, and 11).
• Out of the cities of the opponents, Bill Bogaard’s Pasadena turned in 69% for the measure. Gary Delong’s district in Long Beach turned in 57% for Measure R, seven points less than Long Beach as a whole, while George Hunter’s Pomona council district turned in 71% for the measure, higher than the 68% yes vote for the city as a whole. Ara Najarian’s Glendale pulled in 64% of the vote for the measure, the same as John Fasana’s Duarte. For the entire City of Los Angeles, 72% voted for the tax increase.

You can play with the numbers here.

Measure R, if it passed, would provide $2.1 billion to backfill this deficit, although a good percentage of this money will be siphoned off to other transit operators through the complicated Formula Allocation Procedure. Still, Metro would receive the lions’ share of the funding, and combined with reallocation of capital funds (now funded by Measure R) to operating expenses, and some small fare increases every few years, the amount of revenue is likely adequate to cover the current system and some additional service.

But should it fail, you would be looking at 1.06 million hours of cuts on the bus side…. the equivalent of lopping off all Sunday service, or shutting down the Orange, Green, and Gold lines. Come July 2010, assuming this scenario holds and only service cuts are made, you would see an additional 800,000 service hours cut back, or the equivalent of shutting down all service after 6 pm. The other option would be to jack up fares across the board by about 50% next year (in addition to the already approved fare increase) and another 40% in 2010, more than doubling fares from today.

To be fair, a lot of the ten-year planning process is hocus-pocus that would make the Soviet Union proud. It does not include a proposed 20% fare increase in 2012 (even though the Metro Board authorized a fare increase then), and assumes that state revenue will be slashed by a third next fiscal year and another third in July 2010. The allocation of state funds between capital and operating expenses seems arbitrary, since most of that money can be used for both capital or operating expenses. Government budgeting is notoriously complicated, and numbers can be massaged to give the appropriate message to opinion leaders. Past memos on the subject have been less than illuminating for the real number crunchers out there. Still, the deficit is real and, perhaps not as apocalyptic as presented in this report, the problem is big.

Part of this has been the Board of Directors’ undoing. Rather than working with Metro CEO Snoble to craft a reasonable fare increase proposal, Snoble chose to scare the public with the absurd specter of $140 EZ passes and $8 day passes. Instead of making the hard decisions to cut service, the Board blinked - possibly to avoid cutting service right before Measure R went on the ballot - and avoided cutting 256,000 hours from the budget using one time revenue. When Pam O’Connor was asked earlier this year about the growing deficit, she replied she was focused on Measure R and not on the deficit that would happen if it didn’t pass.

On the same Board agenda where the structural deficit is being discussed, Gloria Molina has decided to rant again about Measure R, this time with a measure to have Metro shut down the Measure R web site and brochure program, and ask the nonexistent pro-Measure R campaign to reimburse them for their expenses. Almost an hour was wasted at yesterday’s County Board of Supervisors meeting with an intellectual exercise designed solely to shaming County Counsel for giving the go ahead for the informational campaign for Measure R. Ironically, she was one of the leaders to stop Snoble’s Draconian fare increase, and crafted a compromise fare increase… which while helpful doesn’t even meet the problem halfway. Will she have blood on her hands for slashing needed bus service, much of which goes through her district, because Measure R fails? Or will somehow another tax increase be sold to the public just to fund the operations of the existing bus and rail system, without the “carrots” of more rail, repaved streets, and better freeway interchanges?

If Measure R fails, as many folks think it will, be prepared to see planning for service cuts start the next day, and an accelerated public hearing process. Depending on the timing of the process, the normal February public hearings could be moved up a month, with the June “shakeup” moving up a couple of months to buy some time and save some money. Expect labor negotiations, currently set for 2009, to deteriorate completely as Metro staff realizes that the only way to maintain some level of service is to cut salaries and contract out service… which will not be popular in a post-Metrolink crash world, where an employee one of Metro’s three contractors, Veolia, was the at the throttle when the collision happened. A 1974-like strike of two months or more could result as both sides butt heads over how much money there really is. (Incidentally, the strikes of the 70’s probably doomed LA’s best chances for rapid transit to be built, with enough funding to build it. Instead, the 1980 Proposition A, which promised everything for everybody, but couldn’t deliver, passed. And remember, for every day employees go on strike, Metro saves money by not operating service.)

These are the choices we face, and they aren’t pretty. Essentially, vote for Measure R, or watch the dismantling of the MTA as we know it.

Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell being consoled by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky Friday after the Chatsworth train collision. Photo Mel Melcon, Los Angeles Times.

Aside from the focus on the victims of this horrible tragedy, attention has been turned to the travails of Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell. After breaking down during a press conference Friday night, she stated the results of the preliminary investigation: that Metrolink was responsible for the incident due to the engineer failing to stop at a red signal.  That triggered a firestorm of coverage, from angry denounciations by the union, to a backdoor backstabbing from the chair of the Metrolink board: - all while the CEO remained curiously silent, until Monday morning when he belatedly defended Tyrrell, but only after she resigned in disgust. Others have called the announcement ill-timed, while others have claimed a power struggle between the NTSB and Metrolink staff. Lots of comments on the matter, too, including the most comments I’ve ever seen to the Bottleneck Blog.

But I think she did the right thing here. As she stated in the statement (which for whatever reason I can’t find online), Metrolink is a family. I’ve talked to Board members, staff, and passengers, and there is a unique bond between the passengers and the staff, which has survived previous incidents, annual fare increases, and other issues. And sometimes, you have to face up to the reality of what happened, and try to start the healing process. The odds of the story changing are very slim, probably slimmer than the chance of the collision happening in the first place.

After an incident, there is a lot of speculation. Could it be the Union Pacific’s fault? A case of terrorism? (After all, almost simultaneously to when she made the statement, a special Board meeting was held regarding a potential threat to public safety.) Tyrrell needed to reassure commuters by telling all of the facts she knew. NTSB investigations usually take over a year and at the end they tell everyone what they already know. Meanwhile, a lot of goodwill is lost. Should she have kept her mouth shut because of the liability? I mentioned that in my original comment, but some experts state that, buy quickly admitting responsiblity, they can insulate themselves from additional punitive damages.

Local transit activist Dana Gabbard notes the insularity of the Metrolink Board, which you can take a glimpse at by reading the minutes. Metrolink management made the right call to go with what they knew at the time.

And Tyrrell made the right call to resign. In an interview with CBS, she chose to resign rather than backtrack over something that she knew - and was told by Metrolink CEO Solow - was not true. The Public Relations Society of America’s Code of Ethics stresses the need to advocate informed debate, to be honest with the public, and to be loyal to the CEO, David Solow, to whom she works for. Unfortunately, many public relations professionals don’t care about “free flow of information”, “disclosure of information”, or “enhancing the profession”. But Ms. Tyrrell did, and for that, I, and many other Southern Californians who ride the rails, are grateful for it. Let’s hope the other public relations professionals at Metrolink can keep the dialogue open with the public about the changes that need to be made after the incident.

It’s too early to figure out what happened, but I was honestly shocked to see that the tracks are single-tracked through that section - there was a local community member being interviewed on saying that Metrolink wanted to double-track through the area, but the neighborhood opposed it.  I truly hope to G-d that I misheard that.

I was having coffee in Silverlake after it happened and saw numerous fire trucks and ambulances heading west down Sunset; presumably, they were heading to Chatsworth.

This incident is being reported internationally: LA Times, New York Times, Boston Globe, BBC, ha’Aretz, Xinhua.

I’ll try to update this as more knowledge becomes available.  Right now the news is showing the search dogs coming onto the scene and is otherwise recycling the already-known information.

[Update 9:27pm] KABC is reporting that residents did, indeed, oppose the double-tracking of this area of the tracks because “more train tracks mean more collisions.”  The illogic of that statement is just astounding, and I find myself hoping that they never get a good night’s sleep again.  If KABC’s reporting is accurate (they’re speaking somewhat imprecisely), NIMBYs have gone from simply opposing rail lines to killing people.

[Update 9:40pm] Metrolink is providing information for people who may be looking for those who may have been involved in the incident:

Family Assistance Center for families of passengers at Chatsworth High School 8538 De Soto Avenue. The hotline number at the Chatsworth High School Family Assistance Center is (818) 678-3422. 

Family members of passengers on board train 111, please call (800) 371-LINK for information.

Of the alternatives examined in the previous round of scoping, Alternatives 1 and 11 survived.  The BRT option was killed for lack of capacity, all non-subway options were killed for lack of capacity, cost, or lack of local support, and the diversion up to the Grove was killed because, in their analysis, the increase in travel time would create a decrease in ridership.  I speak for myself alone when I say that I tend to agree, based on what they showed us.  They’re correct in saying that a long train can’t turn on a dime, and the difficulties inherent in trying to make the sharp turns onto Fairfax, Beverly, and then back onto La Cienega, add time and cost an otherwise easy route.  Follow below the flip for a lengthy report.

Note that they didn’t yet have handouts for the project, so I may be in error here, and will update tomorrow if so.

Alternative 1:

Alternative 11:

At any rate.  Alternative 1 is the standard Wilshire route, with stops at all of the usual subjects - a potential stop at Crenshaw, definite stops at La Brea, Fairfax, La Cienega, Beverly Drive, Century City (exact location to be determined), Westwood or UCLA (exact location to be determined), Bundy, and then into Santa Monica to stop at 26th, 16th, and 4th.  There’s a little bit of a Spaghetti Junction between La Cienega and Santa Monica, but this largely reflects both uncertainty where a Century City station would go and lingering questions as to whether or not the Westwood subway station is on Wilshire or at the base of UCLA.  There is also a question about precisely how the route would be tunneled in this region, due to the fact that the route would lose the street grid between La Cienega and Westwood during the Century City diversion.

I asked Jody Litvak (name may be butchered, if so, I apologize) after the meeting about the Crenshaw stop, and she informed me that the issue at Wilshire/Crenshaw was low ridership, as well as the fact that the Crenshaw Corridor project will be BRT above Expo (translation - the rail line, if it ever exists, will exist solely between the Metro Green Line and Expo/Crenshaw, and the 710 will continue to serve Crenshaw above this).  I think they are hesitant to put a Crenshaw stop in, and apparently the Crenshaw BRT project will extend either to La Brea or Western, so I think we can assume that the Crenshaw stop is not highly favored.  Again, speaking solely for myself as a Koreatown resident, I tend to agree - I don’t think a Crenshaw stop is necessary, especially if they resolve the Crenshaw Corridor problem.  Having said that, I think the Crenshaw project is ill-conceived and potentially stillborn - it may well end up as a back-burner BRT project.  Knowing that it will only run as far north as Exposition Boulevard only reinforces this belief.  I’m just not sure that the ridership numbers they run are going to justify the thing.  Crenshaw is not far along in the study process and, to my knowledge, they have not yet run the ridership numbers.

The second alternative, which the vast majority of people spoke in favor of (at least, the people who both a) spoke and b) had full control over their mental faculties), was Alternative 11.  Alternative 11 takes Alternative 1 and then tacks on a WeHo subway.  It’s not quite the traditional “Santa Monica Pink Line” so I’m going to call it the WeHo line - calling it the Santa Monica subway would be a bit like calling the Red Line the Vermont subway.

The WeHo subway begins at Hollywood/Highland, at a platform either under or adjacent to the H&H platform - current plans call for a transfer inside the H&H station (will explain later).  I also heard speculation about running the WeHo subway from the same platforms as the Hollywood Red Line, but I’m not seeing this as likely from what I saw today.

From H&H, the subway runs down Highland and cuts over to a station at Santa Monica/La Brea, and then Santa Monica/Fairfax.  The next station will either be at Santa Monica and La Cienega or Santa Monica and San Vicente, but will then jog down to a “Beverly Center Area” station.  The subway then heads down La Cienega, but then re-joins the Wilshire line just after La Cienega to stop next at Beverly - translation, La Cienega is not a transfer station, and will only be served by the Purple Line, not the WeHo subway.

From here on west, the line is identical to Alternative 1.

The justification for the forced transfer at H&H is that if Metro tries to originate 3 lines from Union Station, then all 3 branches of the subway are going to take a hit in terms of headways.  Right now, the subway runs every 5 minutes at rush hour through the Wilshire/Vermont to Union Station portion, splitting to provide service every 10 minutes on the branches.  The concern is that headways on the outer portions would suffer if they have to route a third line through the Downtown subway.  Speaking personally, I’m not sure that I disagree, and given the fact that Metro has mastered the Art of the Timed Transfer at Wilshire/Vermont, I’m not necessarily opposed to timed transfers at H&H, assuming that they are able to affect an entirely underground transfer for Valley-West LA traffic.  But this is one issue where there is no right answer.

I am, however, concerned about the La Cienega issue when the WeHo subway is added in (which seems likely - Metro spoke very highly of the WeHo subway, and I think this is what they’re aiming for, although she also stressed that they need to try to way to get a more accurate measure of potential ridership and to find a way to lower costs in order to sell the WeHo subway to the FTA).  I presently fail to understand why they couldn’t create a station essentially identical to Wilshire/Vermont, and use sweeping turns to bring both lines into the same La Cienega platform.  Would these turns really be too expensive?  The next station is at Beverly, which is slightly further than the distance between Wilshire/Vermont and Wilshire/Western.

Some comment on the public comment:

Most comments were supportive.  We had a couple nutjobs.  One of them, who got openly laughed at, claimed he was from NYC, then said that he no longer believed in subways because he was sold on personal rapid transit - people busted out laughing as he described cable cars whizzing over people’s houses.  Just keep dreaming, dude, keep dreaming.

Another nutjob was this guy in a suit from the SGV (why he hauled all the way out to Santa Monica to make a fool of himself was beyond me.)  He gets up and starts talking about how Metro put up a screen showing highly reduced travel times to Westwood from Covina, and then proceeds to mount his High Horse about how Metro “gave up” $320m in federal funding for the Gold Line extention.  I have to admit that I chuckled/laughed/snorted, and people behind me started muttering “yeah right” and “bullshit.”  He wasn’t well received.  From his attire and demeanor, I tend to think that he was a lobbyist or minor SGV bureaucrat.  And frankly, the more I hear from the SGV, the less I want to hear from them.  Their harsh tactics are not winning friends or influence people at Metro or in the community.  We did not have any BRU cultists in attendance.

Anyhow, that’s basically the plans as things now stand.  It sure looks like this is moving forward, but time will tell.  Funding is the huge issue, and if the Legislature solves the budget crisis by upping the sales tax, selling Measure R to LA County will become extremely difficult - politically, if the State uses a sales tax increase to end the current budget impasse, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Metro ask the Governor to veto the bill in order to re-group and reassess their options, of which there may not be many.

[Note: An earlier version of this post erroneously referenced a Wilshire/Robertson station due to an error in my notes.  No such station exists in the current incarnation of Alternatives 1 or 11 - thank you, GreenLAGirl, for posting diagrams of the new plans so that I could correct this - the diagrams in this post are courtesy her great website.]

(Expo Stations: Courtesy Build Expo)

With all apologies to General Douglas MacArthur.

[Note: This post in no way reflects the opinion of Fred of MetroRiderLA, of Metro, of Build Expo, of the Expo Construction Authority, or of my parents' dog.]

The LA Times’s Bottleneck Blog reports today that the Build Expo people (Metro Expo Line Construction Authority) have been forced to hire Dakota Communications, who is apparently a long-time player in Los Angeles politics.

Translation: An over-inflated “community activist” in the proud line of people like the BRU’s Eric Mann (need I even start?) has forced the Expo Line to waste money debating a point that in any other city would not be debating post-EIR and scoping.

The arguments have been rehashed endlessly.  I think the majority of readers on this site understand why the Expo Line isn’t a danger, why it isn’t going to be a lean, mean killing machine, and why every other city with LRT is happy to have LRT running through populated areas.  So I’m not going to flog that poor, dead horse.

To quote the illustrious Damien Goodmon:

“The Expo Authority will say anything they can to get the crossing built at street level,” Goodmon added. “Sheriff’s deputies were posted on the Blue Line and then taken off. They reduced speeds on the Gold Line and then brought them back up. The only permanent guarantee for students’ safety is a grade separation.”

That paragraph struggles to be comprehensible.

“Sheriff’s deputies were posted on the Blue Line and then taken off.”

Huh?  Do you mean because of “crime?”  Well, that’s what you do - you rotate law enforcement officers where they are needed.  I think everyone who rides the Blue Line realizes that it’s safe.

“They reduced speeds on the Gold Line and then brought them back up.”

Huh?  Do you mean the Marmion Way stretch?  I’m working from the fact that Goodmon’s sentence was incomprehensible, so you’ll excuse my confusion, but from what I can understand, that’s because they identified a way to get some improved speeds there without causing problems.  That’s a bad thing… why?  Metro takes a problem, identifies it, throws resources at it, and then solves it?  Am I to understand that Damien Goodmon opposes the concept of a government agency actually being effective?

Er, I owe sincere apologies to that dead horse I just whipped.

Having said that, in the political environment in which we sit, where Gov’nah Ahnold has promised to veto all bills until a budget is passed, it’s past time to stop fighting about this.  The future of transit in Los Angeles is at stake.  Goodmon has already muscled the County into giving more process than is required, and this is going to the PUC next week.  Let the PUC hear this case and move on.  Los Angeles needs to focus its advocacy on getting Measure R to the County ballot and developing transit plans for the 21st century, plans that should have been drafted 50 years ago, but are at least better late than never.

Mediation is generally a private matter, but I think it’s telling that apparently the Federal Court mediation has failed - Damien Goodmon isn’t trying to protect the “children” at Dorsey and Foshay; Damien Goodmon is trying to kill this project.

Who needs the BRU, when we have someone willing to act as a voluntary spokesman for Cheviot Hills NIMBYs?

Well over a year ago we featured the now infamous picture of a group of anti-rail B.R.U. members posing and smiling in a Red Line Station.  Today, courtesy of a MetroRider with a quick wit and a quicker shutter, we present to you a new picture of B.R.U. members riding that which they hate the most.  This time it looks like work instead of fun if the clipboards are any indication, but what could the yellow shirts be telling all these affluent white people on this Red Line train?  Best caption wins mad propz from your peers.  Let ‘em rip.

From the link:
Pam O’Connor, member of the Metro Board of Directors, will be the guest speaker at the August 9 meeting.

Ms. O’Connor, who has just completed a one-year term as Chair of the Metro Board, has served on the Santa Monica City Council since 1994 and has served three terms as that city’s mayor.

Southern California Transit Advocates holds general membership meetings at Angelus Plaza, 255 S. Hill St., in the fourth floor meeting room. The meeting begins at 1:00pm and Ms. O’Connor will speak at 2:15pm. The general public is welcome to attend.

The location is transit accessible by about 50 bus lines and the Red/Purple Line, or if you insist on driving, parking is $5.00.

Image courtesy of Pragmagraphr.

I went and rode the bus.

In an attempt to resuscitate the winter flu season in the SoCal heat of July, Metro has amped up the A/Cs to Day After Tomorrow levels. I’m usually a prepared traveler and have my back pack with zip up in tow at all times, however last night was laundry day and I forgot to restock my day pack.

Now I shouldn’t complain too much, I’m sure peeps about to get their houses burned out because of fires would love an over productive A/C right about now (though perhaps all those over productive A/Cs caused these fires in the first place-eeeek). But even they probably stop blowing the A/C on full when it reaches slow-the-blood-circulation levels. No I didn’t get frostbite but the tingle in the throat and mega cough were evident by trips end.

Then again, perhaps it was the top volume Transit TV that was sending my immune system into a tailspin, throwing me to the mercy of American Latino TV. The conspiracy theorist in me says that the busses are pumping up the A/C in cooperation with the drug companies whose advertisements are blaring at top volume from the plastic bound TVs, but my theory holds no water after failing to log a single cold/flu advertisement while riding. Though whose to say it’s not the debt consolidation people behind it all. Wasn’t there a study by the New England Journal of Medicine that proved sick people are 5 times more likely to screw themselves into high interest loans? Had something to do with slowed neuron reactions. Which means it’s not entirely unfounded to believe it was Metro and other transit agencies that caused the mortgage bubble in the first place and they’re now paying Libertarian think tanks to spew such “radical” ideas that it’s the Federal Reserve’s fault.

Or perhaps I’m just freezing and annoyed by the loud TV and wish I hadn’t forgot my damn sweatshirt. In either case, I’m coughing again and I haven’t a single drug commercial to tell me what to do. Thanks for nothing, Metro.

I know I just said I was officially on hiatus, but then I logged on to Metro.net today…

OMG. WTF.

I’ve known for a while that Metro was in the process of revamping their website.  From what I hear they hired an outside web firm to help them out.  Well, I hope they didn’t pay too much. (Update 12:13pm 7/16/08 - I just got word that this new homepage was done in house, not through an outside firm.)

The homepage has been completely redesigned visually, and for the worse, yet the functionality remains largely the same.  The most noticible difference is that the content area is significantly larger, in fact everything seems to be bigger and bolder.  This is not neccessarily a bad thing, but it certainly looks less sophisticated than the previous design.  Some absolutely hideous gradients and drop shadows are thrown in with the effect of not only making it look less sophisticated, but making me want to close my browser window immediately.  Metro also took a cue from MetroRiderLA by changing the header color randomly with each reload of the page.

Visual differences aside, the functional design of the homepage remains almost unchanged, with a few key differences.  Smartly, the “How To Ride” information links have been moved to the homepage instead of relegated to the menu bar.  They are represented with large and attractive icons that are impossible to miss.  A new section has been added to the homepage called “In The Loop…” which is represented by a large grey gradient box that manages to induce my gag reflex.  This box contains links to “Stop The Presses” (news headlines), “Project Updates”, and “Destination Discounts”.

On the sidebar, the Metro Trip Planner remains, and in a glaring example that this redesign is nothing more than a visual downgrade, to use the much more functional Advanced Trip Planner you still have to click a link to be transported to a new page.  Does anyone actually use the basic trip planner?

Just above the Trip Planner is starburst that is completely out of place that says “Click For Service Alerts”.  When you cilck it you are actually taken to a text-only version of the website. Also on the sidebar is the ambigously named “Spotlight” which shines the light on links to the useless “Metro Interactive”, a video called “Hot Topic: Keep Fast Lanes Fast”, and “Filming at Metro”.  Below that is a box that spews out random trivia about Metro.  The top menu bar has been altered slightly to now include a link to the awful and poorly designed e-commerce Metro Store.

What’s worse than the fact that the functionality of the homepage has seen little improvement and the visuals have gotten worse, is that all pages beyond the homepage are unchanged.  That’s right, despite a completely new visual look, the rest of the site still looks like (well, effectively is) the old website.