Promenade to LACMA in 14 Minutes?
By Frank J. Gruber
In last week's column I floated the idea that the Wilshire Boulevard
"Subway to the Sea" should be a four-track system to allow
for express trains that could skip stations and make better time. This
is the system they have in New York.
My musings were rewarded with an email from Kymberleigh Richards, Public
Affairs Director of Southern California Transit Advocates (http://www.socata.net/),
who tried to answer my question whether over the 16-mile length of Wilshire
Boulevard it would be worth the extra expense to build four tracks.
Ms. Richards doubts that a four-track system would be cost-effective.
But before I analyze that, and maybe disagree with her, Ms. Richards
was kind enough to share a lot of information about the subway that
supplements the Beverly Hills analysis that I wrote about last week,
and this information got me thinking about what a subway would mean
for us Santa Monicans.
To start, Ms. Richards told me that the expectation among MTA planners
is that the extension of the Red Line to Santa Monica would have eighteen
stations in total (ten of them new), as follows:
Existing stations:
- Union Station
- Civic Center
- Pershing Square
- 7th St/Metro Center
- Westlake-MacArthur Park
- Wilshire/Vermont
- Wilshire/Normandie
- Wilshire/Western
New stations:
- Wilshire/Crenshaw
- Wilshire/La Brea
- Wilshire/Fairfax
- Wilshire/La Cienega
- Wilshire/Beverly
- Century City (Santa Monica/Ave. of the Stars)
- Westwood Village
- Wilshire/Bundy
- Wilshire/20th
- 3rd Street Promenade
If you consider that Wilshire starts near the 7th Street/Metro Center
stop, its sixteen miles will be covered by fifteen stations.
As for how long a trip would take, Ms. Richards told me that the length
of the Wilshire line would be comparable to the length of the existing
Red Line between downtown L.A. and North Hollywood, which is fourteen
miles and fourteen stations. That trip takes 29 minutes. Figuring roughly
two minutes per mile (and station), a trip from the Promenade Station
to Metro Center would take about 31 minutes, and a trip all the way
to Union Station would take perhaps 37.
That sounds good, but I am especially excited by how the subway would
open up destinations in the middle of the route. Imagine being able,
at any time of day to shuttle between Santa Monica and Beverly Hills
or Century City in eight or ten or twelve minutes? To LACMA at Fairfax
in fourteen?
Ms. Richards concluded that a four-track system would be unnecessary
because the Red Line to North Hollywood, with similar distances and
speeds, has already proven to be successful. It's also true that because
we will only be building a system west of Western, over about ten miles,
there is not enough distance for express trains to save as much time
as expresses in New York do.
Nonetheless, I am still thinking two tracks good, four tracks better.
The reason is that every minute of more speed means more riders. The
time riding on a train is only part of the time of a subway commute
for most people. Although people currently riding buses on Wilshire
will switch to the train, to attract more riders from among those who
would otherwise drive, door-to-door speed will be of the essence, and
that will depend on attracting riders to the subway who don't live near
Wilshire and distributing them quickly to their jobs -- many beyond
walking distance from Wilshire -- once they disembark.
For instance, if we want to do something about the 405, we need a system
that brings commuters from the Valley to the Westwood subway station
by way of buses that use the "high occupancy vehicle" (HOV)
lanes. Even assuming the HOV lanes are not gummed up with two-person
"carpools" and hybrids), that's going to add 15 or 20 minutes
to a trip.
East-to-West commuters to Santa Monica will have to take shuttles or
buses when they arrive at Wilshire Boulevard stations, because most
of our jobs are not along Wilshire.
Connections take time, and commuters will more often choose to take
the subway if they can blast between Western and Westwood, in either
direction, stopping only once at Fairfax or La Cienega, and saving four
or five minutes.
There is another reason to consider building four tracks: capacity.
It probably sounds ridiculous to predict that ridership could max out
on a heavy rail system in Los Angeles, but the Blue Line between Long
Beach and downtown L.A. has already required retrofitting to allow for
longer trains because of higher than predicted ridership, and the Orange
Line busway is, less than two years after beginning operation, approaching
its capacity of 22,000 riders per day.
People are hungry for transit in L.A. It's quite conceivable that more
than 100,000 people -- the upper limit, per hour, for one track of a
heavy rail subway -- will some day be riding the Wilshire subway in
either direction between five and six in the afternoon.
The real question is -- are we going build the system we need to get
people out of their cars, or -- as we have done so often -- settle for
mass transit that's either not fast enough (the Gold Line), doesn't
go far enough (the Green Line), or can't carry enough people (the Blue
and Orange Lines)?
Consider this: the MTA has started running "express" trains
on the Gold Line that skip stops to make better time. (Unfortunately,
since these trains run on the same tracks as the local service, there
is not much of an increase in speed.)
Or consider this: the phenomenally successful Orange Line, which has
everyone involved with it patting their backs, was originally supposed
to be a light rail system that would have had an end-to-end travel time
of 28 minutes instead of the 41 minutes the buses take. But NIMBYs in
the Valley didn't want the train. (Speaking of such things, some Cheviot
Hills residents who support routing the Expo Line along the Exposition
right of way have set up a marvelous website that details the history
of the route. http://www.lightrailforcheviot.org/)
I don't want to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Even if four
tracks would be better, they would cost more, and money will be tight.
But perhaps they wouldn't cost that much more.
Four tracks would require more tunneling, but contrary to what most
people think, tunneling is not the most expensive element of building
a subway. Tunneling usually only accounts for about fifteen percent
of the cost. (Much more -- 50 percent -- is spent on stations, which
are, in effect, multi-story buildings built underground, although stations
on the Red Line extension will be cheaper than stations on the original
segment because the old stations have a mezzanine level the MTA no longer
uses to collect fares.)
You get what you pay for. What's it worth to you to do something about
traffic?
Event Notice:
The Westside Urban Forum is hosting two breakfast programs, open to
the public, to discuss L.A.'s housing crisis. The first takes place
February 16, and the title of the program will be "Creative Destruction?:
Condo Conversion and the Plight of the Rental Class." Although
the panelists have not yet been announced, WUF events are always informative
and provocative. The downside is the price for non-members is $55.
Details:
Location: The Regency Club, 10900 Wilshire Blvd., 17th Floor, Westwood.
Date and Time: Friday, February 16, 2007, Registration, 7:00 am; Program,
7:45 - 9:00 am.
For more information, contact: Christyne Buteyn
Phone: 310-394-0253
Email: info@westsideurbanforum.com
To register go to: http://web.memberclicks.com/mc/community/eventdetails.do?eventId=116150&orgId=ui |
