Post by bennyp81 on Jun 15, 2005 14:33:14 GMT -8
Bart Reed
User ID: 1606604 May 6th 8:55 AM
DAILY BREEZE : Sunday, May 4, 2003
Lack of space drives Gardena’s bus yard move
By Traci Jai Isaacs
Staff Writer
The Gardena bus yard seems out of place amid a sea of ranch-style homes and a nursery school playground less than 20 feet from the facility’s main gate.
There’s barely room on the 3-acre Van Ness Avenue lot to park buses at night, said Whit Ballenger, transportation director for the Gardena Municipal Bus Lines. That’s why Gardena is planning to move the yard to a larger site, which has people in that area upset.
Ballenger points at a row of buses a few feet apart and says he needs to relocate the yard, expand services and hire more employees.
“As you can see, there’s not much room here,” he said. “We’re bursting at the seams.”
While it’s still in early planning stages, Gardena intends to move the depot to a 9.2-acre site at 13999 S. Western Ave. in the city’s north end an area marked by automotive repair shops, a self-storage facility and a towing company.
But some residents who live near the site are not thrilled with the idea.
They don’t want buses jamming the street and causing pollution and they say the depot takes up valuable space that could be used for much-needed shops and stores.
“I have to go to other places to get clothes because there’s nothing around here,” said Earnestine Larry, a 59-year-old retired postal worker. “I have to drive to another city to spend my money.”
Another resident took the opposite stance. “That bus yard is in a residential neighborhood now and those people have lived with it for as long as I’ve been here, and I’ve been here since the 1960s,” said Rowena Labeaud, who lives three blocks from the proposed site.
She said another plus is that the new bus yard is funded with federal money. “I think we’d better get on board,” Labeaud said.
Ballenger agreed. “We must grow or die,” he said.
“A lot of positive things will come from this.”
Gardena has $25 million in federal transportation money set aside for the depot. The money can be drawn on once the project is approved. The city has another $4 million in local transportation funds. The total of $29 million will pay for the land, the new facility and support equipment, Ballenger said.
The site is in the heart of the Rosecrans Corridor, a run-down 2-mile commercial strip believed to have the strongest development potential in Gardena. City leaders hope the investment will have a domino effect and entice other investors.
“We need to go, the time is now,” Ballenger said. “We are providing services where they are needed and we want to enhance ourselves.”
The municipal line maintains 50 buses, 113 employees and carries an estimated 5 million riders each year to downtown Los Angeles, and around the South Bay.
A new state-of-the-art depot will allow Gardena to double the bus operation, hire new employees and meet riders’ needs for the next 50 years, Ballenger said.
Moreover, he said, the new building will be an improvement to the crumbling mall now there, and, once complete, will provide a space for community groups to meet at night.
Gardena is conducting community meetings and workshops on the project. Officials know there is opposition, but hope people soften once they see the building design.
Still, the city has a long way to go. Officials must complete environmental studies, and decide how much it will cost to clean the soil there.
Underground tanks leaked at a gas station operated on the lot for years. No hard deadlines have been set. But, based on those studies, the city will make an offer to Rikuo Corp., the Los Angeles company that owns the land. It may be easier said than done, as Rikuo has resisted previous city purchase offers.
Last year, Gardena filed an eminent domain action but dropped it because officials weren’t ready to go to court.
Today, Rikuo officials say they’re not too sure what’s happening.
“At this moment, we don’t know the mind of the city,” said Young Kim, general manager. “They have a blueprint for this space but didn’t get in touch with us. We don’t know what their plans are.”
Þ-Þ-®-Þ-Þ
Bart Reed
User ID: 1606604 May 6th 9:03 AM
DAILY BREEZE: Monday, May 5, 2003
Time & Place: City transit passengers share rides, lives; GARDENA: Commuters give drivers and the system high marks for hometown, personalized bus service.
By Traci Jai Isaacs
Staff Writer
Gardena Municipal Bus line, Route 2, Western Avenue and Redondo Beach Boulevard, 9:33 a.m. Thursday: Passengers stare blankly ahead like people desperate to get off an elevator. The hum of the bus’s air conditioner makes conversation impossible.
It’s shift change and the driver pulls ahead 100 feet, cuts off the engine and leaves. A well-dressed Latino man sinks into the seat and sighs, his eyes closed. It takes several minutes before his replacement, Juan Guillen, arrives with a faded blue coffee mug in hand. He smiles, says good morning and fires up the engine.
Strip malls and gas stations run together as the bus passes by. The bus takes the pavement like a boat hitting waves and sends a buzz through the seats.
10 a.m.
Guillen makes a right on Imperial Highway, a right on Vermont Avenue, a left down Gardena Boulevard, turns onto Normandie Avenue and veers toward Pacific Coast Highway. People come, and more people come. Ten buses make this 17-mile loop during the weekdays, fewer on weekends.
10:30 a.m.
Kathie Bornecott, 73, tucks her gray hair under a rainbow scarf, clutches two bags and struggles to see over the rim of her dark brown sunglasses. She feeds the bus meter and sinks into a seat — it’s the end of a workday that started at 1 a.m.
Hers is a world where husbands and siblings die, time stretches and five hungry stray cats await her arrival.
“I do housework, cat sit, dog sit and work at the church on Sundays,” she says, breaking the stale silence that has existed since the bus left Gardena an hour ago.
She’s a self-professed chatterbox who stopped drinking and “kicking up her heels” some years ago, she said, after her doctor told her to quit or she’d die.
Bornecott believes the harder a person works, the longer they’ll live, and by those standards she’ll live forever. Her husband, Joe, of 40 years wasn’t so lucky. He died four years ago, but he’s not gone from her heart. They talk every morning while she’s waiting for the bus, she said.
“He’s looking out for me always,” she said.
10:40 a.m.
Ann Hester feeds the meter and locks eyes with Bornecott. “There you are, Granny; why are you sitting all the way over there?” Friends and regular passengers call Bornecott by her nickname.
Hester, of Hawthorne, has a motto for life and bus drivers. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And that goes double for some of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority folks known for ditching passengers, even those who’ve run alongside the bus banging on the door.
“They forget cars break down, no car is eternal, and maybe they’ll be taking the bus,” Hester said.
Those drivers are known for leaving breathless passengers stranded on the sidewalk, but Gardena doesn’t do that, she adds.
“She rides every Thursday and Friday at the same time,” said Guillen, the driver.
“I ride Monday through Friday,” Hester tells him.
He quickly replies: “Well, I only do this route Thursdays and Fridays.”
It’s the kind of hometown treatment you don’t get anywhere else, Hester said.
10:55 a.m.
Guillen parks and heads for the hydraulic lift to assist a disabled passenger aboard. Hester uses the downtime as an opportunity to show what MTA drivers do. She stands on the bus’s first step and bangs her open palm against the glass door. “I’m telling you, you’ll be doing this and the faster you run, the faster they drive.”
A young man a few rows back nods and smiles. Guillen and Bornecott laugh.
“We’re all just a big family on this municipal line,” Hester said. “Gardena’s drivers are the best, they’re the peoples’ people.”
10:50 a.m.
Bornecott’s stop is approaching and Guillen slows. He nudges to the entrance of a mobile home park off Western Avenue.
“He gets close so I don’t have to walk so far,” she said.
Hester waives goodbye to the friend who helps her breathe some life into the quiet bus rides home each day. And before Bornecott leaves, she said she, too, has a motto: “Take it one day at a time.
No one knows what’s going to happen, not now, not five minutes from now.” It’s sound advice.
Þ-Þ-®-Þ-Þ
User ID: 1606604 May 6th 8:55 AM
DAILY BREEZE : Sunday, May 4, 2003
Lack of space drives Gardena’s bus yard move
By Traci Jai Isaacs
Staff Writer
The Gardena bus yard seems out of place amid a sea of ranch-style homes and a nursery school playground less than 20 feet from the facility’s main gate.
There’s barely room on the 3-acre Van Ness Avenue lot to park buses at night, said Whit Ballenger, transportation director for the Gardena Municipal Bus Lines. That’s why Gardena is planning to move the yard to a larger site, which has people in that area upset.
Ballenger points at a row of buses a few feet apart and says he needs to relocate the yard, expand services and hire more employees.
“As you can see, there’s not much room here,” he said. “We’re bursting at the seams.”
While it’s still in early planning stages, Gardena intends to move the depot to a 9.2-acre site at 13999 S. Western Ave. in the city’s north end an area marked by automotive repair shops, a self-storage facility and a towing company.
But some residents who live near the site are not thrilled with the idea.
They don’t want buses jamming the street and causing pollution and they say the depot takes up valuable space that could be used for much-needed shops and stores.
“I have to go to other places to get clothes because there’s nothing around here,” said Earnestine Larry, a 59-year-old retired postal worker. “I have to drive to another city to spend my money.”
Another resident took the opposite stance. “That bus yard is in a residential neighborhood now and those people have lived with it for as long as I’ve been here, and I’ve been here since the 1960s,” said Rowena Labeaud, who lives three blocks from the proposed site.
She said another plus is that the new bus yard is funded with federal money. “I think we’d better get on board,” Labeaud said.
Ballenger agreed. “We must grow or die,” he said.
“A lot of positive things will come from this.”
Gardena has $25 million in federal transportation money set aside for the depot. The money can be drawn on once the project is approved. The city has another $4 million in local transportation funds. The total of $29 million will pay for the land, the new facility and support equipment, Ballenger said.
The site is in the heart of the Rosecrans Corridor, a run-down 2-mile commercial strip believed to have the strongest development potential in Gardena. City leaders hope the investment will have a domino effect and entice other investors.
“We need to go, the time is now,” Ballenger said. “We are providing services where they are needed and we want to enhance ourselves.”
The municipal line maintains 50 buses, 113 employees and carries an estimated 5 million riders each year to downtown Los Angeles, and around the South Bay.
A new state-of-the-art depot will allow Gardena to double the bus operation, hire new employees and meet riders’ needs for the next 50 years, Ballenger said.
Moreover, he said, the new building will be an improvement to the crumbling mall now there, and, once complete, will provide a space for community groups to meet at night.
Gardena is conducting community meetings and workshops on the project. Officials know there is opposition, but hope people soften once they see the building design.
Still, the city has a long way to go. Officials must complete environmental studies, and decide how much it will cost to clean the soil there.
Underground tanks leaked at a gas station operated on the lot for years. No hard deadlines have been set. But, based on those studies, the city will make an offer to Rikuo Corp., the Los Angeles company that owns the land. It may be easier said than done, as Rikuo has resisted previous city purchase offers.
Last year, Gardena filed an eminent domain action but dropped it because officials weren’t ready to go to court.
Today, Rikuo officials say they’re not too sure what’s happening.
“At this moment, we don’t know the mind of the city,” said Young Kim, general manager. “They have a blueprint for this space but didn’t get in touch with us. We don’t know what their plans are.”
Þ-Þ-®-Þ-Þ
Bart Reed
User ID: 1606604 May 6th 9:03 AM
DAILY BREEZE: Monday, May 5, 2003
Time & Place: City transit passengers share rides, lives; GARDENA: Commuters give drivers and the system high marks for hometown, personalized bus service.
By Traci Jai Isaacs
Staff Writer
Gardena Municipal Bus line, Route 2, Western Avenue and Redondo Beach Boulevard, 9:33 a.m. Thursday: Passengers stare blankly ahead like people desperate to get off an elevator. The hum of the bus’s air conditioner makes conversation impossible.
It’s shift change and the driver pulls ahead 100 feet, cuts off the engine and leaves. A well-dressed Latino man sinks into the seat and sighs, his eyes closed. It takes several minutes before his replacement, Juan Guillen, arrives with a faded blue coffee mug in hand. He smiles, says good morning and fires up the engine.
Strip malls and gas stations run together as the bus passes by. The bus takes the pavement like a boat hitting waves and sends a buzz through the seats.
10 a.m.
Guillen makes a right on Imperial Highway, a right on Vermont Avenue, a left down Gardena Boulevard, turns onto Normandie Avenue and veers toward Pacific Coast Highway. People come, and more people come. Ten buses make this 17-mile loop during the weekdays, fewer on weekends.
10:30 a.m.
Kathie Bornecott, 73, tucks her gray hair under a rainbow scarf, clutches two bags and struggles to see over the rim of her dark brown sunglasses. She feeds the bus meter and sinks into a seat — it’s the end of a workday that started at 1 a.m.
Hers is a world where husbands and siblings die, time stretches and five hungry stray cats await her arrival.
“I do housework, cat sit, dog sit and work at the church on Sundays,” she says, breaking the stale silence that has existed since the bus left Gardena an hour ago.
She’s a self-professed chatterbox who stopped drinking and “kicking up her heels” some years ago, she said, after her doctor told her to quit or she’d die.
Bornecott believes the harder a person works, the longer they’ll live, and by those standards she’ll live forever. Her husband, Joe, of 40 years wasn’t so lucky. He died four years ago, but he’s not gone from her heart. They talk every morning while she’s waiting for the bus, she said.
“He’s looking out for me always,” she said.
10:40 a.m.
Ann Hester feeds the meter and locks eyes with Bornecott. “There you are, Granny; why are you sitting all the way over there?” Friends and regular passengers call Bornecott by her nickname.
Hester, of Hawthorne, has a motto for life and bus drivers. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And that goes double for some of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority folks known for ditching passengers, even those who’ve run alongside the bus banging on the door.
“They forget cars break down, no car is eternal, and maybe they’ll be taking the bus,” Hester said.
Those drivers are known for leaving breathless passengers stranded on the sidewalk, but Gardena doesn’t do that, she adds.
“She rides every Thursday and Friday at the same time,” said Guillen, the driver.
“I ride Monday through Friday,” Hester tells him.
He quickly replies: “Well, I only do this route Thursdays and Fridays.”
It’s the kind of hometown treatment you don’t get anywhere else, Hester said.
10:55 a.m.
Guillen parks and heads for the hydraulic lift to assist a disabled passenger aboard. Hester uses the downtime as an opportunity to show what MTA drivers do. She stands on the bus’s first step and bangs her open palm against the glass door. “I’m telling you, you’ll be doing this and the faster you run, the faster they drive.”
A young man a few rows back nods and smiles. Guillen and Bornecott laugh.
“We’re all just a big family on this municipal line,” Hester said. “Gardena’s drivers are the best, they’re the peoples’ people.”
10:50 a.m.
Bornecott’s stop is approaching and Guillen slows. He nudges to the entrance of a mobile home park off Western Avenue.
“He gets close so I don’t have to walk so far,” she said.
Hester waives goodbye to the friend who helps her breathe some life into the quiet bus rides home each day. And before Bornecott leaves, she said she, too, has a motto: “Take it one day at a time.
No one knows what’s going to happen, not now, not five minutes from now.” It’s sound advice.
Þ-Þ-®-Þ-Þ