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Post by bzcat on May 3, 2012 9:41:50 GMT -8
My biggest concern is bus connections. The bus headways are very long in the Westside and I don't think the Blue Bus even runs after 6 or 7 pm on the lines it connects with Expo. It would have been really great if we had streetcar service on important corridors (National, Venice, etc.) instead of the lousy bus service. Another good solution is, instead of operating large buses with long headways, small buses or even large vans with short headways (like 10 minutes). That would be much more efficient. 30-minute bus headways are deal breaker for most people. I don't think smaller buses with short headway will help because they will just bunch in Westside traffic and not be able to keep to the schedule (which is worse than long wait in my opinion). The lack of bus connection right now is the biggest problem... but that will change when Expo opens to Culver City. CC#1 has 12~15 minute headway until 6:30 pm and 20 minute headway until 7:30pm. Extending the 20 minute headway to 8:30 pm will help. BBB#12 currently has 15 minute headways until 7:30 pm but BBB has already said that it will convert Super 12 to Rapid 12 with all day service (I assume that means until 10pm like Rapid 7) when the Expo opens to Culver City. When you layer #12 and Super 12, that will effectively reduce headway to a very reasonable ~10 minutes all day. We shall see... BBB#5 is a bit of unknown right now because it is being rerouted and no schedule is available yet. But it currently runs 20 minutes headway during rush hour and goes to 30 minute headway at 8pm, 8:30pm, and 9pm from Century City only. I would think going to 15 minutes will be necessary during rush hour. Metro 733 has 10~12 minute headways until 7:30pm and 20 minute headway until 9pm. When layered with Metro 33, the headway is pretty reasonable for going down Venice Blvd. |
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Post by ieko on May 3, 2012 12:28:54 GMT -8
No, it shouldn't be raised until the line begins to find its audience, until then you'd just be wasting money on service that could be put elsewhere. 12 minutes is more than adequate. Thats not how you build ridership. if service sucks, people dont ride. You invest in future ridership by making service attractive now. If headways are too long, people get discourages, and spread bad word of mouth about expo. If trains come every 5 minutes, people say at dinner "I love expo, I never have to wait, theres always a train coming". Its not financially prudent if youre only looking at day to day ridership. Its financially prudent if youre building ridership and want more people in the future. Its called investing in something. So I think we need to put this in perspective. First of all, high frequency does not directly result in ridership. We can put a high frequency service down a suburban road, but it doesn't mean anyone will ride it. Demand first mush catch up with supply, it is resonable to assume that a 12 minute headway is very attractive to a large set of people, good enough that we have system maps based on "15 minutes or less" service. So we need to allow demand to catch up with supply. At this stage in a lines life you wouldn't even be running 3 car trains, the only reason this is happening is because of interlining. So now for the perspective part, I would argue the following in terms of ridership potential. Currently we have 10 minute headways at night on some lines, however we went to shorter trains as well so that supply met demand. When you think about it though, if you kept the headway at 20 you could've provided 24/7 service which is more valuable than a 10 minute wait with a limited service span because reliability and simplicity really help to grow ridership. What good is 10 minute service if by the time I finished at the bar I have to wonder if I missed the last train? Also, bus connections are very important, but I think it's really hard for Big Blue Bus and Culver City to provide extra service. Culver City especially, the agency doesn't have a lot of economies of scale because it's in the sub 200 bus category, this results in scheduling as one of their weakest points due to a lack of specialized staff. They have a lot of inefficiency built into their system right now. I wrote something better last night but it didn't get posted so hopefully this is adequate. Sorry if this is somewhat incoherent -- I'm crazy tired. |
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Post by simonla on May 3, 2012 13:10:49 GMT -8
So, is testing going on with Culver City? While we're all happy Expo opened, it needs as much help as possible right now, with many in the public griping over slow speeds and old cars. Another station to the west will obviously goose ridership. I hopehopehope they can open CC and Farmdale no later than the end of June.
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Post by Gokhan on May 3, 2012 14:58:36 GMT -8
Update from the Expo board meeting today: Unfortunately I missed the beginning because it's always a hassle to have the microphone turned on.  When they finally turned it on, Zev was questioning Rick on red lights causing delays to the trains and low ridership. Rick told that the trains do have signal priority but it only works when one train is around. If two trains are coming in opposite direction, the first one catches the green light and the other one ends up with the red light. Zev instructed Rick to see if they can get full signal preemption for the Expo Line trains. The current Expo Line ridership is 9,000 boardings per day. The contractor still didn't finish the junction, therefore, didn't file substantial completion. Culver City Station will be finished at the end of May and the prerevenue operation will start in early June. Both the Farmdale and Culver City Stations will open in late June. Currently LADWP power-line relocation is showing to delay the Phase 2 completion by up to a year. They are working on that to speed up the relocation. This is the biggest issue facing Phase 2. Enjoy the audio: Expo Line board meeting 2012/05/03 |
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Post by bluelineshawn on May 3, 2012 15:07:52 GMT -8
No, it shouldn't be raised until the line begins to find its audience, until then you'd just be wasting money on service that could be put elsewhere. 12 minutes is more than adequate. Thats not how you build ridership. if service sucks, people dont ride. You invest in future ridership by making service attractive now. If headways are too long, people get discourages, and spread bad word of mouth about expo. If trains come every 5 minutes, people say at dinner "I love expo, I never have to wait, theres always a train coming". Its not financially prudent if youre only looking at day to day ridership. Its financially prudent if youre building ridership and want more people in the future. Its called investing in something. It would be every six minutes, not 5 minutes but it's moot because Metro doesn't have enough trains to run 3-car trains at 6 minute headways. Unless they decide that they can run 1 or 2 car trains more often and not worry about potentially sending Expo trains back out on the blue line, trains won't be able to run any faster until new train cars come in. And since that is expected to coincide with Phase 2, we're looking at several years. |
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Post by bluelineshawn on May 3, 2012 15:11:55 GMT -8
Did you make it? I didn't meet you. Around 4am I realized I had too much to do so I just went to bed Ah. Too bad, but probably the smarter move.  |
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Post by masonite on May 3, 2012 15:24:18 GMT -8
So, is testing going on with Culver City? While we're all happy Expo opened, it needs as much help as possible right now, with many in the public griping over slow speeds and old cars. Another station to the west will obviously goose ridership. I hopehopehope they can open CC and Farmdale no later than the end of June. I don't really understand all the comments on the old cars. They do look dated from the outside, but on the inside I find them pretty nice overall and not in that bad of shape. People expect everything all shiny and new I suppose. I don't remember these complaints with the other lines. The slow speed issue is nothing short of a disaster unless they can improve it. I have heard reports of it taking 36 minutes Eastbound. That is what it is supposed to take all the way from Bundy!!!! 36 minutes from La Cienega is a glorified bus. 9,000 is certainly disappointing but not that surprising. Yes, USC being in session will help come fall and of course so will Culver City (and Farmdale to a very small extent). Since La Cienega doesn't have good bus connections, I think it is missing out on a lot of the Westside workers who live points East. That will hopefully not be a problem once Culver City opens. However, the slow speed is the real issue, especially since in this part of town you have a lot of choice riders. It is almost laughable at this point that they can't say Phase I is substantially completed. I wonder exactly what they have left to finish? Hopefully, they can be made to pay significant liquidated damages. Awful news on Phase II, but not surprising. I could tell that there is a real problem here. |
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Post by bluelineshawn on May 3, 2012 15:51:06 GMT -8
Thanks Gokhan for the audio. Late June is the target for Farmdale and Culver City, so I'm feeling pretty good about my July guess.  Hated hearing that they are already behind in utility relocation. 3 months for LADWP and 8 months for SCE (unless I have those reversed). They hope to get back on track, but it's really out of their control. Interesting that the NFSR actually did slow down the line as they only authorized the contractor to proceed to 85% design completion once the lawsuit was dismissed. Oh, and I think that the signal preemption discussed at the beginning of the call has no chance, nor should it. The decision was made to run the line at grade and now that it's slow making it less safe with signal preemption (in both directions) is not the way to go. I think that there are better ways to fix it anyway. |
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Post by John Ryan on May 3, 2012 16:17:14 GMT -8
Oh, and I think that the signal preemption discussed at the beginning of the call has no chance, nor should it. The decision was made to run the line at grade and now that it's slow making it less safe with signal preemption (in both directions) is not the way to go. I think that there are better ways to fix it anyway. Please elaborate on how signal preemption in both ways would be less safe and what are better ways to speed up the line. |
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Post by bluelineshawn on May 3, 2012 17:25:34 GMT -8
Please elaborate on how signal preemption in both ways would be less safe and what are better ways to speed up the line. First you have to imagine how signal preemption might work in practice with trains coming in both directions fairly close together. Lights will be routinely "preempted" with drivers getting some lights that are longer or shorter than others. It adds to the confusion of what is already fairly confusing in some spots. Plus there are usually multiple trains on Flower during rush hour and there can be as many as 4 trains total. Preempting all of them is essentially setting all the lights to green. And that is what I think is the better way to do it, but not with preemption. If they need to all go green, set them so that's what happens between Pico and Washington. Have the automobile traffic lights longer (make them wait), but on more regular intervals. There can even be countdown timers so that drivers can see how much time is left before the light turns. There are problems with this as well, but it's safer than preemption. Anyway none of this will address the crux of the problem because the real issue is not the traffic lights, but rather bunching. The ridiculously long run times between USC and 7th/metro happen because there are other trains in the way which can't be turned fast enough when they arrive so close together. This is evident in that all of the really slow run times occur when headed into downtown not away. They get the same lights in both directions, but it's the downtown trains that get seriously delayed. They dwell at every station for several minutes and when they get to Pico they dwell some more because there are still trains in the way. Most of the traffic lights are actually pretty short so "fixing" the lights will save a couple three minutes here and there, but the massive delays likely will persist. In case anyone doesn't know what bunching is, what happens is that because of "sh!t happens" along the route trains will sometimes arrive at Flower too close together. Trains that should be 3 minutes apart arrive at the same time. Now one of them has to wait an extra couple of minutes because the other train is in the way at each station and especially at 7th/metro. That in turn causes the trains behind it to start backing up...and so on. You end up with a conga line of trains headed into 7th/metro. |
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Post by bluelineshawn on May 3, 2012 17:27:27 GMT -8
Almost forgot. According to the Expo board meeting audio, the Culver City parking lot is essentially complete. I think that they said that there are only a few cosmetic final touches. So, if it still looks the same then that's what they wanted.
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Post by Gokhan on May 3, 2012 18:46:59 GMT -8
I would argue that preemption actually makes the line safer, by stopping all traffic fairly in advance every time trains are approaching. For example, a lot of accidents seem to be caused by drivers running red lights right after the yellow phase, when the train starts going after a full stop. With preemption, you wouldn't have this problem.
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Post by simonla on May 3, 2012 19:32:19 GMT -8
I didn't know where to put this, but it's bothering me (I clearly have problems). The Expo wikipedia page has a map that doesn't include the Purple Line (even as it exists now). It's annoying and I couldn't figure out how to swap it out with something accurate. If anyone has the bandwith... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_Line_(Los_Angeles_Metro) |
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Post by bobdavis on May 3, 2012 19:36:19 GMT -8
I was a bit surprised to see mostly 100-class cars on the Expo Line Monday. I suspect that most regular riders don't care what the train looks like, as long as it gets them where they're going in good order. It's long been my contention that to your typical transit rider, as long as the cars are well-maintained and clean, Metro could be using Chicago "L" cars from the 1920s. San Francisco has been using refurbished PCC streetcars on their "F" Market St. line for over 16 years now, and the newest is 50 years old. The biggest challenge is overcrowding, with both locals and tourists finding the line useful.
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Post by spokker on May 3, 2012 22:20:28 GMT -8
I consider myself moderately progressive, but am generally against rent control as it is very inefficient and has a lot of unwanted consequences. You know your economics. Thanks for the honest answer! I know it can be a touchy subject. Gentrification is a loaded term, but I see it as more of a banal consequence of this sort of recycling of housing stock. When I moved where I live now, I certainly "displaced" someone, who either went somewhere better or somewhere worse. There's no way for me to know which. When we finally move, we'll be displaced by someone and we'll go somewhere better or somewhere worse. Shrug. |
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Post by matthewb on May 4, 2012 1:15:24 GMT -8
Anyway none of this will address the crux of the problem because the real issue is not the traffic lights, but rather bunching. The ridiculously long run times between USC and 7th/metro happen because there are other trains in the way which can't be turned fast enough when they arrive so close together. This is evident in that all of the really slow run times occur when headed into downtown not away. They get the same lights in both directions, but it's the downtown trains that get seriously delayed. They dwell at every station for several minutes and when they get to Pico they dwell some more because there are still trains in the way. Most of the traffic lights are actually pretty short so "fixing" the lights will save a couple three minutes here and there, but the massive delays likely will persist. In case anyone doesn't know what bunching is, what happens is that because of "sh!t happens" along the route trains will sometimes arrive at Flower too close together. Trains that should be 3 minutes apart arrive at the same time. Now one of them has to wait an extra couple of minutes because the other train is in the way at each station and especially at 7th/metro. That in turn causes the trains behind it to start backing up...and so on. You end up with a conga line of trains headed into 7th/metro. Isn't one of the main benefits of signal preemption that it minimizes the "sh!t happens" factor? If trains aren't getting stuck at lights along the track they can much more closely keep to their schedule. In New York, where the trains are fully grade separated, the main source of delays is people holding the doors. If this happens too much, the driver gives a very stern warning over the loudspeaker that the train is at risk of being withdrawn from service. If it gets too delayed, all passengers are asked to leave the train and it skips all stops until it's caught up. Since Expo is at grade, signal preemption is a very important part of making sure sh!t doesn't happen. |
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Post by matthewb on May 4, 2012 1:26:26 GMT -8
I consider myself moderately progressive, but am generally against rent control as it is very inefficient and has a lot of unwanted consequences. You know your economics. Thanks for the honest answer! I know it can be a touchy subject. Gentrification is a loaded term, but I see it as more of a banal consequence of this sort of recycling of housing stock. When I moved where I live now, I certainly "displaced" someone, who either went somewhere better or somewhere worse. There's no way for me to know which. When we finally move, we'll be displaced by someone and we'll go somewhere better or somewhere worse. Shrug. It seems to me that there are two main root causes of gentrification: (i) unequal access to education and resulting job opportunities (ii) insufficient housing supply Improved neighborhood amenities and transportation aren't the problem, they're part of the solution. Transportation in particular connects an increased housing supply to job opportunities. Increased supply means lower housing prices, which is good for everybody except westside property speculators (including homeowners wanting to cash out on their house for retirement someday). If you want more people to be able to stay in their neighborhoods, you also need to allow those neighborhoods to accommodate an increased population so that new arrivals are less likely to force old tenants out. That means improvements in zoning laws to allow more density when the transportation network can support it. If you want improvements in housing, job access, and social equity, building train lines and upzoning all properties in a 1/4-1 mile radius of stations is not a bad way to go. |
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Post by masonite on May 4, 2012 8:21:29 GMT -8
If new housing is built along the Expo Line, it will likely be expensive for the most part. Housing development doesn't make sense unless you get mostly market rents/prices. I'd call that gentrification, but again I don't think it is a bad thing.
Like I said there will be some displacement of poorer uneducated residents of the City to places like the Inland Empire/Antelope Valley. Rail transit makes the city more attractive as does things like reduced crime, but there are forces working against gentrification such as poor schools, inefficient and expensive city government, etc...
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Post by Gokhan on May 4, 2012 8:29:19 GMT -8
I was a bit surprised to see mostly 100-class cars on the Expo Line Monday. 100-class? I don't think anyone knows what it means. It sounds more like historic-railway society talk. I am guessing you are referring to the Nippon Sharyo P865 because it has three digits in the contract number. But then I can't tell the difference between Nippon Sharyo P865 and Nippon Sharyo P2020. Can anyone tell? Shawn? The answer to why they run Blue Line trains on the Expo Line is very simple, of course. Expo Line trains are operated from the Blue Line yard. When Phase 2 opens, Expo will get its own yard at Stewart and Exposition. |
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Post by carter on May 4, 2012 12:57:59 GMT -8
My biggest concern is bus connections. The bus headways are very long in the Westside and I don't think the Blue Bus even runs after 6 or 7 pm on the lines it connects with Expo. It would have been really great if we had streetcar service on important corridors (National, Venice, etc.) instead of the lousy bus service. Another good solution is, instead of operating large buses with long headways, small buses or even large vans with short headways (like 10 minutes). That would be much more efficient. 30-minute bus headways are deal breaker for most people. I don't mean to be a stink, but it's pretty easy to find out that the Big Blue Bus runs line 12 until 11:30pm and line 5 until about 9pm. bigbluebus.com/busroutes/schedule.asp?bus_route=12&dayofweek=weekdaysThe problem with the "smaller buses, more frequently" option is that paying the driver is the single biggest expense of running a bus, so doubling the number of drivers is going to increase the cost of service considerably. Most transit agencies don't have a ton of flexibility to incur those kinds of cost, especially if we're talking about adding service late in the evening when ridership is pretty light. |
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Post by Gokhan on May 4, 2012 13:09:23 GMT -8
My biggest concern is bus connections. The bus headways are very long in the Westside and I don't think the Blue Bus even runs after 6 or 7 pm on the lines it connects with Expo. It would have been really great if we had streetcar service on important corridors (National, Venice, etc.) instead of the lousy bus service. Another good solution is, instead of operating large buses with long headways, small buses or even large vans with short headways (like 10 minutes). That would be much more efficient. 30-minute bus headways are deal breaker for most people. I don't mean to be a stink, but it's pretty easy to find out that the Big Blue Bus runs line 12 until 11:30pm and line 5 until about 9pm. bigbluebus.com/busroutes/schedule.asp?bus_route=12&dayofweek=weekdaysThe problem with the "smaller buses, more frequently" option is that paying the driver is the single biggest expense of running a bus, so doubling the number of drivers is going to increase the cost of service considerably. Most transit agencies don't have a ton of flexibility to incur those kinds of cost, especially if we're talking about adding service late in the evening when ridership is pretty light. Yes, I had figured out that later. I was looking at the Super 12 schedule. Although, the initial cost of small buses are probably much less -- you are probably looking at $100,000 versus $500,000. Santa Monica already has the "Mini Blue Bus." LADOT also has the Dash mini bus, which is very successful. |
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Post by bluelineshawn on May 4, 2012 15:18:53 GMT -8
I was a bit surprised to see mostly 100-class cars on the Expo Line Monday. 100-class? I don't think anyone knows what it means. It sounds more like historic-railway society talk. I am guessing you are referring to the Nippon Sharyo P865 because it has three digits in the contract number. But then I can't tell the difference between Nippon Sharyo P865 and Nippon Sharyo P2020. Can anyone tell? Shawn? The answer to why they run Blue Line trains on the Expo Line is very simple, of course. Expo Line trains are operated from the Blue Line yard. When Phase 2 opens, Expo will get its own yard at Stewart and Exposition. I can't tell the difference other than by car number, but by "100 class" I'm pretty sure that he means car numbers that start with "1" since they are all one-hundred something. |
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Post by bluelineshawn on May 4, 2012 15:32:26 GMT -8
Isn't one of the main benefits of signal preemption that it minimizes the "sh!t happens" factor? If trains aren't getting stuck at lights along the track they can much more closely keep to their schedule. In New York, where the trains are fully grade separated, the main source of delays is people holding the doors. If this happens too much, the driver gives a very stern warning over the loudspeaker that the train is at risk of being withdrawn from service. If it gets too delayed, all passengers are asked to leave the train and it skips all stops until it's caught up. Since Expo is at grade, signal preemption is a very important part of making sure sh!t doesn't happen. Signal preemption helps prevent delays on Flower, but Flower is only a small part of each line. Right now trains headed downtown will sometimes (often?) arrive at the junction at the same time. That in itself will tend to start backing up trains. Having signal preemption on Flower will not solve that because whatever delays occurred, happened prior to Flower. NYCT actually has more to their delays than just holding doors, but regardless we have pretty much the same causes for delays that they have plus we have delays associated with street running that they don't have to deal with. |
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Post by masonite on May 4, 2012 15:46:14 GMT -8
Isn't one of the main benefits of signal preemption that it minimizes the "sh!t happens" factor? If trains aren't getting stuck at lights along the track they can much more closely keep to their schedule. In New York, where the trains are fully grade separated, the main source of delays is people holding the doors. If this happens too much, the driver gives a very stern warning over the loudspeaker that the train is at risk of being withdrawn from service. If it gets too delayed, all passengers are asked to leave the train and it skips all stops until it's caught up. Since Expo is at grade, signal preemption is a very important part of making sure sh!t doesn't happen. Signal preemption helps prevent delays on Flower, but Flower is only a small part of each line. Right now trains headed downtown will sometimes (often?) arrive at the junction at the same time. That in itself will tend to start backing up trains. Having signal preemption on Flower will not solve that because whatever delays occurred, happened prior to Flower. NYCT actually has more to their delays than just holding doors, but regardless we have pretty much the same causes for delays that they have plus we have delays associated with street running that they don't have to deal with. I wonder how much of the delay is the actual junction and how much is really related to the turnaround at 7th Metro? Also, I still wonder if we can run 6 minute headways on Expo with Phase II and the Blue Line but before the Connector opens. It sounds like we won't and that will be a real problem. |
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Post by rubbertoe on May 4, 2012 16:17:21 GMT -8
100-class? I don't think anyone knows what it means. It sounds more like historic-railway society talk. I am guessing you are referring to the Nippon Sharyo P865 because it has three digits in the contract number. But then I can't tell the difference between Nippon Sharyo P865 and Nippon Sharyo P2020. Can anyone tell? Shawn? The answer to why they run Blue Line trains on the Expo Line is very simple, of course. Expo Line trains are operated from the Blue Line yard. When Phase 2 opens, Expo will get its own yard at Stewart and Exposition. I can't tell the difference other than by car number, but by "100 class" I'm pretty sure that he means car numbers that start with "1" since they are all one-hundred something. Guys, This is crazy. We spend all the time talking about the rail/transit system, and there isn't a thread about the vehicles that run, and the year they were purchased, and from whom? We are totally pathetic train nerds  It wouldn't take long to put all this information together. Someone must have pictures of all the various train sets ordered, and Bob Davis knows the numbering of them all off the top of his head RT |
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Post by ieko on May 4, 2012 16:30:20 GMT -8
I can't tell the difference other than by car number, but by "100 class" I'm pretty sure that he means car numbers that start with "1" since they are all one-hundred something. Guys, This is crazy. We spend all the time talking about the rail/transit system, and there isn't a thread about the vehicles that run, and the year they were purchased, and from whom? We are totally pathetic train nerds It wouldn't take long to put all this information together. Someone must have pictures of all the various train sets ordered, and Bob Davis knows the numbering of them all off the top of his head RT |
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Post by bobdavis on May 4, 2012 18:41:09 GMT -8
Guilty as charged--I really am a member of the Electric Railway Historical Assn. of Southern California, and using numerical designations to identify groups of cars is quite common. One group of PE cars is commonly referred to as "Hollywood" cars, but PE personnel reportedly just called them 600-700 class cars. Then there were the 800s, 950s, Tens, Elevens and Twelves. The hand-me-downs from the Bay area were the 300s and 400s; they are commonly called "Blimps" but one old PE motorman told me that he called them "Bombers".
LA Railway was a bit different; most of their car classes were identified by alphanumeric class designations: BGs, H-4s, P-3s, etc.
Regarding the contemporary LA Metro units--it's taken me a while to get used to the P-865, P-2000 nomenclature; it's rather like New York subway cars and their "R" numbers.
As a final note: PE had a 100-class; they were streetcars that spent their last few years on the Echo Park line, and were sold to the Veracruz system in Mexico.
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Post by spokker on May 5, 2012 1:42:57 GMT -8
It seems to me that there are two main root causes of gentrification: (i) unequal access to education and resulting job opportunities Though I'm not sure what exactly you mean by unequal access to education, I assume you're talking about school funding, and I'm not sure this is true. There is no clear correlation between school funding and student performance. This whole idea of the "underfunded school" implies that there is some price for a sufficient enough education that taxpayers are failing to cover, but I cannot find anything that even attempts to estimate what that price is nor can I find what the definition of an underfunded school actually is. Many schools in the United States have done more with much less than other schools have. washingtonexaminer.com/local/dc/2011/05/dc-maryland-rank-near-top-pupil-spending/114447www.reuters.com/article/2007/10/22/us-education-states-idUSN2220400220071022If the definition of an underfunded public school is a school where students fail to meet basic academic standards, costs will trend to infinity as long as students fail to improve. While the Expo Line will increase access to education, it is not going to make a student want to succeed academically. Just thinking out loud, I wonder if this will cause improvements or simply enable more of the same. The worst of the worst residents, the ones who vandalize, the ones who steal, the ones who are warring in the streets, may have to be displaced before the area improves. I don't think that people who currently live somewhere else will want to move there unless those few but influential residents are gone. The big problem is that taking out those few residents economically will also take out poor but otherwise law-abiding residents as well. Rezoning and enabling higher population density is probably not sufficient enough to change the character of a community in a way that is beneficial to all. |
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Post by bluelineshawn on May 5, 2012 9:03:31 GMT -8
I wonder how much of the delay is the actual junction and how much is really related to the turnaround at 7th Metro? Also, I still wonder if we can run 6 minute headways on Expo with Phase II and the Blue Line but before the Connector opens. It sounds like we won't and that will be a real problem. Not 7th/metro I don't think. If trains always arrived at Pico (headed NB) exactly on schedule I think that theycould turn the trains fine. The delays there happen because trains arrive late and too close together and can't be turned fast enough to catch up. But I wouldn't say that it's 7th/metro causing the delay. The junction is in a similar situation. If two or three trains arrive there too close together, it leads to a delay. But is it the junction causing the delay or is the delay because the trains are already off schedule? I guess that depends on how you look at it. I'd say that the earlier delays that caused the trains to arrive nearly simultaneously are the real culprit, but then that does get magnified by having to pass through the junction. But even then it's not all the junction. The trains have to wait because they can't follow too closely, and then they end up hitting lights, and so on. Welcome to street running. Every city has the same issues if they run enough trains. As far as running every six minutes on both lines, Metro has done that on several occasions by having 3 minute headways on the blue line. It didn't go all that well (kind of like now) and that was without having to merge two lines. I'm sure that Metro will test it and hopefully figure some things out. I think that they will be able to do it but I guess that we'll see. |
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Post by masonite on May 5, 2012 9:48:51 GMT -8
I wonder how much of the delay is the actual junction and how much is really related to the turnaround at 7th Metro? Also, I still wonder if we can run 6 minute headways on Expo with Phase II and the Blue Line but before the Connector opens. It sounds like we won't and that will be a real problem. Not 7th/metro I don't think. If trains always arrived at Pico (headed NB) exactly on schedule I think that theycould turn the trains fine. The delays there happen because trains arrive late and too close together and can't be turned fast enough to catch up. But I wouldn't say that it's 7th/metro causing the delay. The junction is in a similar situation. If two or three trains arrive there too close together, it leads to a delay. But is it the junction causing the delay or is the delay because the trains are already off schedule? I guess that depends on how you look at it. I'd say that the earlier delays that caused the trains to arrive nearly simultaneously are the real culprit, but then that does get magnified by having to pass through the junction. But even then it's not all the junction. The trains have to wait because they can't follow too closely, and then they end up hitting lights, and so on. Welcome to street running. Every city has the same issues if they run enough trains. As far as running every six minutes on both lines, Metro has done that on several occasions by having 3 minute headways on the blue line. It didn't go all that well (kind of like now) and that was without having to merge two lines. I'm sure that Metro will test it and hopefully figure some things out. I think that they will be able to do it but I guess that we'll see. I agree, but the junction and 7th/metro are kinks and street running rail is always going to be off schedule some so it is going to be tough to address this and if they start running 6 minute headways it is really going to be a big problem. This is a major issue and the line is really performing below expectations. Someone on Wikipedia has an estimate of time to La Cienega at 19 minutes and to Santa Monica in 36 minutes. It is taking 36 minutes sometimes just from La Cienega. Some serious misestimates going on. Granted the Expo Authority has a 46 minute estimate to SM. That is not going to be met unless there is improvement. |
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It wouldn't take long to put all this information together. Someone must have pictures of all the various train sets ordered, and Bob Davis knows the numbering of them all off the top of his head