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January 29, 2007
"The subway is an outmoded type of transportation"
We didn't say it. Tony Bell said it to the LA Times' Steve Hymon.
Who is Bell? Bell is the communications director for Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich. And to be fair, Bell thinks "light rail down one of the major east-west streets on the Westside might be the better solution." So trains are not totally out.
Here's another Bell quote:
"The supervisor understands — as do most county residents — that we have a regional transportation crisis, not just a city of Los Angeles transportation crisis," Bell said. "By sinking the lion's share of the funding [sales tax] into a project that only serves three cities" — L.A., Beverly Hills and Santa Monica — "we're shortchanging the rest of the region."
Oh. I see. The only people in LA County who will use the proposed Subway to the Sea will be residents of those three cities. Has Bell not taken the Metro Rapid 720 that serves Wilshire Blvd.? Has he gone out and taken a survey of all the people who use that bus route?
We're no traffic experts here, but by relieving the center of LA County's traffic congestion problem, it just might have a butterfly effect that may benefit the rest of the county, even residents in Antonovich's 5th District.
Photo by Ensie via Flickr
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Antonovich is a relic of provincial California politics. He just wants the non-existant funding from the western expansion of the Purple Line to fund a future suburban extension of the Gold Line through his San Gabriel constituency. But in this world of focus group democracy, he is what we deserve. It's no wonder that countries with totalitarian governments have such wonderful rapid transit systems.
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My God, someone's come unhinged. The basics of transportation planning is resource allocation; the sad truth is that, say, the Gold Line or Green line never needed to be heavy-rail subway; light rail will be adequate for many years to come, but anyone who rides the 720 (I've never seen such overcrowding, and I don't know of any New York busses that have de facto 90 second headways at rush hour!), that needs to be subway. I've got a friend who lives Downtown and commutes to the Wilshire/Barrington area by the 10... imagine what would happen for his poor miserable suburban whiners if cars like that were taken off the 10 once they started taking the new subway.
Indeed, proper and effective transit development can help everyone. It could even people who could take Metrolink or the Metro Gold into the city; instead of driving all the way through, they could change for the purple line at Union and never take their gas-guzzling battering ram into LA! I don't get why this is so hard for people to figure out. I think if they built the subway well enough that it could manage high speeds between stops unlike the speed-limited East coast subways (they already did that with the red line b/t Hollywood and NoHo so they clearly know how), it'd quickly draw large volumes of people, all of whom are currently taking up road space via the 720 or their cars. Even taking the 720 back off Wilshire again post-purple line would help alleviate rush-hour traffic.
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as a former 720 rider... what aaron said.
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This is nothing more then sheer idiocy of a suburban politician.