Happy Holidays from the LA Subway Blog!

Our Transit-Oriented Christmas Tree included a Metro 2 bus button; a Metro Rail cardboard car; a replica of a Metro Bus in California Poppy; a traffic cone, and a Dump the Pump stress toy from an old UCLA Transportation campaign.

And yes, John Gahbauer, that is an actual (heavy paper-stock) Metro Rail car on our Christmas tree.

The bigger question this Christmas:
John, quick: Make, model, year of manufacture of the rail car.

Juan and Sirinya make it to opening day of the Eastside Extension of the Gold Line

Hi everyone!

The Eastside Extension to the Metro Gold Line opened on Sunday to a LOT of fan fare. Juan and I were one of the 70,000 + people who checked out the festivities along the eight-stop extension. We actually went first to Chinatown to sample some dim sum, then trekked to Union Station, where we got off at several stations along the route to check things out.

Above: Soto Station, which has a bird theme. I'm too much a product of the LA public schools, as I can't tell you what kind of art theory informed this kind of... art (is it a bird? a plane? no, folks, it's just a light rail train.) Below: Crowded light rail car! Some people were probably sightseeing (especially the little kids who were suuuper excited and pointing to things out the window to their parents and siblings), and others (um, like the woman with sunglasses who was dozing off) were actually trying to get somewhere.

Metro did a fantastic job preparing its staff to serve as ambassadors and authorizing its staff to implement crowd control strategies. For instance, our return to Union Station via the Mariachi Plaza was slightly delayed, as Metro staff and security crew held us and probably two dozen other people up by the fare gates until the passengers waiting downstairs for trains departed. SMART!

Juan and I walked between the distance along 1st Street between Soto Station and Indiana Station in Boyle Heights. I suspect that the areas along the Eastside Extension will be the next to "gentrify", as the light rail line provides accessibility to the rest of the city and the housing stock - which includes many California bungalows and large boarding houses with intricate details - might be very appealing to the upwardly mobile.

This home is subdivided into four apartments and is near the northeast corner of 1st and Soto.

This recently-renovated Food-4-Less is located on 1st Street, between the Soto & Indiana Stations. I would not be shocked if its corporate owner decided to step up to its A-Game upon the opening of the Eastside Extension.

Good-bye to the bus line that shadowed the Eastside Extension route, effective 11-15-09.

As part of the mini-adventure, Juan and I got agua de limon from El Mercado, which was so darn sweet that it induced dehydration and a headache. But before the headaches kicked in, we also stopped by Mariachi Plaza. There was a huge street fair underway; I was able to get my Metro Gold Line swag (thankyouverymuch); and we listened to Jose Huizar make some comments. We also got tacos from Jim's. (In actuality, the tacos were nothing special - stuff thrown together haphazardly in a fast-food joint setting. I'll get back to you on the pastrami next time.)

The following day, I went on a VIP tour of the Eastside Extension, but I've had enough blogging for now so I'll save that for another day.

Ridership on the extension is expected to average 13,000 a day during the week. Here's hoping to the successful - and safe - launch of the newest extension of Metro Rail!

Blog is Under Construction

And we expect it to be done before 2036.

The LA Subway Blog is undergoing a site overhaul, so things are a work in progress.

A Subway Story: Short documentary on Wilshire Subway by Metro

Verdict: REALLY hokey, but gets the point across. Major stakeholders participated in the video to gush about the subway, including UCLA (see minute 6:00). They are identified by name. Yet we never learned the name of the actual actor.

Metro.net's redesign has inspired an upcoming LASubwayBlog redesign

And that's what the new Metro site looked like when it was working. It's currently down. Luckily, Google Transit is still up.

I've been a big fan of the Beta site and I think that it will be a great change once the technical obstacles are out of the way.

Stay tuned in the coming days for some differences (hopefully improvements) in this site.

Subway meeting in Westwood/VA tonight

Tonight, the Metro Westside Subway Extension team is hosting its last gathering in this round of meetings. It'll be at the Wadsworth Theater on the north side of the VA between 6 and 8p.m. Bruins for Traffic Relief and some of my colleagues from UCLA Transportation will be attending. (I'll be there with Juan as laypeople.) This meeting will be kind of like a charette; after the presentation, we'll be divided into groups to provide feedback on a series of renderings of proposed station locations and designs.

So what's a charette?
A charette is a meeting format which brings together stakeholders to develop design solutions. It's commonly used in urban planning design. Some charettes bring people, including residents, developers, and municipal officials, together for several intense days of brainstorming on a potential design for an area.

Come back to the LA Subway Blog for a recap of tonight's events!

Happy Halloween

Earlier this week, Juan came up with the brilliant idea of dressing up as an articulated 720 bus for Halloween.

=  Juan and Sirinya Dressed as a Bus

Personally, I thought it was so romantic. After all, we got to wear identical outfits (see pictures below) and found a slinky toy to symbolize the articulated part of the bus. Plus, Juan created a multimedia component to our costume: we had a portable speaker playing sounds from the bus on repeat throughout the night.

Juan and Sirinya on Layover

An Open Letter to the Metro Board

Honorable Metro Board Members:

Last night while waiting for the 720 bus at the busiest intersection in Los Angeles (Wilshire & Westwood), I conducted an informal study of vehicles passing in the curb lane. First, the roadway was so congested that over the 5-minute period I surveyed an average of 14 people per minute passed through that curb lane. Second, about a third of the vehicles with identifiable dealer plates came from Burbank or points east along the I-210 corridor (Longo in El Monte, Claremont Toyota, etc). Third, I then boarded a bus, which was much delayed due to the congestion, and counted 55 people aboard that bus. One slow, delayed 60-foot bus carried as many people as 4 minutes of traffic. Public transportation is essential to getting Los Angeles moving again and recouping some of the $10 billion lost annually due to traffic congestion.

The transportation reauthorization bill is likely to expand funding opportunities for transit, but future projects will be continue to be evaluated based on cost-benefit criteria. Two proposed projects serve as significant system-wide ridership multipliers to all projects connected to the network. These projects will increase the potential benefits of all future transit projects in Los Angeles County more than any project, proposed or conceived. These projects are the downtown regional connector and the subway. These projects will create a robust core transit network by providing quick reliable access to job centers and areas of dense population. All peripheral projects will benefit, and jump well ahead in the competition for federal funds as a result.

The benefits of both the Wilshire subway and regional connector will be both substantial and regional. To focus substantial efforts on building other projects before making substantial progress on these core projects is akin to building the second floor before the frame (it’s an important part of the house, but there is nothing yet to support it) and appears parochial and short sighted. I urge you to pass a Long Range Transportation Plan that reflects this reality.

Juan Matute

MBA, MA Urban Planning