Articles 1
Red Line 10 years old but still in its infancy
The San Fernando Valley's decade-old subway stations show their age in small ways.
At the North Hollywood station, sun and storms have faded the rainbow colors of the entryway awning. One stop down the line at Universal City, vandals have added key-scratchings to the pillars near the platforms' distinctive mosaic art.
In both places, escalators creak and lurch under morning commuters' hurrying feet, floor tiles are scuffed, and the trains have lost their original gleam.
But mention these blemishes to an out-of-towner, and expect a laugh.
"I'm from Philadelphia. Our subway doesn't touch this," Bill Thompson said last week as he and a colleague waited for a Metro Red Line train to take them on a 24-minute underground journey from Universal City to downtown for a business meeting.
"In Philadelphia, I hold my breath going up and down the steps because it smells so bad," said Thompson, who said subway crime is another problem back home. "I haven't noticed any of that here. It's still clean, it looks like it's well-maintained.
"You can tell we're in California. It's the art and the architecture. The colors. The openness."
It will be 10 years ago Thursday that the North Hollywood and Universal City stations opened, marking the subway's arrival in the Valley, connecting the giant suburb with Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles.
In many ways, not only do the stations and trains feel comparatively new, but the concept
of a subway in this car capital still seems to be in its infancy.Fewer people use the overlapping Red and Purple lines on the average workday than Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials had forecast in 2000. That places Metro's ridership sixth among U.S. cities and 77th on a worldwide list.
The addition of Valley stops, tacking 6.3 miles onto the 11.1-mile Red Line route that opened 17 years ago, has hardly eliminated congestion on the 405 and 101 freeways.
And the rhetoric has changed little in the debate about the value of the Red Line's $4.5 billion construction cost - including $1.3 billion for the Valley extension - and $91 million annual operating budget.
What's the impact of the Valley extension?
So far it's largely intangible, said California State University, Northridge, professor Tom Hogen-Esch, who teaches about civic government.
"It's been kind of a success in this transformation of Los Angeles from an automobile society (back) to its origins as a public-transportation-based society," Hogen-Esch said.
"The San Fernando Valley was the automobile suburb. For the subway to emerge in this heartland of Southern California automobile culture gets to the transformation that is taking place."
One way to describe the L.A. subway's progress: People who use it and know it mostly love it. The same holds true among people whose businesses are fed by local stations.
But this is not yet as many people as had been hoped.
When the North Hollywood and Universal City stations opened June 24, 2000, Metro officials said they expected ridership to reach 200,000 daily boardings by the following year.
A decade later, however, Metro reports a weekday average of 153,000 boardings.
"I think if you move beyond the ridership estimates, you would find the Red Line performs very well," said Metro spokesman Dave Sotero, who notes that the Red Line is L.A.'s busiest rail line.
Red Line ridership is expected to rise as connecting rail and bus lines are added to the Metro system, such as when the Orange Line busway linking North Hollywood to Woodland Hills is extended to Chatsworth in 2012, Sotero said.
More than 14,000 people a day in North Hollywood and more than 6,500 a day in Universal City board trains heading toward downtown.
On a recent morning, platforms were busy and trains were nearly full.
Attorney Barry Greenberg of Northridge said he began taking the Red Line downtown when his car broke down a few years ago and he enjoys tunneling under freeway traffic.
"I didn't know whether it (an L.A. subway) would work," Greenberg said. "I worried about earthquakes. But I'm impressed.
"I think it fits (Los Angeles). But it's 10 percent of what we need."
Angelenos using New York's notorious subways as a reference point had wondered if crime would be a problem here.
Los Angeles County sheriff's Capt. Patrick Jordan said subway crime rates are low and getting lower, thanks to open and well-lit platforms and hundreds of patrol cameras.
Violent and property crimes numbered fewer than three a day throughout the Metro rail and bus systems that carry about 1.5 million people a day, Jordan said.
"It is very safe," Jordan said.
Subway fares, scheduled to rise from $1.25 per boarding to $1.50 on July 1, cover only 28 percent of operating costs.
Rail systems are more expensive to build but more cost-efficient to operate than buses, Sotero said.
That hasn't changed bus proponents' contention that even if the 17.4-mile subway system is expanded, it is too small and inflexible to serve the nation's largest county.
"You continue to see investment in a mode that hasn't demonstrated a massive increase in ridership (or) reduction in auto traffic," said Esperanza Martinez, an organizer for the Bus Riders Union.
Ten years ago, Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich called the Red Line project a "fiscal catastrophe." The Valley extension came in under budget and on time, but only after the rest of the Red Line was plagued by cost overruns, construction accidents and delays.
Antonovich spokesman Tony Bell said last week the stations are too hard to get to - and parking is too limited - to make the subway a convenient alternative to the 101 Freeway. Bell said above-ground rail can serve more county residents than "one tunnel in Los Angeles."
Among the Red Line's fans are owners of businesses near the North Hollywood transit hub, which has spurred retail and housing development across the street and boosted the nearby NoHo Arts District.
"We're happy it (the Red Line) ties into the whole renaissance going on here in North Hollywood," said Jack Witt, president of the Universal City/North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.
Witt, who owns a private fitness-training business near the North Hollywood station, said he'd like Metro to reduce the number of homeless people riding the subway.
Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, called the subway a "revenue generator" for the local economy and concluded: "I think people (subway critics) have been proven wrong."
At the Universal City station one morning last week, Burbank resident John Mardirossian praised the Red Line as he walked quickly toward a train he said he has ridden to 7th Street every workday for five years.
"It's very good. You take it and you get there right away, no headache," Mardirossian said.
He was asked why more people don't like the Red Line the way he does.
"Until you use it," he said, "you don't know."
Articles 2
Officials say subway has slowed growth of freeway congestion in Valley
Although traffic on the 101 Freeway has increased slightly over the last decade, congestion would be even worse if not for the Red Line subway that has helped ease the commute out of the Valley, officials say.
"The subway has given Angelenos an alternative to being stuck in traffic," said Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who sits on the Metro board.
"We are never going to reduce traffic to the point it was in the 1960s - that's just a pipe dream. But to the extent we can get people out of their cars and into public transportation, we reduce the impact on the freeways and surface streets."
From June 2000, when the Red Line opened in the Valley, to 2009, the annual number of boardings has soared from 28 million to 47 million. Average weekday boardings increased during that time from 83,230 to 146,723.
During roughly the same period, annual average traffic on the 101 Freeway - as measured near Laurel Canyon Boulevard - increased from 283,000 to 290,000, according to the California Department of Transportation.
Although Caltrans hasn't studied the impact of the Red Line on freeway traffic, officials believe it has made a difference.
"Over the last decade, we have experienced a steady increase in traffic on almost all our highways throughout the region," said Doug Failing, a district director for Caltrans. "But when you take a look at the 101 - particularly when you look at the Cahuenga Pass - we haven't seen
the growth there that we've seen in other places around the county."Over the last decade, traffic on most freeways in the county has increased by 10 to 15 percent, Failing said. Yet, traffic on the 101 Freeway over the Cahuenga Pass increased by only 2 percent.
"It's obvious that the Red Line is picking up that expected growth," Failing said. "Over a 10-year period, you'd expect at least a 25,000-vehicle increase, which is clearly not there."
But Tony Bell, spokesman for county Supervisor Michael Antonovich, a subway critic, said Metro officials are overstating the impact of the Red Line on 101 traffic.
"The Red Line doesn't even save time," Bell said. "It's difficult to park at the Red Line station, and the 101 continues to be a congested mess."
But Metro spokesman Marc Littman said the 101 Freeway is often congested due to heavy traffic, accidents and other factors - making the Red Line quicker.
"You are guaranteed that your ride from the San Fernando Valley to downtown is always a half-hour or less because we don't compete with traffic or weather," Littman said.
"As far as parking at the stations, there are many bus lines that serve the rail stations, there are park-and-ride services and you can bicycle there. All the joint development plans call for additional parking, too."
As Metro pursues the 30/10 Initiative to accelerate construction of a dozen transit and highway projects, Littman said he expects further reductions in traffic congestion.
Already, more than 20,000 people ride the east-west Orange Line busway across the San Fernando Valley, many of whom catch the Red Line to downtown and other locations.
The California Center for Innovative Transportation at the University of California at Berkeley conducted a study in 2005 that found the line has made a "measurable difference" in traffic congestion, Metro spokesman Dave Sotero said.
Regardless of the Red Line's impact on traffic, Littman said riding the train has many other benefits, including saving money.
A study released June 17 by the American Public Transportation Association found people who ride public transportation save an average of $9,330 annually in vehicle and parking expenses.
In Los Angeles, the average savings are $10,163, or $847 a month.
"If I'm going to Staples Center, I always park at North Hollywood and ride the Red Line because I know I'm going to get to the game on time and won't have to spend 15 or 20 minutes looking for a parking space I'll pay $10 or $20 for," said Bart Reed, executive director of The Transit Coalition. "Riding the train is healthy, too, because you get to do some walking."
Articles 3
The push is on to improve existing lines, add new ones.
To many motorists in Los Angeles, traffic seems to fit the phrase Mark Twain once used about the weather: Everyone talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.
Even as billions have been spent over the years on transit projects, frustrated drivers continue to sit in bumper-to-bumper congestion on the 405 and 101 freeways every day, and wonder why things never seem to get better.
But local officials insist they have been doing something about it, and they have even bigger plans in store.
With the Red Line subway this month marking its 10th year of operating in the San Fernando Valley, local agencies continue pushing for more projects to improve the subways and local transit.
Most of those will be funded by Measure R, the half-cent per dollar sales tax approved by voters in November 2008 that is expected to generate $40 billion over 30 years.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has been actively lobbying the federal government to accelerate the $40 billion so the work can be done in just 10 years, in what he has dubbed his 30-10 initiative.
"Mayor Villaraigosa has made this one of his top priorities," spokeswoman Lisa Hansen said. "Measure R includes projects for the 405 corridor that are being defined.
"If we are successful in implementing 30-10 and getting all the projects rolling, we will be able to begin environmental work soon and include studies of a subway as well as surface, above-grade and other
options."Also, work is under way to extend the Orange Line from Canoga Park to Chatsworth.
The Valley busway has proven to be one of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's most popular programs, with more than 23,000 daily boardings. Plans call for adding four stations and developing more bikeway and pedestrian paths.
"It has been terrifically successful," Hansen said. "It connects to the Red Line and has allowed us to expand service without adding more subways."
Deputy Mayor Jaime De La Vega, who oversees transportation issues, said a number of projects are in the works for the Valley to complement the Red Line and Orange Line.
"The mayor and the City Council, along with the MTA board, have authorized environmental study on an Orange Line-like busway on Van Nuys Boulevard to provide a north-south artery," De La Vega said.
The $2.5 billion project has money earmarked from Measure R and would be completed in 2040.
Measure R also set aside $1billion for initial studies of improvements through the Sepulveda Pass to the Westside along the 405 Freeway corridor. However, no decision has been made on what exactly will be involved.
"The project would provide a rapid transit option to improve traffic flow between the Westside and the San Fernando Valley," Metro spokesman Dave Sotero said, adding a link is planned with the "Subway to the Sea" program that would extend the subway through the Westside to the Pacific Ocean.
"We haven't begun to study what transit service would best meet the requirements, but the idea is to provide some kind of transit service to connect the Orange Line Sepulveda station with the planned Westside subway extension project in Westwood."
De La Vega said all options are being considered, from using the car-pool lanes on the freeway to a subway to hook up to the Subway to the Sea in West Los Angeles.
Sotero said officials are analyzing various locations in Westwood for a station. The goal is to bring in workers from the Valley to the Westside, but also students to UCLA.
Beyond the Sepulveda Pass project, the state is also looking at plans for the high-speed rail program approved by voters.
The High Speed Rail Authority is still in the preliminary phases of its work and has been looking at stations in Sylmar and Burbank, with some speculation it might be located at Bob Hope Airport.
De La Vega said whatever is decided, officials know there will be at least one San Fernando Valley station for the high-speed rail.
One advantage of having a station is the amount of development that is triggered in the area, much like when the railroads first came West.
"Transit-oriented development has helped revitalize major areas of Los Angeles," Sotero said. "We have seen it throughout the subway line, including at Hollywood and Highland, Hollywood and Western, Wilshire and Vermont and Wilshire and Western."
Hollywood, for example, has seen the opening of the W Hotel and surrounding ground floor retail.
In the San Fernando Valley, Sotero said there have been plans for a major Universal City project, while North Hollywood has seen the opening of new residential, retail and commercial developments.
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