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Post by masonite on Mar 9, 2015 17:30:14 GMT -8
I figure the state would pony up 1 billion and the feds would match it, combine with the measure r money and you're there. Very doubtful the State would kick in anywhere near this amount of money and most likely it would be close to $0. The state road fund is insufficient for even maintenance now with no new funding in sight. Cap n Trade funds cannot be used for building more freeways so that is out.
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Post by johanragle on Mar 10, 2015 10:32:20 GMT -8
Does anyone think that a real BRT option could be on the table? As of right now, the description of the proposed BRT sounds like just another Rapid route along Atlantic. There should be enough funds in Measure R that Metro could develop something more like the Orange Line or the sbX Green Line along that route. But will they?
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Post by culvercitylocke on Mar 10, 2015 12:57:38 GMT -8
I can't imagine the brt or light rail will pencil out ridership wise.
Too bad they can't just build the surface freeway.
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Post by johanragle on Mar 10, 2015 14:18:32 GMT -8
The surface route would be good for relieving the surrounding freeway bottlenecks, but as much as I used to facepalm at the South Pasadena NIMBYs who blocked it, I'm starting to agree with them. We don't need yet another ugly gash in the landscape, and for all the arguments that we need it to relieve the trucks, a better rail link between the inland ITFs and the port would do a lot more to remove trucks from the freeways. Going back to BRT, it looks like Rapid 762 currently attracts about 4,500 annual riders. Contrast the current BRT plan with Rapid 762's route. They've basically extended 762 east into Pasadena along Del Mar and Colorado, which might help attract commuters since that area between Lake and Hill is home to many corporate offices as well as PCC. 762 as of right now only serves Old Town Pasadena, which seems somewhat pointless since that's not a big jobs center. It also offers no connection to the northern side of the Gold Line. As for the southern end, I'm not sure what to make of the disconnect between the Green Line and 762. Right now 762 ends at Artesia Transit Center, so if you want to connect to anything along the Green Line you first have to hop through the Blue Line and backtrack. Why Metro and Caltrans didn't add an Atlantic Ave station is beyond me, but I guess they figured it would be too close to the Long Beach Blvd station. Looking at the plan for two-way dedicated bus lanes along Huntington and Fair Oaks, another thought struck me. Why not leverage the construction investment to put two Rapid routes in? Extend 762 north as planned, but have it connect to the Green Line at Atlantic, continue south to Willow Station, then maybe along Willow/Lakewood/PCH to terminate at CSULB since that college has been sorely lacking a good transit connection. Then add a new Rapid route, let's call it 763. Use part of the current 751/760 routing along Soto and Long Beach to connect it to Artesia Station (or even Harbor Gateway), then extend it from Soto to Huntington and up Fair Oaks. Both routes would run the full Pasadena loop as shown.
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Post by johanragle on Mar 11, 2015 10:33:06 GMT -8
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Post by Gokhan on Mar 11, 2015 11:19:13 GMT -8
Freeways have been LA's main problem. If they want to reduce traffic, they should get rid of some of the existing freeways and make some of them toll. It doesn't look like LA will ever become a transit city. It seems to be repeating its problems over and over.
If they didn't have freeways, people wouldn't live so far from their jobs and housing prices would start becoming more meaningful and poor neighborhoods would start improving. It would also eliminate a lot of unnecessary, leisure driving.
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Post by johanragle on Mar 11, 2015 12:07:43 GMT -8
Here's a quick Google map sketching out some ideas for three possible Rapid routes that extend current Metro lines, and would provide complementary north/south service for the SGV paralleling the 710. I would imagine that it should be possible to at least implement partial bus lanes for the congested portions of these routes, as well as upgraded shelters throughout, using the existing SR-710 measure R funds. Thoughts?
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Post by masonite on Mar 11, 2015 12:13:38 GMT -8
Freeways have been LA's main problem. If they want to reduce traffic, they should get rid of some of the existing freeways and make some of them toll. It doesn't look like LA will ever become a transit city. It seems to be repeating its problems over and over. If they didn't have freeways, people wouldn't live so far from their jobs and housing prices would start becoming more meaningful and poor neighborhoods would start improving. It would also eliminate a lot of unnecessary, leisure driving. I agree to some degree. The overall bigger issue is that LA hasn't really fully embraced transit as a way of life and it looks at it more as a sideshow. For example, new development still requires huge amounts of parking even if right on top of a transit station. As long as you make people pay for the real estate of an expensive underground parking space, you pretty much guarantee that they are going to own a car and use it instead of transit. In the Bay Area, they broadcast as part of their traffic reports, an update on their transit lines if any are running late or have issues. Here in LA, we don't even have a sign on the Freeway for the Expo Line. I saw the ridership numbers for Jan. and they are awful. All rail lines are falling and bus ridership is down quite a bit too. Expo is now below 30k. Maybe we are just in a down period with all the construction, but right now it seems like LA is not moving forward, but I think this will change some in 2016 as new projects both big and small come on line.
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Post by Gokhan on Mar 11, 2015 15:55:11 GMT -8
I saw the ridership numbers for Jan. and they are awful. All rail lines are falling and bus ridership is down quite a bit too. Expo is now below 30k. Maybe we are just in a down period with all the construction, but right now it seems like LA is not moving forward, but I think this will change some in 2016 as new projects both big and small come on line. January is still in the holiday period and Expo is doing OK at 30,137. However, it looks like it has stopped increasing. February should give us a good idea of where it is. I think it has stabilized in low 30k. The 27k Phase 1 estimate was laughably low and I won't really consider $30k ridership a big accomplishment -- it's an accomplishment but not a big one. Most other lines seem to have been hurt by cheaper gas. Gold Line seems to be doing very well though. I often run into poor and/or young people on the Expo Line who complain about having to take the train, and they say that they are trying to buy a car so that they won't have to take the train. This summarizes the car culture in Los Angeles. It's sad but that's how things are around here. Most people -- rich or poor -- want to get into a car. Few people, who can't afford to drive or find the public transit convenient for one reason or another, use the public transit.
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Post by masonite on Mar 11, 2015 16:40:47 GMT -8
I saw the ridership numbers for Jan. and they are awful. All rail lines are falling and bus ridership is down quite a bit too. Expo is now below 30k. Maybe we are just in a down period with all the construction, but right now it seems like LA is not moving forward, but I think this will change some in 2016 as new projects both big and small come on line. January is still in the holiday period and Expo is doing OK at 30,137. However, it looks like it has stopped increasing. February should give us a good idea of where it is. I think it has stabilized in low 30k. The 27k Phase 1 estimate was laughably low and I won't really consider $30k ridership a big accomplishment -- it's an accomplishment but not a big one. Most other lines seem to have been hurt by cheaper gas. Gold Line seems to be doing very well though. I often run into poor and/or young people on the Expo Line who complain about having to take the train, and they say that they are trying to buy a car so that they won't have to take the train. This summarizes the car culture in Los Angeles. It's sad but that's how things are around here. Most people -- rich or poor -- want to get into a car. Few people, who can't afford to drive or find the public transit convenient for one reason or another, use the public transit. I must have seen prelim. numbers, because the ones they have posted now are better than what was reported in their transit data earlier. Yep, we have a long way to go. I still think once you build transit that beats the timing of a car like Phase II will be in certain instances and the Purple Line once it goes to Westwood, the culture will change somewhat.
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Post by culvercitylocke on Mar 11, 2015 18:22:01 GMT -8
I saw the ridership numbers for Jan. and they are awful. All rail lines are falling and bus ridership is down quite a bit too. Expo is now below 30k. Maybe we are just in a down period with all the construction, but right now it seems like LA is not moving forward, but I think this will change some in 2016 as new projects both big and small come on line. January is still in the holiday period and Expo is doing OK at 30,137. However, it looks like it has stopped increasing. February should give us a good idea of where it is. I think it has stabilized in low 30k. The 27k Phase 1 estimate was laughably low and I won't really consider $30k ridership a big accomplishment -- it's an accomplishment but not a big one. Most other lines seem to have been hurt by cheaper gas. Gold Line seems to be doing very well though. I often run into poor and/or young people on the Expo Line who complain about having to take the train, and they say that they are trying to buy a car so that they won't have to take the train. This summarizes the car culture in Los Angeles. It's sad but that's how things are around here. Most people -- rich or poor -- want to get into a car. Few people, who can't afford to drive or find the public transit convenient for one reason or another, use the public transit. I think you're underestimating the utility of a car to an individual, overestimating transits utility to any individual, and overlooking that a car can be the best way to improve ones quality of life. When I finally got a car I was able to take better paying jobs and gained two to three hours of leisure time back per day. And riding the bus was miserable hell. The trains were pretty great, but I didn't get to take them often. But I'm sure being shackled by transit is something many people enjoy and I'm just an outlier. It's worth remembering transit is a collective action problem, which drives most of the resistance towards investing in it. The 710 tunnels are a pretty good idea that would offer the most utility to the most people, a single day on the freeway would serve more people than would ride the train alternative in a month, yet the train is nearly as expensive for far less utility and use.
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Post by johanragle on Mar 12, 2015 8:13:52 GMT -8
The 710 tunnels are a pretty good idea that would offer the most utility to the most people, a single day on the freeway would serve more people than would ride the train alternative in a month, yet the train is nearly as expensive for far less utility and use. Good idea, horrible execution. If they were going to be built, it should have been done back in the freeway boom before Prop 13 was rammed through. Now it's just a $5 billion band-aid fix for a system that's bursting at the seams. Fixing the LA freeways is going to take a lot more than a tunnel under South Pasadena. We're going to have to somehow get legislation in the Federal government allowing conversion of existing lanes to HOT - no more of this "widen the freeway to add carpool/toll lanes" madness. I would even go so far as to argue that all freeways in the Southland should have only 2 free lanes - toll the rest and use the extra money to put transit through the HOT lanes, much like the Silver Line. Libertarians be damned; taxpayers paid for and built the freeways back in the 1970s, taxpayers (including transit riders!) have been paying for ongoing maintenance ever since. There's nothing free about a freeway, much less any reason why motorists should get a free pass to use them when the gas tax revenues don't even come close to making up the shortfall. I don't think it's fair to sock every consumer in LA with $5 billion in sales taxes for a freeway tunnel that will, at most, relieve a little bit of traffic in the Pasadena area. Better to use existing Measure R funding to improve bus services in the San Gabriel Valley - which has been very shortchanged by projects so far - than beg for more money for this. I think I'm in agreement on LRT for this route, however. It's duplicative and LA needs a better grid, not more isolated short-line systems.
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Post by culvercitylocke on Mar 12, 2015 14:56:36 GMT -8
The 710 is the backbone out of the port. If it can get all the way to the 210, that will take pressure off the 405, 10, and 5 freeways. It will probably do more to ease congestion than any other freeway project.
It may also help relieve some minor congestion in the area as you suggest but that's a minor plus. This is mainly about making the freeway system less deliberately crippled and disfunctional by closing the most significant gaping wound.
It's like if the subway didn't go to union station but started at 7th metro, it's a regional connector type of gap filling, direly needed piece of crucial, missing infrastructure.
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Post by johanragle on Mar 12, 2015 15:07:39 GMT -8
As I've said before, I feel like we're going about this entirely the wrong way. Right now, freight rail shipments in and out of the port are bottlenecked by very limited intermodal facilities at and near the port. This has resulted in huge amounts of heavily polluting truck traffic along the 710 to service BNSF and UP's inland intermodal facilities.
Instead of pouring more money into a tunnel connector - which by its nature may even preclude certain truck traffic due to "security concerns" - we should instead try to push forward on expanding the intermodal facilities by the port so trucks can make shorter trips (and possibly even allow electrification of the trucks as mentioned in the Port's long range plans). Further upgrades to the Alameda Corridor would also help, including electrification. And the impact will be far greater than the tunnel - removing even a fraction of those trucks from the 710 will result in a major change in air quality through the entire region.
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Post by rubbertoe on Mar 12, 2015 16:20:30 GMT -8
As I've said before, I feel like we're going about this entirely the wrong way. Right now, freight rail shipments in and out of the port are bottlenecked by very limited intermodal facilities at and near the port. This has resulted in huge amounts of heavily polluting truck traffic along the 710 to service BNSF and UP's inland intermodal facilities. Instead of pouring more money into a tunnel connector - which by its nature may even preclude certain truck traffic due to "security concerns" - we should instead try to push forward on expanding the intermodal facilities by the port so trucks can make shorter trips (and possibly even allow electrification of the trucks as mentioned in the Port's long range plans). Further upgrades to the Alameda Corridor would also help, including electrification. And the impact will be far greater than the tunnel - removing even a fraction of those trucks from the 710 will result in a major change in air quality through the entire region. You mean like the GRID project, linked to on our very own website: www.thetransitcoalition.us/nationaltc/ntc_grid.htmlBart, has anyone ever done a comparison to see what something like this would cost versus building the 710 tunnel? Maybe the solution is the "do nothing" alternative, and then find the funds to get all the truck container traffic onto electrified rail right at the port, all the way to Victorville? Europe (particularly Germany) is filled with electric freight trains. While sitting on the platform in Darmstadt a few years ago, electric freight trains were screaming through the terminal every couple of minutes. RT
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Post by masonite on Mar 12, 2015 16:29:29 GMT -8
The 710 is the backbone out of the port. If it can get all the way to the 210, that will take pressure off the 405, 10, and 5 freeways. It will probably do more to ease congestion than any other freeway project. It may also help relieve some minor congestion in the area as you suggest but that's a minor plus. This is mainly about making the freeway system less deliberately crippled and disfunctional by closing the most significant gaping wound. It's like if the subway didn't go to union station but started at 7th metro, it's a regional connector type of gap filling, direly needed piece of crucial, missing infrastructure. Except it doesn't work like that in reality at all. You build more freeways and all you get is more people driving and more traffic elsewhere in the region. Take the $1.1B 405 project just completed. It not only hasn't reduced traffic on other freeways like the 101, it hasn't even reduced traffic on the 405 as times have been reported as being even slower than before the project. Building in one part of the system only serves to put pressure in other parts of the system. This has been proven over and over again in LA with disastrous results in traffic.
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Post by fissure on Mar 12, 2015 18:54:24 GMT -8
Having 2 free lanes on the freeway doesn't solve the weaving problem of carpool lanes. Unless you have separate access ramps, things will flow much more smoothly if all lanes are created equal. There are already free lanes that run parallel to the tolled lanes the freeways should have: they have names like Figueroa, Sepulveda, Ventura, Valley, and San Fernando.
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Post by culvercitylocke on Mar 12, 2015 20:57:47 GMT -8
The 710 is the backbone out of the port. If it can get all the way to the 210, that will take pressure off the 405, 10, and 5 freeways. It will probably do more to ease congestion than any other freeway project. It may also help relieve some minor congestion in the area as you suggest but that's a minor plus. This is mainly about making the freeway system less deliberately crippled and disfunctional by closing the most significant gaping wound. It's like if the subway didn't go to union station but started at 7th metro, it's a regional connector type of gap filling, direly needed piece of crucial, missing infrastructure. Except it doesn't work like that in reality at all. You build more freeways and all you get is more people driving and more traffic elsewhere in the region. Take the $1.1B 405 project just completed. It not only hasn't reduced traffic on other freeways like the 101, it hasn't even reduced traffic on the 405 as times have been reported as being even slower than before the project. Building in one part of the system only serves to put pressure in other parts of the system. This has been proven over and over again in LA with disastrous results in traffic. I drive the 405 every day. It moves much better post construction. And freeway construction does not create more driving, freeway construction often allows latent demand to be met, this creates the false impression that freeways cause more driving. I used to live on green valley circle in 2006, to get to Santa monica I would take lincoln. Now I work in the same area of office parks and take the 405 to Santa monica because it's faster and Lincoln sucks. The freeway allows a latent demand for a lincoln alternative to be met. That's probably a net positive to pull congestion of pass through traffic off surface streets and onto the more efficient and larger capacity freeway.
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Post by johanragle on Mar 13, 2015 6:18:27 GMT -8
You mean like the GRID project, linked to on our very own website: www.thetransitcoalition.us/nationaltc/ntc_grid.htmlBart, has anyone ever done a comparison to see what something like this would cost versus building the 710 tunnel? Maybe the solution is the "do nothing" alternative, and then find the funds to get all the truck container traffic onto electrified rail right at the port, all the way to Victorville? Europe (particularly Germany) is filled with electric freight trains. While sitting on the platform in Darmstadt a few years ago, electric freight trains were screaming through the terminal every couple of minutes. RT You know what's funny? I was in a discussion of this very same issue over on Reddit and was trying to find the page for the GRID project. It's too bad they haven't registered a proper domain (or done any kind of search engine optimization for that matter) - their homepage is just too difficult to find on its own if you don't remember what the project was called. So yes, GRID is exactly what I had in mind, but even alternatives like BNSF's proposed Carson intermodal yard would go a long way toward solving the problem. (The Long Beach NIMBYs opposed to that project need a swift kick in the ass, too.) As far as not using the Measure R funds, since $700 million in funding is "set aside" for the 710 project, can that money be repurposed elsewhere? Because I think that using $250 million for BRT improvements (especially if it can result in 3 extended Rapid lines for the San Gabriel Valley as I suggested) and then putting some of the remaining $500 million toward study of the GRID project and other port-related congestion improvements would be highly worthwhile.
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Post by masonite on Mar 13, 2015 7:14:09 GMT -8
Except it doesn't work like that in reality at all. You build more freeways and all you get is more people driving and more traffic elsewhere in the region. Take the $1.1B 405 project just completed. It not only hasn't reduced traffic on other freeways like the 101, it hasn't even reduced traffic on the 405 as times have been reported as being even slower than before the project. Building in one part of the system only serves to put pressure in other parts of the system. This has been proven over and over again in LA with disastrous results in traffic. I drive the 405 every day. It moves much better post construction. And freeway construction does not create more driving, freeway construction often allows latent demand to be met, this creates the false impression that freeways cause more driving. I used to live on green valley circle in 2006, to get to Santa monica I would take lincoln. Now I work in the same area of office parks and take the 405 to Santa monica because it's faster and Lincoln sucks. The freeway allows a latent demand for a lincoln alternative to be met. That's probably a net positive to pull congestion of pass through traffic off surface streets and onto the more efficient and larger capacity freeway. Here is one of many articles showing no improvement. I work with quite a few people who use the Sepulveda Pass to commute into West LA and they say there has Ben no improvement as well. www.laweekly.com/news/11-billion-and-five-years-later-the-405-congestion-relief-project-is-a-fail-5415772
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Post by johanragle on Mar 13, 2015 7:56:44 GMT -8
I think culvercitylocke is under the impression that it's better than it was during the construction period, which it is. However, compared to traffic from before the construction period started, it still takes the same amount of time to get through the congestion - the only "improvement" is that more cars get through in that same amount of time.
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Post by culvercitylocke on Mar 13, 2015 10:22:49 GMT -8
Yes it's better than during construction. let's go LA has good graphs about traffic volume over time.
It's also worth remembering that if the expanded freeway is moving more cars but the average speed is the same, that's a traffic improvement.
Not to mention you need to regress.out variables like economic growth and contraction and population growth or you won't see the improvement.
If traffic stays the same despite ten years of population growth that's a traffic improvement.
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Post by masonite on Mar 13, 2015 11:48:02 GMT -8
Yes it's better than during construction. let's go LA has good graphs about traffic volume over time. It's also worth remembering that if the expanded freeway is moving more cars but the average speed is the same, that's a traffic improvement. Not to mention you need to regress.out variables like economic growth and contraction and population growth or you won't see the improvement. If traffic stays the same despite ten years of population growth that's a traffic improvement. That increased volume on the freeways has to get on and off the freeway too. The streets intersecting with the 405 are overburdened as Santa Monica, Wilshire, Sunset, Olympic and more back up for miles every afternoon. Adding more volume on the freeway just adds more cars to these roads, which has been a disaster.
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