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A pair of Big Kahunas in California politics made a last-minute pitch Friday in San Francisco for Proposition 1A, the $9.95-billion bond measure on Tuesday’s ballot that would help finance construction of a bullet train between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein echoed what has become a common refrain among supporters of the rail mega-project – that it will help curb congestion, cut pollution and provide lots and lots of construction jobs for a wheezing economy.
Feinstein also waxed nostalgic. The Democrat senator recalled riding Japan’s bullet train back in the 1960s while on her honeymoon. “We traveled 341 miles in roughly three hours with no lines, no hassles, train on time,” she said. “I will never forget it.”
--Eric Bailey
 I spoke this afternoon to Melody Kanschat, president of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The museum has kicked in $900,000 to the Measure R campaign, making it the largest single donor to the effort to raise the sales tax in the county and build more mass transit, including the beginning of the subway-to-the-sea.
"The reason we're supporting this is obvious," she said. "We think the cultural infrastructure in L.A. really can't realize its full potential without an investment in transportation infrastructure."
In other words, the subway to the sea would stop at Wilshire and Fairfax, just outside the museum.
Kanschat says that when LACMA does surveys to try to find out why people don't visit, the top three reasons all have to do with getting there: Prospective visitors say they live too far, there's too much traffic and the museum is inconvenient to freeways and mass transit.
I asked whether the museum had been approached by anyone to donate to the campaign. Kanschat said that she had closely been watching the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's continuing study of possible subway routes and had been lobbying for a Wilshire alignment. "It seems a no-brainer to us to have a subway serve the city's main business boulevard," she said.
She mentioned, not surprisingly, that in many other major cities across the world -– from New York to Paris to London -– major museums are almost always adjacent to subways or major mass transit stops.
And if Measure R fails at the polls and the museum is out $900,000? Kanschat predicted that the list of mass transit and road projects will get sliced up and supporters will each be fighting to get funding for their individual projects, often battling each other. "I think this" –- Measure R –- "is the most efficient way of jump-starting the projects and getting them all moving," she said.
-- Steve Hymon
Photo: Annie Wells / Los Angeles Times
The agency just sent out a release saying overnight closures planned for pavement replacement on the southern 710 Freeway this weekend have been canceled. Enjoy!
A federal judge in Washington today gave the Metro mass transit system in the nation's capital a 10-day reprieve from having to pay $43 million to a Belgian bank trying to collect money in a lease-back deal gone awry, reports the Washington Post. The problem: The middleman in the deal was American International Group, the financing giant whose credit rating has slipped.
This is a story that should resonate here: The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (the MTA or Metro) could be in the same pickle. It has sold much of its rail and bus equipment to investors over the years and then leased it back. AIG provided financing and insurance for the deal, and now that AIG's credit has fallen, the MTA could default on those deals unless it finds a new middleman.
That could lead the MTA to have to pay millions of dollars in penalties. Such costs would almost certainly trigger significant service cuts, MTA officials say.
From the Post's story about the events in D.C.: If Metro loses its case Nov. 12, the agency could be forced to immediately slash more than $25 million from its capital budget. That would mean less money for much-needed capital projects, including overhauling escalators, fixing tunnel leaks, upgrading train communication equipment and buying buses.
Metro estimates that it could pay as much as $435 million to banks if its other agreements go into default.
Members of Congress say the potential for damage is even broader. The more than two dozen other transit agencies that have similar financing agreements stand to lose $1.5 billion to $4 billion.
The Post also notes that the U.S. Treasury Department is reluctant to help with the deals. Why? The lease-back deals are advantageous to investors because they provide a tax break -- the banks that own the MTA's equipment get a big tax break for depreciation. The Internal Revenue Service has been fighting such deals, and the Treasury Department doesn't want bailout deals that can be viewed as gaming the tax laws.
I posted on Thursday that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has asked Sen. Dianne Feinstein for help with the issue. Also, here's a link to The Times' recent story on the lease-back deals.
--Steve Hymon
The most recent list of donors to the Measure R campaign was released late yesterday afternoon and topping the list was a $400,000 contribution from the Los Angeles Museum County of Art. Measure R proposes to raise the sales tax in Los Angeles County by a half-cent to pay for more mass transit and road projects.
LACMA also gave $500,000 earlier this month. It's not at all surprising: the museum sits at the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax and if the subway is extended west, as Measure R proposes to do, LACMA would be right next to a stop.
Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan also kicked in $100,000 to the campaign.
Overall, the campaign has now raised more than $3 million, enough money to run television ads during prime time during the past few weeks. Opponents haven't raised any money and are mostly trying to fight the measure through the media.
Unions also continued to donate to the Measure R campaign at a heavy clip. That's also not a shock: the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor has endorsed Measure R because it would help workers get to their jobs and also create a lot of construction jobs.
Here's some highlights from the latest list of donors:
Laborers International Union of North America, $200,000.
Carpenters-Contractors Cooperation Committee, $125,000.
Paul Haaga, $100,000. He's the vice chairman of the Capital Research and Management Company, an investment firm, and lives in the Southland.
AECOM, $100,000. The firm provides transportation engineering services. They also recently donated to Prop 1A, the high-speed rail bond.
Anschutz Entertainment Group, $100,000. Philip Anschutz's company owns Staples Center, the Nokia Theater and L.A. Live -- which is near both the subway, Blue Line and future phase one of the Expo Line.
Edith Wasserman, $100,000. She's the wife of Lew Wasserman, the late head of Universal Pictures.
Parsons Brinckerhoff Americas Inc., $50,000. Parson is an engineering firm that does work in the field of transportation.
(correction: an earlier version of this post misspelled Parsons Brinckerhoff)
International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, $50,000.
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 47, $25,000.
Southern California District Council of Laborers, $25,000.
AT&T California Employee Political Action Committee, $25,000.
Beny Alagem, $5,000. He owns the Hilton in Beverly Hills, which is trying to rebuild and expand -- which would be permitted if Beverly Hills residents vote for Measure H on Tuesday.
-- Steve Hymon
 Hoping to avoid mass transit service cuts because of the financial situation on Wall Street, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Thursday asked Senator Dianne Feinstein for federal intervention to help 31 transit agencies, including the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Click on Villaraigosa's letter to view it as a larger image.
In the past 20 years, the MTA has sold much of its equipment to investors, who then leased the equipment back to the MTA. Investors got a tax break for depreciating the equipment and the MTA got an injection of cash and favorable financing deals. Here's a link to a story I recently co-wrote about the deals and their potential impact.
But American International Group financed and insured the MTA's deals. With AIG's credit rating slipping, the MTA now must find a new middleman to keep the deals together or face penalties and possible repayments of its leases that could cost hundreds of millions dollars in a worst-case scenario. The MTA's chief financial officer has said that would likely result in service cuts.
In his letter to Feinstein, Villaraigosa notes that at least 31 transit agencies in the U.S. have similar deals that are now at risk. The mayor didn't ask for cash. Press secretary Matt Szabo said that the hope is that the federal government may also be able to solve the problem with regulatory action.
"The mayor's view is that if we're going to invest all this money building up the banks that have failed, we certainly shouldn't leave commuters holding the bag," Szabo said.
-- Steve Hymon
On a couple of recent occasions, I've asked readers whose traffic bites the most -- the eastern half of Los Angeles County or the Westside? After all, opponents of Measure R, the half-cent sales tax increase to battle traffic in Los Angeles County, are saying it's weighted in favor of the Westside.
In response, I received this e-mail today with the above photo of traffic on Overland Boulevard attached from reader Lorelei Laird of Palms: I normally work at home, but I had to be in Santa Monica at nine on Wednesday morning and failed to plan for the traffic. Since I was stuck in it anyway, I thought I could at least take some pics illustrating the need for [a] light rail along the Interstate 10 corridor. (Since the sight of all those cars was so depressing, I figured it was better to take a picture than describe the parking-lot-like conditions with words.)
These pics were taken on Overland Avenue between Palms Boulevard and National Boulevard. The cars are heading for the 10 entrance on Overland and National. I'd estimate that it took me 15-20 minutes to get from my home to the entrance, a trip that I can make in three minutes without traffic. Once on the highway, I was lucky enough to be going west.
Her total travel time from Palms to Santa Monica ended up being 30 minutes for a 6.5-mile trip. Laird, a freelance writer, said she's voting for Measure R because she believes that more rail transportation is needed to get people around.
I spent a good chunk of Wednesday in the San Gabriel Valley talking to voters. Most agreed that while traffic in the valley was no picnic, traffic west of downtown L.A. had reached truly epic proportions.
Here's a quote from Paul Kirby, who lives in San Dimas and owns the Train Stop, a model railroading shop in downtown San Dimas:
A few weeks ago we had to go to Marina del Rey on a Friday night for a birthday party. I've got two hours to get from here to there. About one hour and 45 minutes into it, I'm thinking I'm not going to make this birthday party.
We get on the San Bernardino Freeway and it was bumper-to-bumper. Then we get on the Santa Monica Freeway and it's bumper-to-bumper. And we get on the 405 freeway and it's bumper-to-bumper. I told my friend when we finally got there that if you have another birthday party, don't do it on a Friday night or start it later so I've got three hours to get there.
San Dimas is about 48 miles from the Marina, by the way.
As for Measure R, Kirby is undecided. He has concerns, like most people I spoke with, on how the money will be spent.
I also spoke to Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor earlier today. She recently wrote a scathing opinion piece against Measure R that ran in the papers in the San Gabriel Valley. She doesn't believe the Gold Line Foothill Extension receives enough funds in the spending plan to get it to Claremont and Montclair -- the plan guarantees it $735 million -- and, equally important, she doesn't believe the money that the Gold Line is promised would arrive in any kind of timely fashion.
I posed this traffic question to her: What's it like in the Valley these days? Her answer:
It's miserable. I’ve lived in Claremont for 30 years and traffic has gotten much worse -- to the point that we don’t go into L.A. anymore. That’s not good for me. I like a full life where you experience stuff. We’ll go to a concert on Sunday afternoon [in Los Angeles] rather than Saturday night because it’s easier to get in and out...
We’re like the bologna in the bread here. And they keep building. You take the 210 east and all you see is roofs and they’re building them without building the infrastructure.
That's a fascinating quote. Why? In early 2007, Times columnist Steve Lopez wrote a piece about how bad Westside traffic is, with quotes from one resident saying they too no longer tried to attend cultural events in downtown L.A. (The Lopez column led to the creation of the Bottleneck Blog). Taylor is essentially saying the same thing, but from the other side of Los Angeles County.
I think the quote that struck me the most about traffic came from David Aure, 24, who I spoke to a Chevron station in Walnut. He commutes about 75 minutes each way to Burbank for his job and said that generally speaking the traffic worsens as he goes west. He said he was likely voting for Measure R because, at this point, any new money for transportation would be helpful.
What about the squabbling, I asked him, between politicians on both sides of the county over the sales-tax increase?
"You can't look at the small picture," he said.
-- Steve Hymon
Photo: Lorelei Laird
This video from the California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG) caught my eye: It's both clever and includes some eyebrow-raising statements in support of Prop 1A, the $9.95-billion bond on the state ballot to start construction of a high-speed rail system in California.
Among the sweeping promises: the trains would take 92 million drivers off the road annually. My calculator tells me that's 252,000 drivers a day. The subway in Los Angeles carries about 150,000 passengers a day in a heavily urbanized area and for $1.25 a trip for those paying full fare. Maybe that could happen if the full high-speed rail system is built, at a cost that will be much more than $9.95 billion.
There's also the statement that building high-speed rail will create 450,000 new green jobs, a statement that sounds great and is incredibly vague. This comes from a study commissioned and paid for by the California High-Speed Rail Authority.
In other Prop 1A news, some big donations to the campaign for the bond measure have been reported to the California secretary of state and can be viewed on the state's online database (the name of the campaign committee is Californians for High Speed Trains). The big money is coming from unions. Among them are $300,000 from the California Alliance for Jobs Rebuild California Committee, $250,000 from the International Union of Operating Engineers and $100,000 from the California State Council of Laborers Political Action Committee.
I've posted on a couple of occasions about the number of engineering firms that have kicked in donations to the campaign (here's a link to the first post and a link to the second post). Joining them on the latest list of contributors is Aecom, a firm that specializes in transportation engineering, among other skills. The firm donated $50,000, according to campaign reports filed with the state.
--Steve Hymon
Trolling for international traffic pics brought me to the doorstep of this wonderful pic from Beirut that vividly shows how some things are universal.
The photo caption from AFP/Getty Images says: A Lebanese driver argues with a traffic policeman as he issues the former a driving infraction ticket in Beirut on October 13, 2008. Something of a revolution is taking place on Lebanon's notoriously dangerous roads. Drivers are beginning to stop at red lights, to wear seat belts and no longer have their cell phones glued to their ears. All thanks to a crackdown ordered by the country's new no-holds-barred Interior Minister Ziad Baroud who has unleashed a small army of traffic cops to impose law and order in a country where rules appear made to be broken.
I again beg any international readers out there to send over some traffic photos for the blog. My email is below. Same goes for domestic readers -- if you see something curious, don't be shy.
--Steve Hymon
photo: Ramzi Haidar / AFP/Getty Images
Remember the Calabasas Exxon station that last month was charging $4.69 a gallon? As gas prices lurch even farther downward locally, the Calabasas Exxon is still charging … $4.69 a gallon. The above photo, by the way, was taken Sept. 8.
That price regularly tops the Los Angeles charts at Gasbuddy.com, and a call to the Exxon station confirmed it. The man who answered the phone said the station’s owner sets the prices but was not available to talk.
If there were no rival gas stations nearby, I could understand. Convenience and habit might haul in some regulars. But a Google map shows that the Exxon station (listed as a Mobil) is one gas station in a cluster of at least three.
Calabasas Auto Spa & Detail is just 417 feet away, the map says. A man named Amir took my call and said the day’s price for regular gas was $2.99.
You may want to chalk that up to brand names -- the familiarity of “Exxon” inspires a comfort that “Calabasas Auto Spa & Detail” might not (sorry, Amir) -- but the map shows a Chevron station 0.2 miles away.
Do comparable brand names mean comparable prices? Nope. Chevron station store manager Carlos Chavez said his gas was $3.09.
I asked Amir if he knew why the Exxon station charges so much. “It is strange,” he said.
Does he see people filling up there?
“It sometimes happen,” he said. “I don’t know why.”
Neither do we.
--Lauren Raab
photo: Chris Bucka
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