In the city of Bell, residents finally rose up and threw out the bums who were ripping them off.
In Venice and Eagle Rock, residents mutter about what so many in the San Fernando Valley still yearn for: Seceding from LA and forming their own cities.
The CRA keeps on looting property taxes that could be used to keep libraries and parks open and giving it away to bring sweatshops to town and subsidize well-connected developers to build projects that nobody wants.
The DWP quietly goes about buying up land near downtown, as Joseph Mailander reports in the LA Weekly, on speculation to serve the mayor’s fantasy of a clean tech corridor, whatever that means, in a city with half a million unemployed or unemployable low-skilled workers.
But today we celebrate the triumph of our political leadership: The far-flung subway and light rail system that isn’t a system at all.
It was plagued with corruption and catastrophe during its construction, cost $8 billion and has failed to get more people to use public transit.
Twenty years too late, the LA Times finally gets around today to reporting just what a fiasco it is, quoting transit experts Tom Rubin and James Moore on what they have been telling the world all along: The rail system was built at the expense of the bus system, destroying the critical links that make transit systems effective while driving up fares.
The result is more traffic congestion and lower ridership despite a 20 percent increase in the county’s population.
Yet, the mayor in his desperation and delusion is staging a dog-and-pony show for the TV cameras today near Staples Center — where else? — to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Blue Line between downtown and Long Beach.
The real reason is to promote himself and his plan to build more rail lines, mostly on the hopelessly congested Westside.
The problem with that is the same problem with the whole rail system: It is making the cost of public transit even more expensive and forcing even more cuts in bus service that are needed to connect passengers from train stations to where they want to go.
The only facts you really need to know are that bus use doubled in the 1980s when fares were cut in half and that the construction cost per passenger of the Orange Line Busway across the Valley was a fraction of the cost of the subway and light rail per passenger. In addition, took only three years from conception to operation, not a decade.
Richard Riordan, when he was mayor, understood that the only reason we were building a rail system instead of a transit system that works was to feed the contractors and unions that funded the political system with campaign cash and gifts. .
Only, the Valley, that poor stepchild of the city, got a busway from his efforts and we’re now moving forward on more subways and light rail to feed the contractors and unions instead of going back to the drawing board and figure out how we get more people into public transit because it gets people where they want to go at a cost that gets them out of their cars.
That isn’t going to happen until we take a lesson from the residents of the city of Bell and throw the bums out.
JOIN THE LA CLEAN SWEEP CAMPAIGN (lacleansweep.com) TO ELECT BETTER PEOPLE FOR A GREATER LA
You’re right on this one Ron. No one rides the Gold Line and yet no one wants to bring it up especially the council members. I want to know since when did the CRA become a banking system loaning out money to grocery markets in poor areas to help them buy refridgeration? What about the businesses that have taken a huge hit because of the economy? I’m sure they could also use some of that “Grocery Loan Money”
No one rides the Gold Line? I do, every work day. Luckily I get on early enough in Pasadena that I get a seat. A stop or two later everyone that gets on stands all the way downtown. The cars are packed just about every day during commute hours by the time we get to Union Station. It’s pretty much the same story going home.
Consider this: People don’t like to be in close proximity of complete strangers – especially strangers with poor hygiene…thus the reason why I avoid public transportation at all costs.
OMG!!! 10:26am no doubt a council staffer. All anyone has to do is watch the Gold Line when it passes and see all the empty seats. Its been mentioned at numerous community meetings all the hassle and construction that hurt businesses for two years and then come to find out it was all for nothing cause its not being used. The article in today’s LA Slimes states it clearly.
Yours truly advocated bus rapid transit precisely because it is much more cost-efficient than subways.
If we replaced street parking with off-street parking along major boulevards, we could have dedicated bus lanes and move people rapidly and economically, NOW rather than 30 years from now.
Here’s my old video re same — and yes, I know, it doesn’t have Hollywood production values, and I don’t care:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG_m1RyILMQ
Unbelievable that you Clean Sweep people can actually be railing against any kind of railways, including the decades-overdue light rail Expo Line which will finally connect downtown to Santa Monica (if Damion Goodman and his crowd crying “Environmental racism” if the most expensive, below-ground intersections aren’t built, don’t keep delaying it to where costs balloon out of sight) and then, the even more overdue “westside Extension.”
These lines DO and will connect to us lines that you want to expand AT THE EXPENSE OF rails, but are far faster, cleaner and more appealing to all socio-economic strata than the crowded, rickety, buses that pollute and wreck our roads. Just look at EVERY other major city, even many “minor” ones, from the older models of New York, Chicago and Berlin, London or Paris or Moscow or Budapest, to the immaculate newer ones in Tokyo or other Asian cities, or Australia or…
Do you ever LEAVE the Valley, or even L A? Sure doesn’t seem like it. You’re mired in the Valley of the 50′s, no less. (Though many of the “older” subways listed were built way before then, over a hundred years ago in some cases, and are still extensively used, and have kept their cities from being even MORE congested.) With the benefits of current planning and technology, we should be aiming to match the “Newer” models.
My god, you actually reference Riordan as some sort of Old Wise Man – because he showed at your meeting to rail at pensions? I’m sure he’s never been on a bus, and has no idea what he’s talking about. He may be right that there was fraud in previous construction, but it’s idiotic to say that’s why we should forever rely on only buses! Having a fantasy that what worked in the 50′s will work 60+ years later, is just timewarp.
Sure there was cronyism and mismanagement on the building of the subway in the 80′s – our city was defrauded shamefully by a contractor who skimped in materials, so the walls were too thin and collapsed, among other things. The way in which contracts are awarded and the lack of oversight, and yes the fact that unions want as many jobs as possible sometimes at the expense of efficiency, are a problem and THAT is a legit place for you to exert demands for citizen oversight.
Your wanting to prevent us from building clean, much faster, efficient, air-conditioned rail lines which are a pleasant alternative to cars, would only add to the current “hopeless gridlock on the westside” (most of it from drive-through people, from the Valley, eastside, Santa Monica and elsewhere) is so scarily arcane and genuinely reactionary, it shows WHY reactionary groups like SLAP/ Clean Sweep, can be downright dangerous. Even more so than the idiots who are paid to run the city now.
Ron,
You are a little off in your reasoning.
Doesn’t anybody wonder why 30 years ago, the central locus and terminus of all the light rail was planned for downtown?
It had nothing to do with the “unions”.
I am shocked that you have lived in the city for so long and are completely out of the loop as to the real reason we have the gold/red/blue etc all coming into Union Station and also why the CRA is so powerful.
It goes back to the the schism which developed between the old money Pasadena/Downtown WASP establishment (Chandlers etc.) and the nouveou riche Jewish community (Taper, Ahmansons etc.)
The city was changing in the 60s and 70s and the real action was in the valley and the west side.
Downtown was a dump and the old money which owned all the land and buildings were losing out to Century City, Warner Center, suburban malls etc.
Bunker Hill was demolished in the 60s to help pave the way for a new building Renaissance to bolster sliding property values downtown, hence the CRA was created to slice off money to reinvigorate the tired area of Downtown.
Remember the wasps lived in Pasadena and commuted into downtown.
The Jews were excluded from clubs, golf courses etc.,(see Jonathon Club, LA Country Club) but with their newfound money from Hollywood and real estate and financial institutions, they
carved out the “new” Los Angeles in far flung suburbs.
The old money needed to do something to reclaim their power, hence the LA Times (the wasp bluebloods with substantial land holdings in the city) trumpeted along with the LA Chamber and the CRA, the need for light rail and subway transit systems beginning and ending, no surprise, in downtown LA, which at the time had less than 10k people living down here.
You would think that the transit would have been planned and located in more densely populated areas, i.e. the westside or valley, but that clearly was not the purpose of these projects.
Transit systems were built to buoy the stagnant downtown property market and with the CRA as frontman, these lines to nowhere were built.
Of course, this is a highly condensed version of the story and many out there probably think I am crazy, but this is all true.
I mean, why is there Hillcrest CC on the westside? Obviously because Jews were excluded from the other clubs at the time, so they built their own clubs.
Also, if my story is so farfetched, ask yourself this: other than Eli Broad, where was the Jewish support for Disney Hall? and other totems downtown?
Geffen comes to mind, but not much else.
In short, in your zeal to score political points, you automatically railed at the unions.
If you expect to lead LA in a revolt against the entrenched interests, the least you could do is not stoop to their level and scapegoat those that aren’t the primary evil.
As someone who believes in your cause, I expect more from you.
Walter, you want to replace street parking including meters with bus lanes on major thoroughfares: have you considered the REALITIES of the conservative homeowner groups in this city, the very ones likely to get behind Clean Sweep?
The whole premise for the Pico-Olympic partial – and tentative, for one year subject to revision or tweaking based on effectiveness and input – One Way was to ban street parking for just an extra hour during rush hour to allow traffic including buses to move more freely, but residents fought it tooth and nail. Coming up with any number of doomsday scenarios, from the death of small businesses (which are hurt much more by Bill Rosendahl’s “gold in the gutter” quadrupling of meter rates and extending hours) to visions of cars racing through side streets.
Even though this was exactly the scenario that a Rand Corp study said was needed: a short-term and immediate solution while mass transit rail and subway lines were built down the road.
(The leaders of these SAME homeowner groups want literally zero development – because of traffic problems, while they scotch every possible plan.)
Many also object to bus-only lanes for various reasons, like that they only impede car traffic, create danger at intersections because of their wide turns, pothole the outer lanes: the objections go on and on!
You’re showing that you were never remotely qualified to be mayor, because you have no real- world experience dealing with such people, who are not “logical and reasonable” and don’t fit into near plans. A “just say no to anything” is more the order of the day for them. Plus, you sign on to Ron’s notion that “mass transit it bad” (as the Westside White Guy summarizes on his blog today), preserve the car culture at all costs, wave a wand back to the Valley of yore.
The problem with the plan to eliminate parking along Pico and Olympic is that it omitted any alternative parking arrangements.
My proposal was to build off-street parking FIRST, in underground facilities with parks on top — like those used successfully in Europe — and then, only after making the parking available off-street, eliminate the on-street parking.
To ban street parking without providing any alternative would be to kill businesses for mile after mile. That is why people objected.
The problem with the plan to eliminate parking along Pico and Olympic is that it omitted any alternative parking arrangements.
My proposal was to build off-street parking FIRST, in underground facilities with parks on top — like those used successfully in Europe — and then, only after making the parking available off-street, eliminate the on-street parking.
To ban street parking without providing any alternative would be to kill businesses for mile after mile. That is why people objected.
10:46, interesting comments and I think you’re right.
But add to that LATER in the 80′s, when the Westside was established as the new “chic” wealthy area replacing the downtown/ California Club-Jonathan Club, Pasadena old money crowd, now some of THEM didn’t want the unwashed masses from SLA and the Eastside, the poor blacks and Latinos, encouraged to come to and through their neighborhoods. Mainly, the Cheviott Hills crowd. (In truth, the area, including the kiddie play park, has become largely a magnet for areas to the south, and there’s gang graffiti and so on – but they’re coming with or without the subways, by car or by foot – a subway would just mean more THROUGH-traffic, likely towards the ocean.)
The Eastside Latinos meanwhile objected that mass transit should serve the poor instead of the “rich,” even though most of the traffic
through the westside is commuter, much of it from the ethnic poor going to jobs on the westside and Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, etc. Studies then as now, showed the logical route to be more or less along Wilshire, from the eastside to Santa Monica, serving mid-city and Century City, etc., along the way.
Their reverse racism (seen again today from the likes of Gloria Molina and Gloria Romero) fed into the Cheviott HIlls people, who urged Zev to prevent the Red Line from going west, and the methane gas explosion around Fairfax was an ideal excuse. So the Red Line was halted where it is now, run up the Valley, a hugely expensive route that managed to avoid precisely the areas that most needed it.
When the westside zenophobes persuaded Zev to actually ban all mass transit and ask Waxman/ the Congress NOT to fund L A while other cities were getting money like candy, they set us back by decades. NOW Ron wants to continue that tradition.
So we had class warfare- anti-Semitism, replaced by a different kind of race and class warfare, continuing to this day.
What a great dialog! And this is just what is needed downtown. Put aside all of your “conservative HOA” group beliefs, “anti-this or that,” etc., and think about this – this the type of dialog that doesn’t happen downtown. There is no public discourse with an exchange of ideas which often leads to solutions! Instead, the public (as identified by the various commentators) gets fed up having purposely being ignored by elected representatives, and puts that their proverbial feet down because it is virtually impossible to stop the corrupting political influence and monies of the assorted special interests and career politicians which are ruining Los Angeles.
Is that what you want? More of the same? Just join LA Clean Sweep.
Did you know those Bell bums are going to collect yearly pensions in the tune of $600,000 for Rizzo; and approximately 1/2 of his salary of $500,000 for the police chief? Same for one other guy too…
Friday, July 23, 2010 the LOST Angeles City Council is Awaiting A Quorum Again which is customary here in Los Angeles.
The Need to Set Precedent Assistant Pro Tempore Dennis Zine informed constituents of the NO QUORUM expected until 10:30 a.m. as nothing was mentioned on Tuesday or Wednesday’s meetings stating a quorum was not required until 10:30 a.m. It appears Fridays are a come in late to chambers when you feel like it due to NO roll call prior to the two or three hours Presentations and Proclamations.
The Need to Set Precedent Eric Garcetti, Need to Set Precedent Pro Tempore Jan Perry, and Need to Set Precedent Assistant Pro Tempore Dennis Zine should conduct roll call on Fridays, as done on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and PRIOR to the long presentations. This should serve as a small token of exercising transparency.
LA Council members http://www.lacity.org/YourGovernment/CityCouncil/index.htm
This is a great dialog? Really? All the comments race, age and religion etc. makes most of it seem pretty silly too me.
Everyone would like to get from A to B rapidly and economically. In other cities, mass transit carries people of all races and income levels, ages and religions.
It can work here too. But it has to be cost efficient, clean, fast and safe.
It goes back to the the schism which developed between the old money Pasadena/Downtown WASP establishment (Chandlers etc.) and the nouveou riche Jewish community (Taper, Ahmansons etc.)
I liked your analysis, but Howard Sr. was never nouveau riche. He was pretty riche from the moment he hit town, which was good enough.
Have you read just how many accidents have happened on those Metro Lines? Too many in fact that some media don’t report them all. Everyone wants people to get out of their cars in LA and take mass transit. The idiots on council should be setting an example but you’ll only see the gangster Mayor on Metro for a photo op or LaBonge too. LA are lazy and love their cars. Its fine taking mass transit but no one thought logistically of the mess once you get off and need to get to your next destination. Its not as easy as New York or Chicago.
Walter, the Pico-Olympic plan did suggest an alternative: allowing shop customers to park on the side streets during that period, for the ONE HOUR extra during rush hour. But residents objected. IF they really cared about merchants so much and weren’t just looking for excuses, couldn’t they have lived with that, at least tried it out? Your saying you’d build parking structures first is another unrealistic fantasy, in an area where there is no land or money for it now. Yes, that is a goal down the line, or to make arrangements with a private facility. But again, the HOA’s wanted nothing.
Do YOU have any idea where such parking facilities would go – they’d have to be every couple blocks or so for people to use them – and how they’d be paid for? No, more theorizing, removed from the realities of the world.
And you’re proving still again how utterly naive you are, in actually putting down what IS an overall interesting dialogue, because it includes historical realities about “age, race and religion” insofar as they have affected and CONTINUE to affect the building of mass transit in this city.
Meanwhile, ironically, you’re the one who ran a Mayoral campaign based on race and ethnicity and continue to bring them in where NOT appropriate, as at the meeting last Saturday, re: Watts, on top of your nonsense misleading the Shaws that the city’s SO40 policy was responsible for the death of their son. As a LAWYER who wanted to be Mayor, you should surely know that the COUNTY prison system is under the jurisdiction of the COUNTY DA, Republican Steve Cooley, and Sheriff Lee Baca. Whose people are the ones who were proven to have released illegal immigrant, known gangbanger, repeat felon, Pedro Espinoza just because he SAID he was born in the US. Without checking.
And your running mate, David Berger – who clearly represents Trutanich’s views as well, since he used him to campaign and rewarded him with a job – was downright xenophobic to a nutty extent. He even accused Weiss on Mayor Sam of “all but giving out our phone numbers and home addresses to illegal immigrant gangbangers,” in so many words, in order to ensure that illegal gangbangers preyed on “us,” however Berger/ Rumpole defines THAT – clearly, by HIS and YOUR narrow notions of race, class and geography. (Actually, releasing illegal immigrant gangbangers and giving them “our” home addresses would be the modus operendi of YOUR “team,” as in what they did with Pedro Espinoza.)
OF COURSE, you two prefer to bring race into things where they don’t belong and amount to fearmongering and irrational scapegoating, but can’t handle a discussion of the FACTS which must be addressed to move ahead as a city.
As long as the Eastside Latinos, Valley conservatives, Inland Empire Supervisors like Antonovich and Knabe who ALSO joined Molina/ Romero in skewering the westside as “elitist,” — de ja vu all over again, from the 80′s and before — and older folk (wanna bet how many people under 40, or “urban” types of any age, people who have traveled, or who NEED mass transit, agree with you and Ron on the mass transit issue?) continue to play politics of ethnicity, geography and create scenarios of urban vs. suburban ideals as they see it, etc., instead of following rational studies, the polarization that has given L A the most long overdue and stunted (insofar as it exists) “mass transit system” (that isn’t), will continue.
By the way, since you’re such a Francophile, have you asked Parisians how many of them would have happily done without their metro and rail systems?
Thank you all for repeating the history of WASPS vs whoever in LA. Now let’s look at the future. Where did we get the notion that LA must look like “New York, Chicago and Berlin, London or Paris or Moscow or Budapest”. Every city has its unique identity, and LA with its suburban lifestyle, a result of geography and space, with single family homes and yards is an attractive alternative to many of these other cities. We chose to live here because of this life style, and not in those other cities, which are great for a vacation.
Why must we accede to someone else’s vision of what our city should be. It is indeed pseudo- planners, arhcitects, labor unions and politicians who live off the fat, who force high density and the tired argument that public transit requires such density. I’m not advocating against public transit, which should be built, but let it be first built before we allow densities around the lines. This issue requires more thought and discussion than one can comment on here.
If one looks at traffic studies, they show that a relatively small decline or increase in cars can have a huge aggregate impact on traffic.
The best example was the LA Olympics when 15% of the workforce took vacations because of predictive gridlock. As anyone who drove around LA during that time can attest, it was paradise as the freeways were unclogged and free moving.
Similarly, whenever there is a Jewish holiday, the traffic from the westside to downtown on the 10 during a weekday is much quicker.
The point I am making is simple, if we can reduce by 10% the amount of cars on the freeways, the impact is monumental.
But how can this be done?
My suggestion won’t cost any money and would add zero construction to achieve this goal.
Its simple really…every 6 months, each individual in LA must take a bus, car pool,walk, ride a bike or hitchhike to work.
The employer would know in advance, so if one is a few minutes late, it would be understood beforehand.
The impact would be immediate and encouraging.
Traffic would be mitigated without having to add buses or car pool lanes etc.
It would depend on the cooperation and understanding of the public and a little self sacrifice to give up the car every 180 days.
Which is why this plan will never work in our Republican dominated age of me first and fuck everyone else as long as I am happy.
Thank you for letting me share.
Way too much Walter Moore here.
Perhaps it’s because I’m a train fan, but I’d a million times rather have a quiet, clean electric rail line next to my house than a noisy, dirty bus. I’ve lived within feet of a railroad line, and a bus line, and the rail was SO much better.
One other thing … if you think no one rides the rails in L.A., you need to come down to Union Station. The traffic would be so much worse if it weren’t for the Gold Line, the Red Line, the Purple Line, and the Blue Line! And it’s not just the white-collar “elites” either — you’ll see real working people riding the trains, side by side with execs, Assistant DA’s, public defenders, etc. Talk about a great equalizer — I’ve seen burly blue-collar types, still in their uniforms, talking politics with lawyers and teachers.
When the price of gas outstripped the cost of riding the rails, the trains were very crowded. Many people continued to ride, realizing that this was a faster and much more hassle-free way of commuting than taking the bus. Take the bus and you’re still in traffic.
And frankly, the only way people are going to get out of their cars and take public transit is if the advantages of having one’s own car are outweighed by the traffic. It’s how all traffic administration works on a large scale. If a street is too difficult to maneuver, the traffic will disperse to other routes. If we make it easier to drive, no one will ride the rails.
1. Turning residential streets into commercial parking lots is not a solution at all.
2. Yes, actually, I did look into the placement and cost of parking facilities. You could put them every few blocks, and it would cost a FRACTION of what it costs to tunnel under skyscrapers through hydrocarbons. Now, moreover, is a GREAT time for the City to buy real estate and/or obtain it through eminent domain, because property values are low.
3. Measure R specifically authorizes the use of funds collected thereby not just for subways, but also for bus rapid transit. So the funding is available.
4. Why the snotty tone? Are you not capable of having a calm discussion about the pros and cons of policy alternatives? So much anger, and for what? This is not an ideological issue, and even if it were, chillax, baby, chillax!
Oh, I just read the rest of your comments about race, David Berger, the Shaws, etc. Now I get it: You’re one of those crazy, racist angry people who can’t analyze costs and benefits of policy, so you just attack people and call them names.
Inside Opinion: We could have electric buses. Indeed, that technology is pretty old; you power them from a line above. Quiet and clean.
Even before we approved Measure R, people have forgotten that we’d voted a 1/2 cent increase in the 1980s for public transit. Does anyone know what has been accomplished with that money other than to fatten the wallets of MTA employees.
Walter, you’re proving what a jerk you are, the only real racist here which you accuse others of.
Your comment @3:53 proves that you can’t realize how racist you and Berger are, even when your and his words are quoted verbatim. You are the one who accuses those of a rational discussion of the history of racism/ classism in this city, insofar as it has negatively impacted mass transit – and will continue to do so in future, if not rectified – of racism, but you are Berger are irrational, fearmaongering, “snotty” bigots.
You are BOTH “one of those crazy, racist, angry people,” as you unwittingly describe yourselves (without addressing the partisan, demagogic inconsistencies of your positions on leading the Shaws astray, getting them to attack the city democratic leaders and police Chief for your partisan Republican campaign purposes, making them lose valuable momentum when they should’ve been going after the real culprits, your Republican heroes like DA Cooley and Baca).
But because you are “”those crazy, racist, angry people,” so wacko that even your former friends have dropped you both and even Trutanich has sent Berger back where he came from (Cooley’s office, from where he was on loan as campaign attack dog but now, is too unseemly for public consumption) can’t see your reflections in the mirror. You also can’t see how reactionary you are, because reactionaries never do.
I used to think that while you were rightwing, you at least made some logical sense. Sometimes. You’ve proved otherwise.
NO ONE cares what you think. About anything.
As for using Measure R money to build parking lots every couple blocks instead of the mass transit lines people agreed to tax themselves for, “for bus transit” instead, because you think there’s a loophole in the wording: you’re a true master of deceit.
There IS way too much Walter here, but just for the sake of argument, WHAT would be the point of all those public parking lots you want (pt. #2) every few blocks, if NOT to allow people to park near and jump onto mass transit? Are you saying you’d want to create denser thoroughfares that people could walk around once they parked, like a Santa Monica promenade? Using MTA money for these lots INSTEAD of mass transit which gets people OUT of cars for greater distances, makes no sense.
And similarly, using Measure R, clearly intended by the public for mass transit via rail and subway, for “bus rapid transit” INSTEAD, is devious, and foolish.
People who won’t ride noisy, polluting, crowded buses do happily ride rail and subways in every other city, and as Zev says, “if we build it” and do it right “they will come.” And the MTA has been holding numerous public forums for 3 years now, and have a route and detailed plans for the Expo and Subway that look as “right” as they can be within as realistic a budget as they can muster.
So if it were upto you, you’d blow all the Measure R money and then some on parking lots (keeping people in their cars except for a two-block stroll) and buses with NO rail or subway.
Walter, 4:44 is the wacko you were warned about long time back. You’ll waste a lot of productive time arguing with her. She has no job having made money suing the city. Smothering the blogs with her opinions and lies is now her full time job. Just ignore her. And you will soon see an angry retort, cause the woman has no life and never sleeps.
This woman scores over 90% of the comments on Mayor Sam, in case you didn’t know. Any comment against her is not allowed on that site.
They did allow a comment about her, and I’m impressed. Kudos to Mayor Sam. “Mary Cummins is not human. It is a computer system developed to answer and respond to everything that ails the city, except it has not been upgraded for a long time. So it regurgitates whatever limited information it has in its memory. Sometimes, the wires get crossed and it writes as a latino, or some other minority group, sometimes in favor of the Mayor or not. Only part of the original memory still functioning is the pro-Weiss and anti-Trutanich chip”.
Anonymous on July 23, 2010 4:07 PM wrote:
“Even before we approved Measure R, people have forgotten that we’d voted a 1/2 cent increase in the 1980s for public transit. Does anyone know what has been accomplished with that money other than to fatten the wallets of MTA employees.”
Actually TWO 1/2 cent sales tax increases were voted before Measure R. Prop A in 1980 and Prop C in 1990. Now a 1 1/2% transit sales tax.
What has been accomplished? nothing. Millions more cars are on the road and fewer people take public transit in L.A. than before Metrorail. Metrorail subsidies are a black hole billions of taxpayer dollars have/are/will disappeared/is disappearing/will disappear into.