One million trees, greenest city in America, 12-2 building permit process, they all have one thing in common: They are all empty political slogans put forward for the mayor’s political advantage without any intention or ability to deliver them.
You can add to that list subway-to-the-sea and 30/10, which are far more sinister, costly and destructive.
Measure R was the mayor’s greatest fraud, another half-percent sales tax increase on top of the 1 percent the public has generously supported to improve what is one of the worst big city public transit systems, if not the worst, in America.
Transit systems are supposed to move people from one point to another efficiently. They are efficient to the degree that the price is right and buses, trains, subways, shuttles connect with each other with short wait times.
The MTA system doesn’t do that. There simply is poor inter-connection between the various lines and long wait times — a problem that has gotten worse as bus lines and frequency have been reduced, most dramatically by the drastic 5 percent cut now being implemented to save $30 million.
Even the trains and subway lines don’t connect, which is why the downtown connector is the single most valuable project that is on the drawing boards
From its conception, critics have called the rail system the subway-to-nowhere (except downtown) because it doesn’t deliver people to the airport, Coliseum, Hollywood Bowl or other major venues.
Its purpose was to spur downtown development, to allow developers to make tens of billions of dollars in profits from skyscraper project subsidized by the public through the Community Redevelopment Agency.
Even as light rail lines have been extended, total traffic on the MTA remains only slightly above the million passengers achieved decades ago with more than 80 percent using buses, not trains.
The only time that number changed was in the mid-1980s when fares were cut in half for a year and the number of passengers doubled.
If MTA officials had followed through on what they learned from that experiment, we now would have less traffic congestion and a vast network of bus lines, busways, rapid buses moving people from where they are to where they want to go and could be adding trains where the cost and lengthy time of construction justified them.
A case in point is how city and county elected officials, took advantage of a small constituency’s objections, and broke the promise to build a subway across the San Fernando Valley.
Instead, the Valley got an anagram of subway — a busway — in three years at a fraction of the cost of light rail or subway and passenger use is twice what was predicted while rail lines carry fewer people than projected.
If busways had been built on the Expo line and in other high-traffic areas, we would now have a system that works for people and could be in the process of upgrading segments to rail..
Instead, we’re taking the money saved from this round of service cuts and putting it into a rapid bus line down Wilshire Boulevard — except in this area of the hoi polloi in Westwood — and then we’re going to replace it with a subway that will take years and never get to the sea at all.
The Valley, the South Bay and other parts of the county are getting little or nothing from Measure R and 30/10, the plan to get the federal government to front the tax revenue from the sales tax increase to speed up construction.
All the projects planned will never be built before the money runs out so they will be coming back for yet another tax increase when that happens even though the half-percent is still being paid off for 20 more years.
What they are building is not a public transit system.
It is a boondoggle for contractors, lobbyists, construction unions and all the rest who profit from these major public works projects and it will only open the door to massive densification on the Westside and wherever else there’s a train or subway stop.
The MTA’s own studies show traffic congestion will only be worse when all these billions are spent and construction completed..
Nothing is going to stop this train from running over us but we should all be clear: We need a transit system that works now and we’ll need it even more in 10, or 20, or 30 years from now.
Yesterday, the MTA cut another five percent of its bus routes. Maybe their reasoning was sound, like low ridership, so they’re adding those buses to the higher ridership lines.
Now put that together with jury duty.
People without a car and no public transportation can’t mail in their predicament when they’re summoned for jury duty.
They are still require to make the trek to wherever they’re summoned to tell the numbnuts who organize jury pools that they CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE!
MTA and it’s huge staff and salaries have been under the radar for too long. They have been on a great hiring spree with most positions paying over $200,000. This agency has mismanaged out tax dollars forever while providing absymal mass transit. An audit is in order.
Hire fares or HIGHER fares?
One of the finest monuments to the utter failure of the City of Los Angeles’s policy to waive parking requirements on the false assumption that people will use the transit system is in Ed Reyes’ district.
Reyes supported the construction of two huge low and moderate income housing apartments next to the Cypress Park Gold Line station. In a huge gift to the developer, Reyes only required one parking space for each apartment –even the four bedroom apartments. Reyes’ assumption was that low income and moderate income people would locate in these apartments and give up their cars or would come without a car.
Wrong. Oh, so totally wrong. Every night hundreds of cars circle the block around this low income complex as the poor people who did not give up their car search fruitlessly for parking. If only there was parking in the building as required by planning code.
Oh, no. Reyes and Michael Woo claim that such parking is “out-moded”. Really? Let’s make Woo and Reyes live in these crummy apartments and see how long they say that. Jerks.
Sure, it’s a “Subway to Nowhere.” What a crock. Right now Metrorail is the fifth largest urban rail-based mass transit system by length in the USA. Only behind New York, Chicago, Washington and the Bay Area. The Blue Line is the second most ridden light rail line in the USA. Within five years, (with the Gold Line Foothill Extension and the Expo Line) it should pass the bottom two to land in third place, and connect together most job centers in Los Angeles County. (Burbank and Glendale the two most obvious locations not served frequently by rail, but they do have Metrolink commuter trains.)
Once again, more pompous pronouncements by know-nothings. You want to use the subway, why don’t you move out of the Valley? That’s what I did. Face it, The Valley is The Sticks. It would have had light rail if not for the stupidity of the residents, who forced a busway to built where a light rail would have worked better.
Any problems with lack of utility in our rail system have been due to baseless fears by uninformed residents and lack of money.
Measure R was the best thing to happen to this County in years. I pray every night that 30/10 becomes law.
We move several hundred thousand riders per day by rail…yes over one million take buses, but that is because the bus network is larger. Rail is only 79 miles right now.
Sorry you can’t see the forest for the trees.
Before the 1940s, we tried an almost all rail system (Pacific Electric and LARy), and that failed.
After 1963, we tried an all bus system with no rail, and that didn’t work so great either.
Los Angeles had a period of almost 30 years where the various agencies (RTD, LACTC) tried to make it happen, but there isn’t a 100% “catch-all” solution in a city like ours.
I know the subway is expensive, but the same thing was said of BART’s construction in the bay area in the early 70s. Can you imagine San Francisco without it today?
Any buses we buy now, probably 15 years from now will be getting scrapped/sold off. Any rail we invest in now will still be running, look at the 1989 vintage Nippon Sharyo cars on the Blue Line for an example. How many buses from the 80′s does Metro run these days?
I am amused by some comments I read, which are similar to those of Bus Racists Union. I am amused by how racists separate Buses from Subways, thinking that buses are for poor, and subways are for rich. LOL. Come on, guys, get a reality check!
And also – a message to the Bus Racists Union (aka BRU) – who gave you a right to categorize, and separate, people of different races to certain modes of transit?! Don’t you think minorities and people of “color” deserve to ride the subway as well?… etc., etc. I hope most (if not all) people with common sense will agree with me, that public transportation is equally for all, and separating the certain modes per person’s race is simply nonsensical, and racial (that’s why BRU can be clearly classified as Bus Racists Union). One day members of Bus Racists Union will realize about the enormous brainwashing by the BRU leaders; they will realize that their pathetic yellow t-shirts will only embarrass them further.
Now, talking about our (screwed-up) situation… yes, LA is in deep trouble, and latest December 12 service “changes” have done little except reduce (ever further!) service on many bus lines. I was astonished to see intervals to increase to 40 minutes on some of the busiest lines. But, it’s not necessarily MTA’s fault (although in some ways it is), but it’s rather – due to lack of federal and state funding. If any of you are concerned about poor bus (or subway) service, please write to your senator, write to state legislature, but don’t just keep blaming the messenger (i.e. MTA).
In any event, Los Angeles does need a comprehensive Subway & LRT system (which already thankfully started to developed) and improved bus system.
And @ Derek: the Pacific Electric and LARy system in the early 20th century did NOT fail, and there was always high demand for public transportation; the reason it was shut-down is because of the automakers, along with certain interest groups, who decided to create a mega-billion dollar business by shoving into our a**es the “necessity” of car ownership. The auto industry is the 3rd biggest market in the country (after Housing and Drugs/Medicine), thus the government, in collaboration with GM and special interest groups, shut down the rail system, by deciding to create one of the biggest money-makers (automobile industry) on the face of Earth. The rail system did never ever fail, as people of all ages enjoyed the benefit of using rail transit.
The bottom line is, Los Angeles will only find its way out of the traffic quagmire is by re-building a comprehensive Rail system, which will provide a fast, reliable way to commute for all of us.
@ Scott Mercer: well said!!
I totally agree with you.
Ron, you missed this little tidbit of information that you can find on the LACMTA website:
LACMTA’s own ridership statistics shows a decline of over 1,500,000 monthly boardings from November, 2008 to November, 2010. This was before the December, 2010 service “reductions”.
http://www.metro.net/news/pages/ridership-statistics/
The 2008 numbers themselves were declines from earlier years that do not appear on the LACMTA site.
LACMTA rail ridership increased by 300,000 a month in November 2010 over November 2008, solely due to the opening of Linea de Oro.
It would appear however that bus lines in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles were cut (like Line #31) or shortened (like Line #30) after Linea de Oro opened, so much of this is simply a move from bus ridership to rail ridership.
Somebody wrote somewhere (not here) that Public transit would be great if they got rid of all the poor people. I assume that’s the intent.
Measure R stipulates 25% for operating improvements, which equates to 7 to 10 billion dollars over the next 30 years. What are the operating improvements? The current bus and rail system.
Without Measure R, Metro cannot effectively upgrade their fleet, nor buy new buses to increase capacity.
Also, 15% of Measure R goes back to the local jurisdictions for their own transportation projects.
People need to realize Measure R is not soley about building the subway and other rail projects. It helps everyone.
25% of Measure R was indeed intended to provide operations improvements.
But then Sacramento decided to raid all our transit money.
The result? Measure R fills in the hole the state left. If it hadn’t passed, we would have seen the major cuts that other counties saw.