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Post by darrell on Mar 23, 2012 13:50:27 GMT -8
Short version of the Appeals Court hearing this morning: NFSR's John Bowman raised 4 points, but spent all of his time on only the first, the Baseline year. He argued CEQA requires "existing" traffic conditions as the Baseline. The 3 judges (all women) asked a lot about what year and why.
Expo's Robert Thornton and Metro's Ronald Stamm made the points that every California transportation agency does Baseline projections this way, appropriate for big, long-term projects. Expo used official projections from SCAG and the three cities for 2030.
Conclusion was only the "matter will be submitted", but the tentative decision was against NFSR and they didn't seem persuaded by Bowman's answers.
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Post by John Ryan on Mar 23, 2012 16:18:51 GMT -8
Thank you, Darrell
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Post by Alexis Kasperavičius on Apr 17, 2012 11:26:30 GMT -8
"..We find no merit in petitioner's contentions and affirm the judgment."NIMBYs. Now. Officially. Done. Thank you, please come again. --the following transaction has occurred in: Neighbors for Smart Rail v. Exposition Metro Line Construction Authority et al. Case: B232655, 2nd District, Division 8 Disposition date (YYYY-MM-DD): 2012-04-17 Disposition description: Affirmed in full Disposition status as of 2012-04-17: FinalFor more information on this case, go to: appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.gov/search/case/disposition.cfm?dist=2&doc_id=1977893&q=165871&f=397015153-- I can just hear the phone call to their attorney: Terri Tippet: "Well, what do we do now? What's our next step"
Attorney: "Uh, pay my bill?"
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Post by Gokhan on Apr 17, 2012 11:40:10 GMT -8
It's not under but it's over. DISPOSITION: The judgment is affirmed. Respondents shall recover their costs on appeal.Here is the full decision in PDF format. Note that NFSR will try going to the CA Supreme Court next. Chances are that the CA Supreme Court will not take their case.
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Post by metrocenter on Apr 17, 2012 11:57:33 GMT -8
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Post by John Ryan on Apr 17, 2012 12:20:38 GMT -8
Let this be a warning to Beverly Hills
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Post by gatewaygent on Apr 17, 2012 15:07:39 GMT -8
Ha-ha! Let the Cheviot Hills exodus begin! I can just hear these silly people "Oh no! The minorities are coming in droves to steal our chifforobes, vitrolas, 8-track tape players, and betamaxes! Whatever shall we do?"
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Post by rajacobs on Apr 17, 2012 15:31:58 GMT -8
Heck, Cheviot is no more than an upscale tract housing built on former golf courses bought up by real estate interests out to make a buck. It has a terrific walkability potential to Overland/Pico & Pico, Century City, and even Culver City. It has 2 stations at either side: National/Palms & Westwood/Exposition--to get to Santa Monica, Downtown, etc., etc. ...And traffic limits access ON ALL SIDES.
For these reasons alone, I think most in Cheviot are quite in favor of "the train!" ...Most are perplexed at the fear-mongering, silly, snooty signage promoted and sold by gaggles of Chicken Littles declaring the sky is falling. Largely, these are not Angelenos stuck with their heads in the sand yearning for a distant and questionably wonderful past!
Let's stop characterizing Cheviot, as a whole, as filled with myopic, bigoted relics of a thankfully lost era of race and class stratification. Most of the residents are shocked and embarrassed at the insanity of the few who challenged a rail line that never should have been abandoned in the first place!
With the lawsuit behind us, finally, community mislabeling needs to stop, too! ...Looking ahead, I think almost all of the residents of this area--including Cheviot--are looking forward to inaugurating the train: tomorrow for some and in only 11 days for the rest of our community!
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Post by Alexis Kasperavičius on Apr 17, 2012 17:43:00 GMT -8
...Most are perplexed at the fear-mongering, silly, snooty signage promoted and sold by gaggles of Chicken Littles declaring the sky is falling. Except that they used homeowner dues to pay for the lawsuit - and continued to raise funds from residents. If there had been an uproar or an attempt to quash the board by this "perplexed" majority, I would be less keen to paint that neighborhood with such a broad brush. They're going to get some well deserved hard knocks - the hardest of which will be the legal ruling that the homeowner's association now pay all of Metro's legal fees and research costs (in addition to their own attorney fees). Something tells me those fund raising coffees are going to get a whole lot more frequent (and a whole lot less "neighborly").
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Post by rajacobs on Apr 17, 2012 21:06:45 GMT -8
Alexis, my wife's colleague's father is a former president of the Cheviot Homeowner's Assoc. This guy shakes his head at the antics and insanity. He said that when his father was involved it was the same thing (years ago). You know that because the community is an amalgamation, the assoc. we're alluding to does NOT cover a lot of CH. I for one am not in the covered territory.
I agree that it was a terrible thing for the assoc. to purport that challenging Expo was sooo much in the community interest that dues should be used to try to throw a monkey wrench into the works. (But I believe the dues are voluntary, not required!) Though the board talks in the community's name, because of the voluntary nature of the dues, they don't garner much respect.
Whatever costs are allocated to the assoc. will be well-deserved for all the trouble they've created. Perhaps dissolution of the dysfunctional group will be the end result.
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Post by tonyw79sfv on Apr 18, 2012 7:01:14 GMT -8
Ha-ha! Let the Cheviot Hills exodus begin! I can just hear these silly people "Oh no! The minorities are coming in droves to steal our chifforobes, vitrolas, 8-track tape players, and betamaxes! Whatever shall we do?" Betamax FTW! Regarding the lawsuit, it's nice to hear the greater good triumph. Expo FTW!!!!!
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Post by Gokhan on Apr 18, 2012 7:35:15 GMT -8
...Most are perplexed at the fear-mongering, silly, snooty signage promoted and sold by gaggles of Chicken Littles declaring the sky is falling. Except that they used homeowner dues to pay for the lawsuit - and continued to raise funds from residents. If there had been an uproar or an attempt to quash the board by this "perplexed" majority, I would be less keen to paint that neighborhood with such a broad brush. They're going to get some well deserved hard knocks - the hardest of which will be the legal ruling that the homeowner's association now pay all of Metro's legal fees and research costs (in addition to their own attorney fees). Something tells me those fund raising coffees are going to get a whole lot more frequent (and a whole lot less "neighborly"). This is not correct. No Cheviot Hills Homeowners' Association funds were used by NFSR. They gathered the money through their fundraising efforts. Also, rajacobs is quite right that many people in Cheviot Hills support the line. Therefore, there is no need to bash the area. NFSR is comprimised of two different types of people: (1) Those who live very close (adjacent or within a few hundred feet) to the line, who therefore have legitimate concerns and (2) those who live far but oppose it just out of their irrational negative feeling about it. Many people in the Cheviot Hills / Rancho Park area do not fall in either category 1 or 2 and therefore are not members of NFSR. In fact, many are supporters of the line. Also, Rancho Park, as well as the part of Cheviot Hills near the Expo Line, are not rich neighborhoods at all. Home prices there are among the lowest in the Westwide and not different than most other areas in LA.
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Post by roadtrainer on Apr 18, 2012 10:44:21 GMT -8
(quote rajacobs) With the lawsuit behind us, finally, community mislabeling needs to stop, too! That's okay with me, I will quit call Cheviot Hills people Racist Idiots.
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Post by rajacobs on Apr 18, 2012 11:22:27 GMT -8
...actually the demographic of the area is Democratic and l-i-b-e-r-a-l (except maybe NFSR members)!
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K 22
Full Member
Posts: 117
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Post by K 22 on Apr 18, 2012 11:26:40 GMT -8
I've said this for the past year and I'll say it again: watch the Westwood station end up being one of the Top 3 best-looking/usable in the Expo Line. I'm anticipating this station more than any other in Phase 2.
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Post by gatewaygent on Apr 18, 2012 13:45:06 GMT -8
It's really tragic that it takes a small subset (NFSR) to make the rest look like hyperbolic racists. It'll blow over just like it did in South Pasadena all those many years ago. But in the meantime...LOL! Now, onto Phase II! What's the latest and greatest?
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Post by bobdavis on Apr 18, 2012 17:34:46 GMT -8
Regarding the mention of the South Pasadena NIMBY faction: I took the Gold Line into LA today for a preview run on Expo. The train went through S. Pas at speeds well above the 20 mph demanded by the local obstructionists.
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Post by bzcat on Apr 23, 2012 9:59:39 GMT -8
I went to some open houses in Rancho Park and Cheviot Hill yesterday and it was hilarious to observe all the "trains and kids don't mix" sign next to the "for sale" sign.
Even more hilarious... all the real estate agents are talking up the fact that you will be able to walk to the train station in the future but the people who are selling the house are all NFSR nut jobs.
But perhaps the saddest part of the whole experience is the roar of 10 freeway noise that can be heard inside some of these $1 million homes. I always thought that you must be crazy to fight an electric light rail that only comes 8 times per hour and doesn't operate in the middle of the night when you live under a constant roar of car tires noise from the freeway 24 hours a day. Being inside these homes and hearing the freeway noise really did reaffirm my opinion that these people are certifiably crazy.
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Post by rubbertoe on Apr 23, 2012 10:28:07 GMT -8
Being inside these homes and hearing the freeway noise really did reaffirm my opinion that these people are certifiably crazy. Long duration exposure to moderate levels of constant traffic noise has been definitively linked to several mental health problem, and also to impotence and NIMBY'ism RT P.S. I have to agree with you about the hilarity of the "anti-train" movement. People are selling their homes because the "train is going to destroy the neighborhood". And at the same time the agents selling the home are touting the closeness to the Expo Line as a selling point. Netting the NIMBY's more $$$ than they would otherwise have had. I guess it's all about perception. If you think your neighborhood is being destroyed, then it is being destroyed. Localized self-induced unnecessary mass hysteria, like all the cheerleaders in that New York high school that started having involuntary ticks. Big news on the TV a few months ago. A little mental health counseling and they are all fine now. Time to ship those counselors out to Beverly Hills...
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Post by davebowman on Apr 23, 2012 11:00:41 GMT -8
Speaking of trains and kids don't mix, as I've posted before growing up in St. Paul MN in the early 60s (hardly the Wild West era) I and my friends would go down to the local rail yards to play, putting coins on the rails and waiting for freight trains to come by and flatten them. Even at a young age we knew that if we were't on the track at the same time as the trains we'd be okay, so this LA train-phobia has been strange to me.
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Post by rubbertoe on Apr 23, 2012 11:44:15 GMT -8
Some things vary by region. Most locals who grew up out here are not old enough to remember the Red Cars, and grew up in a car centric culture. It is pretty easy to demonize what you don't know, or be led to nutty conclusions by those who yell the loudest. Bart or someone here pointed out that the trains by the school are being driven slowly by people who have been rigorously trained for years. And yet, there are hundreds of individual cars on the road being driven in some cases by harried parents texting on their cell phones while weaving in and out of the school kids But yeah, they are afraid of the trains My favorite example of regional differences is when I moved out here from Chicago about 30 years ago. I'm watching the news one night and literally half the 30 minute newscast was about the impending presumably world ending "storm"! Went to work the next day not knowing what to expect, then came home and watched the news that night. Another 30 minutes of reporters "braving the storm", live reporting from various locations around Southern California. Someones dog got loose and didn't come back. The anchors were beside themselves wondering if the end of the world could be far behind... It turns out that we got about a half inch of rain Back in Chicago, something that "catastrophic" generally would warrant about 15 seconds of the local weather cast. Left me wondering how people out here would react to about 30" of lake effect snow... RT
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Post by rajacobs on Apr 23, 2012 12:44:59 GMT -8
I don't undertand the train phobia either... I grew up 1 block from a "rapid transit" line --think PCC cars-- My dad took it to work every morning. I learned to take it, by myself, at a young age. Like Dave, I also learned how to flatten pennies under the wheels! ...Gosh, get hit by a train??? Never gave it a thought; never remember a single incident. Cars turning in front of a train? ...Didn't happen!
So, I too conclude that here in LA we lead "culturally-deprived" childhoods ...as adults! If rain and snow and God-forbid, trains, cause so much uproar, then perhaps places like Berlin and Rome are too dangerous to visit. Rather, the South San Fernando Valley is much safer, where nary a train can be seen (as long as one stays away from vexing Metrolink tracks)--and one has only to dodge buses and trucks and private cars?!
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dane
Junior Member
Posts: 59
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Post by dane on Apr 23, 2012 12:47:55 GMT -8
Living here for a few years must thin the blood. I once worked with a Chicago native who, after 3 years in LA, came to work on the first under-50-degree day of the season and exclaim, "It's freezing out there!"
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Post by Gokhan on Jun 1, 2012 20:27:26 GMT -8
NFSR goes to the CA Supreme CourtAs expected, NFSR has gone to its final resort. You can follow the CA Supreme Court NFSR case at this link.
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Post by jdrcrasher on Jun 5, 2012 17:07:25 GMT -8
^ How long do you figure it'll take for the case to come before the Supreme Court? Is it possible for Expo to be well along in construction by the time that happens?
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Post by simonla on Jun 19, 2012 9:59:08 GMT -8
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Post by John Ryan on Jun 19, 2012 12:55:02 GMT -8
Once it receives a petition for review, the court has at least 60 days in which to make its decision. It assigns the case to legal staff to draft a conference memorandum, which summarizes the case facts, outlines the issues, and makes a recommendation to the court whether the case presents sufficiently important issues for review. A decision to review is made at the court’s weekly conference—at which over 250 petitions are usually considered—if at least four justices vote to accept a particular case for review.
The Supreme Court cannot take every case so their basic standard in granting review is (1) a critically important issue of law or (2) a conflict between courts of appeal, e.g. the court of appeal in SD decided the same issue differently than a court of appeal in Fresno.
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Post by gatewaygent on Jun 19, 2012 22:02:32 GMT -8
This is ridiculous! I don't even think South Pasadena went this far when they challenged the Gold Line; and those people have genuine deep pockets.
I'd love to know where NFSR is getting the money to fund this! Just how much coffee, lemonade, and medicinal marijuana brownies can these people possibly sell?!!
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Post by Gokhan on Jul 26, 2012 15:07:48 GMT -8
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Post by Gokhan on Jul 26, 2012 16:19:50 GMT -8
The new CPUC proceeding A1112010 for the rehearing of the Phase 2 crossings was assigned to Commissioner Michael R. Peevey and Adminstrative-Law Jusge (ALJ) Robert Mason on July 11, 2012. The rehearing will reopen pretty much everything. An error, which was pointed out by us earlier was also discovered and identified by CPUC. They omitted the I-405 freeway and Palms Park pedestrian bridge crossings in the original application and they will have to study these now as well, possibly requiring an addendum to the FEIR. The nice thing is though they can still continue with the construction of Phase 2 unless it's determined otherwise during the rehearing. Link for the CPUC proceeding A1112010 for the rehearing of the Phase 2 crossings
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