Photo courtesy of LA Times
Monday, October 29 2007, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Southern California Transit Advocates is sponsoring a series of public
meetings in the Wilshire Corridor regarding the proposal to extend the subway
(also known as the Purple Line) west to Westwood and eventually Santa Monica via
the Miracle Mile, Beverly Hills and Century City. Learn about the status of the
proposal and the public's role in its progress, and how to engage in effective
advocacy by contacting elected officials.
Location: El Rey Theatre, 5515 Wilshire Blvd. (4 blocks west of LaBrea)
Contact: (213) 388-2364
Transit access via Metro 20 and DASH Fairfax
Driving the problem
Re: your Oct. 19 editorial, "Ride the rails into the future":
The editorial was absolutely correct. If Southern California is ever going to find its way out of perpetual gridlock, it's going to be by getting more people out of their cars, not by continually finding more ways to encourage driving.
On the East Coast, its somewhat older infrastructure has fallen into a state of disrepair while Department of Transportation officials tried to build their way out of congestion. Now, these governments are spending more and more money on maintenance with funds needed, and originally dedicated to, upgrading transit and local roads.
Hopefully, our elected officials will remember the lesson of Oct. 15 next time they're
tempted to take funds dedicated to expanding transit and using them to balance
the general fund. If not, we'll find ourselves in the same position as our
friends to the east — unable even to maintain the transit system that we have as
congestion and commuting times continue to rise.
Damien Newton, Los Angeles
(The writer is the author of the blog "Street Heat," which can be found
at streetheatla.blogspot.com. — Editor)
By now, it’s too late to defeat the proposed widening of the I-5 between the vicinity of SR 91 and I-605 in Los Angeles County. The Final Environmental Impact Statement, which is mercifully available in English, was released this summer, meaning the chance for the public to comment officially is over. Unofficially, it’s never too late to kill a project until the spades are in the ground.
The widening would take the current 6-lane stretch of road and widen it two more lanes in each direction. One of the given reasons to complete the project is because it will reduce carbon emissions. On page 162 (172 in your pdf file) of the EIS it says:
It should be noted that although traffic volumes are expected toHowever, as discussed here last week, increasing lane miles will also increase the amount of traffic on the road. The EIS/EIR for this project doesn’t take into account that the widened Route 5 will attract more traffic (and thus will create more traffic for SR 91, I-605 and the 405) than an un-widened road. The traffic study assumes that a widened I-5 will see the same increase in traffic as an-unaltered road so emissions will go down as congestion goes down.
increase from their existing levels, the decrease in emission factors due to
improved technology and lower ambient levels would more than offset the
increase in CO emissions from increased traffic volumes.
CaliforniaNo. 14
Score: 37.1 out of 50
Despite the fact that California
routinely sets the bar for environmental policies, it takes a hit in our air and
water quality rankings. At least five of its metropolitan areas, including Los
Angeles, Bakersfield and Fresno--appear on the American Lung Association’s 2007
list of cities with the worst long-term smog and ozone pollution. And 69% of its
major water facilities exceeded their Clean Water Act permit limits at least
once in 2005, according to the watchdog group U.S. PIRG. That’s the 10th worst
percentage in the country.
One of the disadvantages to blogging about regional transportation while not having been an Angelino for too long is that sometimes I don’t know, or haven’t learned, something that is common knowledge to everyone else.
From Wednesday’s Live Chat with Pam O’Connor:
From E-mail: Alex Romano writes: Right now the north San Fernando Valley and
the Westside are woefully undeserved by public transit. When will the
downtown-centric focus of transit routing be revised to reflect the multi-core
reality of the Los Angeles area?Pam O'Connor: You're right! Los Angeles County has many centers where there
is a high concentration of jobs, residents and activity. Downtown Los Angeles is
the biggest but Warner Center in the San Fernando Valley, Santa Monica, Long
Beach, Pasadena, Hollywood, Century City and other centers deserve decent
transit, as well. The Expo Light Rail line now under construction to Culver City
and, then onward to Santa Monica, will help ease traffic on the I-10 Freeway and
major surface streets. And a western extension of the subway is also under
serious consideration.
In this instance, we have a person asking about improving transit from the Westside to the Downtown and the answer is that there’s light and maybe heavy rail on the way. My question to all of you, is there some reason that O’Connor didn’t mention more and better bus routing as an option to improve transit?
In my experience it’s much easier and quicker to provide bus routes than any type of rail. Nationally and locally more people commute by bus than by train and the subsidy per bus commuter is much lower. Yet, the only options being discussed here are the most expensive ones (both to build and maintain.) Am I overreacting to an innocuous question and answer session, or is there something going on here I don’t know? Is there some sort of bias against bus service, or was not mentioning bus service an oversight?
What Mr. Lutz was describing Monday morning was what rush-hour freeway
travel could be if Southern Californians would just abandon their cars, if only
for a couple days each week, and give public transportation a try.
It would do wonders for stress levels, not to mention cutting down on
pollution-generating car trips, saving gasoline, reducing household expenses and
time. A recent report showed Ventura County drivers each wasted nearly a full
week of work sitting in rush-hour traffic in 2005.
Imagine how many more hours would be lost, especially during rush hour,
without the Metrolink rail system. When it began in 1992, Metrolink had a daily
ridership of 2,500. Today, the system has seven lines, 54 stations and serves
more than 42,000 riders daily.
In 2005, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign released a report showing that heavy truck traffic in New Jersey would grow by 80% by 2020. The report's numbers were based on FHWA projections based on figures from 1998.
