Week in transportation, Nov. 22 edition

Congress told the Big Three automakers "no thanks" -- at least for now -- to Detroit's request to borrow $25 billion to keep their business alive. Here's CNN's story about how the chief executives of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler flew to hearings in Washington in private jets, noting that it was Rep. Brad Sherman -- local boy! -- who asked the CEOs to raise their hands if they flew commercial or were planning to sell their airplanes. No hands were raised. Surprised? Those are Ford F-150s awaiting shipment in Detroit in the photo above.

New cars are sitting around with nowhere to go at the Port of Long Beach. Press-Telegram

The one-eighth-of-a-penny sales tax increase in Santa Clara County looks as if it's going to win. The money would go to extending the BART system south to San Jose from the East Bay. A story in the Mercury News contemplates what San Jose's train station may look like in the future when BART and high-speed rail are both serving the area.

Interesting week for BART: A woman also delivered her baby on the platform of the San Leandro station. Mercury News

From the Department of Space Transportation: Kudos to the Houston Chronicle copy editor who wrote the headline "Water recycler not quite right, works in spurts" about NASA's difficulty getting its urine-to-drinking water system to work aboard the space shuttle.

L.A. Times editorial board member Dan Turner's favorite car at the L.A. Auto Show this week: the Honda CR-Z (at right). "It makes the hover-vehicles soaring between skyscrapers on the planet Coruscant look like antiques; imagine a white shark that has swallowed a bright purple video-game console and you get the general design concept," Dan writes. If you don't know the significance of Coruscant -- capital of the once-mighty Republic -- then you might as well go back to Dagobah, as far as I'm concerned. That's Coruscant in the background in the photo below; Sen. Palpatine is at right.

The Times' editorial board says it's a big mistake by the city of Los Angeles to spend money renovating the Bradley Terminal without first moving the north runways farther apart.

Sue Doyle in the Daily News writes about some Valley residents calling for the Orange Line busway to be converted to light rail. It's just talk at this point, but Sue also notes that efforts to speed up the slow-as-syrup bus (14 miles in just 40 minutes!), such as adding express service or syncing lights to favor the bus, have gone nowhere. The issue might be a good one for a member of the L.A. City Council interested in accomplishing something on the mass-transit front. Yes, I know. I wrote that just for fun.

Lack of money is just part of the problem when it comes to building infrastructure and transportation projects in the United States, writes the New York Times' David Leonhardt:

It's hard to exaggerate how scattershot the current system is. Government agencies usually don't even have to do a rigorous analysis of a project or how it would affect traffic and the environment, relative to its cost and to the alternatives -- before deciding whether to proceed. In one recent survey of local officials, almost 80 percent said they had based their decisions largely on politics, while fewer than 20 percent cited a project's potential benefits.

You've probably seen all those ads by oil companies touting their new green initiatives. Not getting as much p.r. are their efforts to extract oil and gas from tar sands in Alberta, Canada (above), a process that one environmental group calls "the most destructive project on Earth." Grist

Fun Curbed LA item on historic photos posted online of Los Angeles traffic from the archives of Life magazine. "Among the highlights are photos of 1940's and 50's Los Angeles before it was ruined by traffic and ungodly shadow casting skyscrapers. Oh wait. We're not sure that Los Angeles ever existed except in the minds of cranky old people in the Valley," writes JWilliams.

-- Steve Hymon

Photos (from top):

Ford trucks: Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Honda CR-Z: Ian Langsdon / EPA

Coruscant: Lucasfilm

Tar sands: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Dana Gabbard]

I think this Washington Post article does a much better job than David Leonhardt's column in describing the transportation challenges the incoming administration faces:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/24/AR2008112402457.html?hpid=topnews

[Dana Gabbard]

We may have no choice but to eventually upgrade the Orange Line to light rail. Due to design constraints it will max out somewhere in the 30,000s as to boardings. The street crossings won't allow more frequent service without disrupting cross traffic and to grade separate would be so costly at that point you might as well go for the additional cost of conversion to get the most benefit of the investment in the corridor. Personally I always opposed the busway, and knew it would eventually max out (and it is funny I just ran across an old Daily News op-ed by rail critic Tom Rubin who claimed the busway would be failure due to lack of ridership). But Zev Yaroslavsky pushed the project so he could have trophy. He bears the blame for this current situation.

Express service is tricky stuff, as witness when they tried to do it on the Gold Line. There is a reason that Caltrain in the Bay Area spent $100 million before it started its very successful baby bullet service: express service calls for extensive infrastructure (passing tracks, etc.) to work. And anyway the Blue Line is not so much about serving end to end travel as it is serving needs along the entire corridor. And for that it works just fine.

[Jose]

Extend the Red Line to the Metrolink at Chatsworth. Tunnel under the Orange Line to do it. If that won't work, then cut and cover. Convert the right of way to parking lots and the stations, and turn what is not needed into a linear park connecting the stations.

The Orange Line will never be more than a glorified bus.

Geez, that was easy. That will be $15M for my consulting fee.

[Dana Gabbard]

I am not impressed by David Leonhardt's column. He has cherry-picked some examples and cobbled together a few quotes to fit an opinion I suspect he already had before he did any research. Why doesn't he mention the recent section 1909 report that deals with how to improve transportation planning? Or what is the status of the relationship between local jurisdictions and their Metropolitan Planning Organizations like the Southern California Association of Governments? That is where the war is waged between prioritizing by impact/need versus doing what gets politicos re-elected. He doesn’t scrutinize dubious actions of the politicized federal Dept. of Transportation or given a fair shake to Congress which certainly when it comes to new starts (which funds urban rail projects) has been strongly advocating more cost-benefit analysis as a criteria for awarding full funding grant agreements (as the GAO has noted in their various reports).

Leonhard like most lazy columnist did a drive by on transportation: he cruised the issues, gleaned a few simplistic ideas and offers it all up as if it is "the solution". The truth is much more complicated. I give him props for noting the danger of ribbon cuttings dominating decisions, but his analysis is inadequate. Unfortunately the standards for writing on transportation opinion pieces in most media venues are below what is expected in covering science, business or politics.

[Steve]

How would converting the orange line to rail spped up the service?A train could never travel faster than a bus if it is stopping every mile or less.And especially if it is sharing major city streets.Even if you travel near the speed limit of the freeway it would take 14 minutes to make that 14 mile trip(at 60 mph).Now imagine f you had to make 14 stops on that 14 mile trip and had to pick up and let off passengers?
Anybody who travels the blue line light rail from downtown to long beach knows this.It is agonizing that it takes 1 hr to reach long beach.It is no faster than the dedicated orange bus line.They should have an express train that runs from downtown to long beach with only 1 stop at the green line junction.
The only way to speed up the service of the orange line or any surface rail service is to reduce most stops with an express service.

[Damien Goodmon]

And someone give David Leonhardt a Pulitzer!

My neighbor thought I was having church in my front room with all the Amens I was shouting out.

[Damien Goodmon]

Converting the SFV busway (aka Orange Line) to light rail is typical MTA thinking.

Just because a ROW exist doesn't mean its appropriate for urban rail.

The east-west corridor in the lower SFV that needs rapid transit service with the speed and service that's actually needed to convince people stuck on the 101 freeway to take public transit is Ventura Blvd, not a right-of-way that is 1-3 miles away.

And if rail conversion is to be a serious discussion for MTA bus routes that are over capacity the SFV busway wouldn't even make the top 5, probably not even top 10.