A different kind of subway to the sea

I spotted this photo on the AP wires. These are out-of-service subway cars being loaded onto a barge last Friday in New York. The cars are destined to be dumped into the ocean, where the cars will serve as reefs and provide structure for the growth of plants and other sea life, so say the experts.

--Steve Hymon

photo: Seth Wenig / AP

UCLA student: Subway to the sea almost too much to imagine

Good column in the Daily Bruin today by Ross Aikins on the possibility of the subway extension reaching Westwood. An excerpt:

In the hallucinatory spirit of Dumbo the elephant and batches of LSD, let’s call our fictitious UCLA line the “Purple Line,” and run it eastward from Santa Monica where it connects to everywhere in Los Angeles you could ever want to go.

It’s a student’s dream for Los Angeles to become “car optional.” Anyone who’s ever spent time in New York, D.C., Tokyo, London or any other large city with an efficient underground transportation network knows this.

I know, it’s almost difficult to imagine such ease of travel here in Los Angeles.

Later in the column, Aikins references the mistake the Georgetown neighborhood in Washington D.C. made by resisting the subway years ago -- denying Georgetown the school a good connection to the rest of the city -- and Aikins also points to the fact that USC has embraced the under-construction Expo Line.

Measure R, the proposed half-cent sales-tax increase on the Nov. 4 ballot in Los Angeles County, would provide more than $4 billion to the subway. Proponents say that those revenues, plus perhaps some federal money, could get the line as far as Westwood.

--Steve Hymon

Subway news reaction from readers

Lots of interesting reader comments on yesterday's news that Metro will pursue studies of two subway lines going west -- one under Wilshire and the other under Santa Monica and La Cienega, to meet with the Wilshire line. That's no guarantee either will get built, but it's certainly ambitious, if nothing else.

Now, let's look at some of the comments:

M notes that even with a new line, it would take as long to get from Northridge to UCLA as from Covina to UCLA -- even though Northridge is half as far away.

She has a good point. No matter how you cut it, the trip from Northridge to Westwood -- on the future subway or present bus system -- is likely to take two hours. Even if the La Cienega line gets built, it doesn't do much to help residents of the west San Fernando Valley because they've still got to get to North Hollywood to catch the train.

The proposal for a half-cent sales tax increase for Los Angeles County does include $1 billion for a vaguely defined transit line that would follow the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass. But it wouldn't be built until the 2030s, and at that point, I'm not sure that $1 billion is nearly enough for a subway, light rail line or whatever other type of transit is in there.

At that point, however, there should be carpool lanes on both the north- and southbound 405 and perhaps will be quick buses from the northern Valley.

Dave wrote the following:

"it's funny, but the delays in rail to the west side (oh, and to the airport, like most world-class cities) happened on the L.A. Times' watch - transit was always a dead-end beat at the Times, and resulted from a lack of any coherent SoCal political leadership (leaders are groups of people who come together to advocate for something and use persuasion and argument to drive needed change). We have what we deserve, gridlock and more gridlock. The Olympics will never come back to L.A. because the carbon foot-print of the airport alone, with no terminal access to rail, equals that of many small countries. Lots of luck!"

I think he has a point on both counts.

MTA picks subway route(s!) for further study

In a surprising and ambitious move, local transportation officials said Tuesday that they would recommend further study of two subway lines to the Westside, with one train going down Wilshire Boulevard and the other shorter leg partially following Santa Monica before diving south to meet the Wilshire line.

That's what the map above shows. The dark green areas indicate sections of the route where the MTA needs to do further study.

While the whole effort is still largely hypothetical -- the subway has no funding, nor has it been formally approved -- it shows how officials with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority are gearing up should any money be secured for a project with a potential $9-billion price tag.

It was just a decade ago, amid several spending and construction boondoggles on the existing subway, that voters in Los Angeles County banned the MTA from using sales tax money for subway tunneling. That ban remains in effect, but complaints over Westside traffic have continued to pile up, fueling efforts to continue the subway.

"We know there are some people internally [at the MTA] who have said 'this is always where [the subway] was going to end up," said Jody Litvak, a spokesperson for the Metro Westside Extension study. "But now there's some validation for what we've thought. We thought people would say they want a Wilshire line or we want a Santa Monica [Boulevard] line. We were surprised they wanted both."

The Wilshire line would get first priority for funding because it has higher ridership estimates, said David Mieger, the project manager for the Westside study. But the other line is being considered because it would make the entire system more versatile by stopping near major job centers and attractions such as the Warner Hollywood studios and Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood and the Beverly Center and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

It would also chop significant time off the trip to the Westside from the San Fernando Valley, according to MTA estimates -- shown above on this page from the latest study. Mieger said a train trip from North Hollywood to Westwood could potentially drop from 61 minutes according to today's MTA schedules to 28 minutes if both lines were built.