Not Good Enough (http://www.citywatchla.com(

Not Good Enough

05.19.2011

D.J. WALDIE

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Link: http://www.citywatchla.com/lead-stories/1696-not-good-enough

COMMENTARY - SoCal Focus' Matthew Fleischer [link] noted the other day that LA - by some measures - has one of the best public transit systems in the nation. Based on data compiled by the Brookings Institution: [link]

▪ 96 percent of residents of working age in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana Metropolitan Statistical Area have access to public transit. (About 12 million people live in the MSA.) The region ranks second nationally in the percentage of those who have e to option to take a bus or train.

▪ During peak hours of travel, the wait time for the next bus or train ("headway" in transit jargon) is slightly over six minutes.

▪ L.A. has a smaller per capita carbon emission load compared with more car-dependent areas such as Nashville and Oklahoma City because of the region's relatively large number of transit users.

▪ The L.A. region display a lesser degree of "job sprawl" than Chicago and ranks second in the nation for the number of jobs (about 1.5 million) that can be reached by transit in 90 minutes or less.

Good, but not really good enough:

▪ Access doesn't mean convenience. It doesn't even mean likely. Less than 26 percent of workers in the region could get to their current job by public transit in less than 90 minutes (the report's idea of the outer limit for a commuter). Only about 230,000 jobs regionally are reachable within 45 minutes by transit; another 225,000 are reachable in under an hour. But twice as many - slightly more than one million - are at the 90-minute fringe.

▪ As a result, the L.A region ranks a low 69th out of 100 metropolitan for ease of commuting by transit. Worse, the working poor and low-wage earners are those most likely to be inside that 90-minute window. Middle-income wage earners face an even longer and more frustrating commute.

▪ The impressive statistic for frequency - under seven minutes during peak hours - also comes with caveats. L.A.'s 19 transit systems operate more than 500 bus routes, and their buses - not Metro rail - move the vast majority of riders during rush hours. But system operators - including Metro - have steadily reduced bus service over the past three years.

No matter how frequent they are, over-crowded buses make peak-hour trips a brutal endurance exercise. Fewer local routes require more transfers from bus to bus, longer waits at some stops, and longer walks to and from them. Wait times outside of peak hours have increased, too, making transit a poor choice for uses beyond home-to-job commuting.

(Bus riders are hurting in part because the bankrupt state has cut transit funding and in part because Metro has overcommitted to rail construction. Given the politics of transit in Los Angeles, it's no surprise that the big money flows to big construction firms, their lobbyists, and their political fixers rather than to prosaic buses that generate none of that "juice.")

As a transit dependent person, I'm fortunate that I lucked into a middle-class job I could walk to. And like the statistic says, I'm one of the 96 percent that's close to public transit. Long Beach Transit's 192 line stops at the end of my block. It goes nowhere near my job (but does connect to the Metro Blue Line to downtown Los Angeles.) And the 192 is the only Long Beach line I don't have to walk more than a mile to reach.

The Metro 266 local bus stops about a half-mile from my front door, putting it at the theoretical edge of accessible. The 266 stops at the Metro Green Line (famously the train from "nowhere to nowhere") and after nearly two hours, at a Metro Gold Line station on the far eastern end of Pasadena. To connect to any other destination, I would have to a transfer at least once to another bus.

The Long Beach 192 bus runs about every 40 minutes on weekdays. The Metro 266 bus runs every 30 minutes - not the 6.2 minutes of "headway" Brookings statisticians calculated as the peak-time average for all the systems they surveyed. That statistic is true only in downtown cores, not at the edges of system service areas where wait times of an hour are not uncommon.

The Brookings report admits that its methodology has weakness. L.A. transit's good grade is based on really high marks in just two of the study's categories. That's the way of statistics. They describe averages and abstractions. But averages aren't what transit riders experience, and no part of our life is an abstraction.

Mark Twain satirized the limits of statistics in Chapters from My Autobiography, published in the North American Review in 1906: "(T)he remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'"

(D. J. Waldie, author, historian, and as the New York Times said in 2007, "a gorgeous distiller of architectural and social history," writes about Los Angeles every Monday and Friday at 2 p.m. on KCET's SoCal Focus blog. This article was posted first at KCET.org Photo credit: flickr user Josh Shaw. -cw

California Mass Transit: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (citywatchla.com

California Mass Transit: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

05.19.2011

KEN ALPERN

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MOVING LA-The times, they are a-changin’, and despite these troubled times for our region and state we are moving forward with transportation and infrastructure efforts that range from improvements at our ports to our water/energy grid to our rail system. It’s a shame that our urban planning efforts are so misguided (at least at the political/governmental level), but at least the will of the people is being heard (overall) when it comes to wanting better mass transit.
First, the GOOD:

Los Angeles County, for all its traffic problems (and they’re just not going to go away, in large part because we do have such a huge role in our state, national and world economy), is coming up with alternatives to freeways to get commuters out of their cars (and the associated gridlock) and to their destinations in a more rapid and sure method with its current rail plans. In fact, we’re becoming a model for other cities in the country. (Link)

We’ve got three projects that are either being built or about to be built—the Foothill Gold Line, the Exposition Light Rail Line, and the Crenshaw/LAX Line, which will either be built in, or affect, virtually every portion of LA County. In the wings are the Orange Line Busway (count me in as someone who doesn’t value busways as meriting their own colors, but this is big for the San Fernando Valley) and the Downtown Light Rail Connector.

This isn’t just for choo-choo lovers, but for those who want alternatives to freeways—and these three lines (Foothill Gold, Expo and Crenshaw) are meant to be direct alternatives to the 210, 10 and 405 freeways, respectively. Furthermore, there are lots of highway projects going on, from the I-405 (in both the Westside and southeast LA County) to the I-5 (in both the High Desert and at the Orange County border), and everywhere in-between.

In the aftermath of Measure R, we really can’t say our elected don’t give a hoot about our traffic problems.

Now, the BAD:

Despite being viscerally popular with most Californians, the California High-Speed Rail (CAHSR) Project is clearly not “down with the details” on their planning as are Metro’s aforementioned projects when it comes to vetting and routing. The Legislative Analyst up in Sacramento’s not too keen about how the CAHSR Authority’s doing things. (Link)

The LA Times editorial board, still supportive overall of the project, agreed with the Legislative Analyst and recommended building first in urban regions (instead of building the easiest portion of the line to construct in central California) just in case the money dries up. (Link).

They may be right, but at this time—despite the valid concerns of economic deficit hawks and political conservatives—it’s my own guess that the majority of the voters of this state want the whole thing to somehow be built. Whether it’s economically smart or not, this is still the state that rebuffed business concerns about alternative energy last November, so it’s probably best to hold the CAHSR Authority’s feet to the fire, continue the debate…but move forward.

As with Metro’s disjointed rail mass transit system, once it all comes together, the CAHSR will probably enjoy very high ridership and virtually no one will remember or even care about the current controversies.

And, finally, the UGLY:

It was recently reported in the Times that Exposition Park is really turning into a wonderful local/tourist attraction that will extend Downtown’s revival to the south and west, but an unsightly Expo Line will be surrounded by two lines of black fencing, thereby creating an ugly divide between USC and the rest of the park. (Link)

It’s hard to interpret this turn of events, because those of us who’ve followed and/or advocated for this project remember how the leadership of USC—despite the overwhelming support for the Expo Line from both students, alumni and employees alike—opted to be a perpetual drag on the Expo Line in a manner that reflects poorly on these leaders. No names need to be mentioned, but they darn well know who they are, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

The Authority became forced to focus on safety over aesthetics, and now hopefully a more representative leadership of both USC and the local museums will consider ways to beautify or revise the ugly fence and throw in a few beautiful pedestrian bridges to ensure both safety and a more open atmosphere for the USC/Exposition Park site. But it’ll take some local dollars to do that, so to the billionaires at the campus and adjacent museums…tag, you’re it!

Of course, it’s entirely incorrect from both an intellectual and moral standpoint to let the Authority off the hook. They’ve been too hamhanded in how they’ve pursued the line (although considering the waves of opposition they’ve had to encounter just to build the line, perhaps there’s a reason for that ham-handedness), and whether it’s lack of money or being forced into covering themselves legally with respect to safety, they’ve just not put enough into beautifying the line.

Fortunately, in Phase 2 of the line we’ve got Westside leader Jonathan Weiss and the City of L.A. teaming up to create an Expo Greenway between Sepulveda and Overland that involves water reclamation, open space and a wonderful place for Westsiders to enjoy instead of the ugly strip of land we now have there.

Furthermore, the Authority would do well to consider the recommendations of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee to explore the revision of station plans in both Phase 1 and Phase 2 that includes solar panels to power station needs and actually provide shelter for transit riders from both the sun and other elements.

After all, we paid for these projects…so we might as well get the most from our shared investment.

(Ken Alpern is a former Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently cochairs its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at Alpern@MarVista.org. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.) -cw

California Mass Transit: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (citywatchla.com

California Mass Transit: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

05.19.2011

KEN ALPERN

• 
• 
• 

MOVING LA-The times, they are a-changin’, and despite these troubled times for our region and state we are moving forward with transportation and infrastructure efforts that range from improvements at our ports to our water/energy grid to our rail system. It’s a shame that our urban planning efforts are so misguided (at least at the political/governmental level), but at least the will of the people is being heard (overall) when it comes to wanting better mass transit.
First, the GOOD:

Los Angeles County, for all its traffic problems (and they’re just not going to go away, in large part because we do have such a huge role in our state, national and world economy), is coming up with alternatives to freeways to get commuters out of their cars (and the associated gridlock) and to their destinations in a more rapid and sure method with its current rail plans. In fact, we’re becoming a model for other cities in the country. (Link)

We’ve got three projects that are either being built or about to be built—the Foothill Gold Line, the Exposition Light Rail Line, and the Crenshaw/LAX Line, which will either be built in, or affect, virtually every portion of LA County. In the wings are the Orange Line Busway (count me in as someone who doesn’t value busways as meriting their own colors, but this is big for the San Fernando Valley) and the Downtown Light Rail Connector.

This isn’t just for choo-choo lovers, but for those who want alternatives to freeways—and these three lines (Foothill Gold, Expo and Crenshaw) are meant to be direct alternatives to the 210, 10 and 405 freeways, respectively. Furthermore, there are lots of highway projects going on, from the I-405 (in both the Westside and southeast LA County) to the I-5 (in both the High Desert and at the Orange County border), and everywhere in-between.

In the aftermath of Measure R, we really can’t say our elected don’t give a hoot about our traffic problems.

Now, the BAD:

Despite being viscerally popular with most Californians, the California High-Speed Rail (CAHSR) Project is clearly not “down with the details” on their planning as are Metro’s aforementioned projects when it comes to vetting and routing. The Legislative Analyst up in Sacramento’s not too keen about how the CAHSR Authority’s doing things. (Link)

The LA Times editorial board, still supportive overall of the project, agreed with the Legislative Analyst and recommended building first in urban regions (instead of building the easiest portion of the line to construct in central California) just in case the money dries up. (Link).

They may be right, but at this time—despite the valid concerns of economic deficit hawks and political conservatives—it’s my own guess that the majority of the voters of this state want the whole thing to somehow be built. Whether it’s economically smart or not, this is still the state that rebuffed business concerns about alternative energy last November, so it’s probably best to hold the CAHSR Authority’s feet to the fire, continue the debate…but move forward.

As with Metro’s disjointed rail mass transit system, once it all comes together, the CAHSR will probably enjoy very high ridership and virtually no one will remember or even care about the current controversies.

And, finally, the UGLY:

It was recently reported in the Times that Exposition Park is really turning into a wonderful local/tourist attraction that will extend Downtown’s revival to the south and west, but an unsightly Expo Line will be surrounded by two lines of black fencing, thereby creating an ugly divide between USC and the rest of the park. (Link)

It’s hard to interpret this turn of events, because those of us who’ve followed and/or advocated for this project remember how the leadership of USC—despite the overwhelming support for the Expo Line from both students, alumni and employees alike—opted to be a perpetual drag on the Expo Line in a manner that reflects poorly on these leaders. No names need to be mentioned, but they darn well know who they are, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

The Authority became forced to focus on safety over aesthetics, and now hopefully a more representative leadership of both USC and the local museums will consider ways to beautify or revise the ugly fence and throw in a few beautiful pedestrian bridges to ensure both safety and a more open atmosphere for the USC/Exposition Park site. But it’ll take some local dollars to do that, so to the billionaires at the campus and adjacent museums…tag, you’re it!

Of course, it’s entirely incorrect from both an intellectual and moral standpoint to let the Authority off the hook. They’ve been too hamhanded in how they’ve pursued the line (although considering the waves of opposition they’ve had to encounter just to build the line, perhaps there’s a reason for that ham-handedness), and whether it’s lack of money or being forced into covering themselves legally with respect to safety, they’ve just not put enough into beautifying the line.

Fortunately, in Phase 2 of the line we’ve got Westside leader Jonathan Weiss and the City of L.A. teaming up to create an Expo Greenway between Sepulveda and Overland that involves water reclamation, open space and a wonderful place for Westsiders to enjoy instead of the ugly strip of land we now have there.

Furthermore, the Authority would do well to consider the recommendations of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee to explore the revision of station plans in both Phase 1 and Phase 2 that includes solar panels to power station needs and actually provide shelter for transit riders from both the sun and other elements.

After all, we paid for these projects…so we might as well get the most from our shared investment.

(Ken Alpern is a former Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently cochairs its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at Alpern@MarVista.org. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.) -cw

The Difference Engine: Fast track to nowhere (The Economist))

The Difference Engine: Fast track to nowhere

May 20th 2011, 10:32 by N.V. | LOS ANGELES

Link: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/05/high-speed_trains_0

OF ALL the high-speed train services around the world, only one really makes economic sense—the 550km (350-mile) Shinkansen route that connects the 30m people in greater Tokyo to the 20m residents of the Kansai cluster of cities comprising Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto and Nara. At peak times, up to 16 bullet trains an hour travel each way along the densely populated coastal plain that is home to over half of Japan’s 128m people.

Having worked for many years in Tokyo, with family in Osaka, your correspondent has made the two-and-a-half hour journey on the Tokaido bullet-train many times. It is clean, fast and highly civilised, though far from cheap. It beats flying, which is unbearably cramped by comparison, just as pricey, and dumps you an hour from downtown at either end.

The sole reason why Shinkansen plying the Tokaido route make money is the sheer density—and affluence—of the customers they serve. All the other Shinkansen routes in Japan lose cart-loads of cash, as high-speed trains do elsewhere in the world. Only indirect subsidies, creative accounting, political patronage and national chest-thumping keep them rolling.

California wants a share of that bullet-train hubris. Where Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin have turned down billions of federal dollars for high-speed rail, the Golden State has been pressing on with its $43-billion scheme to build a high-speed rail service from Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area, with spurs eventually to San Diego, Sacramento and San Luis Obispo.

The irony is that California has the highest rate of car-ownership in the country, if not the world. It also, despite years of neglect, has one of the best road networks anywhere—certainly leagues ahead of Japan’s. On top of that, it enjoys a highly competitive network of budget airlines serving its main cities. The Los Angeles Times got it about right when it editorialised on May 16th that “California’s much-vaunted high-speed rail project is, to put it bluntly, a train wreck”.

And an expensive one at that. Between them, the federal government, municipals along the proposed route and an assortment of private investors are being asked to chip in $30 billion. A further $10 billion is to be raised by a bond issue that Californian voters approved in 2008. Anything left unfunded will have to be met by taxpayers. They could be dunned for a lot. A study carried out in 2008 by the Reason Foundation and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association put the final cost of the complete 800-mile network at $81 billion.That is probably not far off the mark. Last week, the state's Legislative Analyst’s Office came out with a damning indictment of the project’s unrealistic cost estimates and poor management. The bill this legislative watchdog put on the first phase of the high-speed rail project alone is $67 billion—and higher still if the project runs into trouble gaining route approval in urban areas.

The report warns lawmakers in Sacramento not to appropriate any money for the project until big changes are made in the way it is managed. The biggest such change is to transfer day-to-day operations from the High-Speed Rail Authority (HSRA), set up to oversee the project, to the California Department of Transportation. Caltrans, which designs and manages the state’s major roadworks, is widely respected around the world for its engineering prowess and professionalism.

That has not stopped the HSRA from racing to get construction started by 2012. To be fair to the authority, $3.6 billion of the funding from the federal government is stimulus money earmarked for use before the presidential election in 2012. While it would make more sense to use this cash to make a start on the link between San Francisco and San Jose, the only part of the proposed route not plagued with political infighting is the sparsely populated Central Valley. Besides, the White House has insisted that the stimulus money be used to create jobs within the Central Valley, where unemployment in many farming communities exceeds 20%.

As a result, the first section of California’s high-speed railway, estimated to cost $5.5 billion, will run 65 miles between the tiny towns of Bordon and Corcoran in the midst of the Central Valley’s farmland. When it was announced last December, critics promptly labelled it “the line to nowhere”.

In defending its decision to lay track in the middle of nowhere, the HSRA argues that there is plenty of space there, little resistance from local residents, and that the line from Los Angeles to the Bay Area will eventually have to go through that part of California anyway. The small section of high-speed track will be connected at both ends to existing lines used by Amtrak, the government-owned passenger railway. Conventional trains will run over the new section until the rest of the high-speed route is completed.

Some are beginning to wonder when, if ever, that might be. The eleventh-hour compromise on the federal budget last month stripped out $400m for high-speed rail in the present fiscal year (2010), and eliminated all federal funding for high-speed rail for the forthcoming fiscal year (2011). That puts the $19 billion in grants that the HSRA was counting on receiving by 2016 in doubt. The congressional action could even put the kibosh on the Central Valley track. And because the bond vote in 2008 required the issue to be matched, dollar for dollar, by money from the federal government, the future of California’s bullet train has begun to look decidedly hazy.

The problem in making the case for high-speed rail in California is that, though it is the most populous state in the union, there are simply not enough people packed into the 50-mile wide coastal strip that wends its way 350 miles from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Put it this way: the Shinkansen plying the Tokaido route have access to some 180,000 potential passengers per mile of high-speed track. Even by 2025, when California’s population is likely to have grown from today’s 38m to 46m or so, the number of people within the coastal strip is unlikely to exceed 85,000 per mile of track.

To put it yet another way, coastal Californians would have to live cheek-by-jowl—as Japanese people in the megalopolis that stretches from Tokyo to Osaka do—to have any chance of a high-speed rail service that offered at least half a dozen trains an hour and did not require huge tax-payer subsidies. Few would be prepared to make such a sacrifice. With petrol costing half the price paid in Japan and Europe, they will doubtless continue to use their cars for two-to-three-hour journeys and fly for anything longe

Burbank Had First Monorail in 1911, SaMo Wanted One in 1912 (http://la.curbed.com)

Burbank Had First Monorail in 1911, SaMo Wanted One in 1912

Wednesday, May 18, 2011, by Adrian Glick Kudler

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Image via USC Digital Library

Link: http://la.curbed.com/archives/2011/05/burbank_had_first_monorail_in_1911_santa_monica_wanted_one_in_1912.php

Yeah, it's pretty sad that Los Angeles had and lost a comprehensive mass transit system that linked the whole city and beyond, but it's heartbreaking that we had and lost a monorail and missed the chance for a line running the length of Santa Monica too. The first monorail-ish vehicle was an aerial trolley that ran between Lake and Flower Streets in Burbank, according to Burbank history repository Burbankia. It opened around 1911, the year the city was incorporated and got its first Red Cars, and it was built (and patented) by local eccentric J.W. Fawkes, who owned the land roughly between Victory and Flower, southeast of Olive (which is now home to a bunch of car and RV dealerships and repair places, perhaps ironically).

Image via USC Digital Library

A 1912 article in the LA Times said the Burbank monorail "runs on a trussed rail and is propelled with a fan, operated by a gasolene motor," and could get up to a speed of about 25 miles per hour. But Fawkes claimed that a proposed line in Santa Monica could reach 150 mph, which sounds pretty terrifying.

The Santa Monica City Council backed the Aerial Trolley Company's 1912 effort to build a line running down Fremont Avenue all the way from the ocean to the city's border with Los Angeles, but property owners and the city's Chamber of Commerce opposed the plan. The Burbank line was shut down in the early 1920s.