Subways and the Bay bridge collapse

The Daily News' editorial board sees a lesson in the Bay Area freeway collapse for Los Angeles. The lesson isn't about freeway engineering. It's that our city's reliance on freeways. And the DN thinks the MTA doesn't seem to care:

The MTA, for example, is sinking all of its resources into building an exorbitant Westside subway at the expense of more pressing projects that would deliver a far greater return on the investment. Meanwhile, the MTA pursues a fare increase so steep that it's expected to drive some public transportation users into cars, thus exacerbating L.A.'s crisis. After Sunday's explosion and freeway-ramp collapse, Bay Area and state authorities moved quickly to find solutions. Monday was declared a free public-transportation day, and the governor declared a state of emergency. Los Angeles' transportation officials ought to take note. We, too, have a crisis on our hands that demands swift, immediate attention.

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Comments

[JR]

The benefits of the los angeles subway are truly immeasurable in my opinion. A high capacity subway along wilshire will be the backbone of the centralized los angeles basin area. From there your could run high speed buses, make pedestrian friendly side walks, and connect to light rail lines like th expo. Union station and other downtown stations are already in place on the east side. With a strategically placed station on the westside and the subway connected them, the resulting transit corridor could become the strongest west of the mississippi (including SF). THat is of course if one more light rail line, 4 rapid bus only lanes, and 30 sidewalk corridors were put in place or improved. We could densify the entire region with transit orient developement and pedestrian freindly design. More jobs and high density retail, recreatoin, and housing could be developed in West LA, culver, Downtown, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Hollywood, Ktown, mid-wilshire, and mid-city west. A subway and a major corridor would also changes the worlds image of LA and spur more mass transit development. The subway, if done right, would be a huge catalyst. YOu cant just measure this as one line, but THE line that centralizes LA. The LA basin district would be 65 square miles of nice urban design and conta n 70% of LA's culture and entertainment making it a defacto SF. it would serve multtiple business districts as well.

Some people feel LA lacks the civic pride, the political will, the united populace, and is just too decentralized to ever become like Tokyo or PAris. Some feel ONE line will never centralize LA even though 4 miles north or south of wilshire contains vast amounts of communities, jobs, and development. In my opinion, all the other lines should spill INTO this main VEIN, or many other lines should spill into the two stations anchored by this line.

Anyhow, it seems like people want to keep LA a birds nest of random buses and rail lines. To each there own I guess!

[Scott Mercer]

"The MTA is sinking all of its resources into building an exorbitant Westside subway at the expense of more pressing projects that would deliver a far greater return on the investment."

No. They are NOT doing that. I wish they would, but they are not doing that at this time. Some money has been set aside for a study, but that's hardly "all of its resources."

And I also disagree that the Purple Line extension would not deliver a good return on investment. It will probably deliver the greatest return on investment of any mass transit project currently proposed for So Cal. It will likely be the most ridden subway line in the nation outside of New York City. It will carry as many people as an equivalent freeway, at a similar cost, and it will carry people at the lowest cost per person, per mile, over the life of the system.

Once the light rail lines currently in the pipeline are built (Gold Line extensions on both ends, Expo Line, and Green Line extension to LAX), our Metrorail system with be the FOURTH LARGEST in the USA, after New York, Chicago and San Francisco. And then there will be plenty of progress. Add in the 13 mile long Purple Line and we'll be ahead of San Francisco, with the third largest urban rail mass transit system in the country.

[calwatch]

No, Bart, MTA should eliminate weekend service on Metrolink and replace some of the midday trains with buses. Metrolink trains cost more money than buses and don't offer much of an advantage outside of the peak hours, where they do provide a useful service.

Fares need to be commensurate with the service provided. Doubling the fares as is currently proposed will lead to more service cuts because fewer riders means that Metro's Transit Service Policy is not met, meaning that cuts will happen to service anyway, even though the passenger is allegedly paying more. In addition, higher fares will lead to more dollar vans and jitneys springing up, as people find ways to get around the increase. Even buying Metrolink passes instead of MTA or EZ Passes, because they are cheaper than the $140 EZ Pass.

[Shaun]

Doesn't this article kind of contradict itself. It talks about the traffic mess created in the Bay Area is what we experiance in LA everyday. But the traffic and congestion from the collapsed freeway isn't that bad BECAUSE THEY HAVE A SUBWAYS AND FERRIES. They have ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF TRANSPORTATION that commuters can choose from. LA does not have that. BART just set a single day ridership record! I think the lesson Angeleno's can learn from this is that we NEED a subway and other forms of fast transit so we don't have to rely on only freeways.

What's going to happen in the next earthquake if the Santa Monica Freeway collapses AGAIN? If the Westside had a damn subway we could do what people in the Bay Area are doing; take the subway instead of driving.

It's absolutely amazing that this editorial talks about learning lessons from the Bay area and then opposing the westside subway!! If anything this incident shows us how much we need a subway.

[Bob Zwolinski]

I hope we’ll get our “exorbitant Westside subway” within the next decade, at least up to Fairfax… We needed it 40 years ago! Isn’t it time we built it? Or are we going to be irresponsible and leave our transportation problems for the next generation to deal with, when it will be $500 million per mile to build?

People in the bay area are much more educated than us southlanders. They approved a tax increases to pay for BART construction back in the 60s & 70s. And by golly, the bay area HAS an alternative to driving! What a concept! When a disaster occurs up north like the ’89 temblor or this latest bay bridge dilemma, it doesn’t affect them as much as it would if the same occurred down here.
We voted down out BART-like system back in the mid 70s. How incredibly ignorant us Angelenos were.

Raising MTA fares? It’s about time the MTA did!
Most municipal transit systems are up to or past $2.00 now. It’s time that the MTA caught up to the rest of the U.S. so we can maintain our moniker of “America’s Best Transportation System”.

Do we need a “Free Transit Day”? I don’t think so… The ensuing vandalism from minors would me way too costly.

Yes, we DO have a transportation crisis on our hands and it needs swift attention!
Feh… All we’ll do is put even more crawling busses on Wilshire, just like any other 3rd-world country would.

[Bart Reed]

Are my friends over at the Daily News high on drugs? Significant resources over at the MTA are not being used to work on the "Subway Towards the Sea." Yes, the Metro Board voted last June to conduct a Major Investment Study for three key projects: the Harbor Subdivision, the Downtown Regional Connector and an extension of the Purple Line to Fairfax and points west.

That is hardly a redirection of resources. As for fare hikes, is it better to let the MTA keep the gut and destroy policy that is removing huge chunks of weekend service to balance the books, so the most transit dependent can then use a $30 taxi in each direction, since significant streets will no longer have weekend service? Or should the user co-pay go from 24 cents up towards the MTA policy of 40 cents? The MTA co pay would drop from 76 cents for every dollar of service to 60 cents.

Metro only wants to move the average fare collected per ride from 58 cents to 86 cents, when each ride costs about $2.50. That same public that has trouble paying transit fares somehow manages to pay for increased gasoline costs. The gas firms don't offer public hearings when their prices constantly increase.

The only problem with the fare adjustment is the step increases. If the elected officials running the MTA could actually understand that steady and gradual are the way to increase prices, the citizens of Los Angeles would all be better off. I'd rather see the existing service maintained, rather than the slash and burn policy of service reductions.

[Aaron]

I think that it's usual to hear that kind of anti-rail nonsense from a newspaper based out of the Valley. I'd rather they make their real argument, that the Purple Line would short-change the Valley, rather than using these circumferential arguments to try and confuse people.