Labor Day Weekend Open Thread
Hope everyone is enjoying their holiday weekend. I’m in Orange County, visiting family and as always wishing there were more in the way of passenger rail infrastructure in the region. Spent last night in Santa Monica, which was very busy with people. Their pedestrian-friendly downtown area is a perfect terminus for the Subway to the Sea, or even just Phase 2 of the Expo Line. And of course, Union Station will be the node that connects Santa Monica and other points along the Expo Line and the Westside subway to the rest of the region and, ultimately, the state.
Right now we’re in the middle of the difficult planning portion of both the HSR route and the Westside Subway (which is still unfunded, at least beyond Westwood). But the end goal remains in sight and remains popular – giving a state suffering from high unemployment and high gas prices a way to get around that doesn’t require them to drive.
Some prefer to come up with reasons not to do something important, something big. This state and its prosperity were built by people who rejected that thinking, who instead preferred to come up with reasons to do something important, and to figure out how to get it done. That is the ethos that will pull this state out of recession. Those who prefer to find excuses to do nothing are those who embrace the failed status quo. Californians have shown their preference for problem solving and for thinking big. Let’s hope Sacramento is listening.
This state and its prosperity were built by people who rejected that thinking, who instead preferred to come up with reasons to do something important, and to figure out how to get it done.
Are you referring to the weapons of mass economic destruction (and Indian genocide) known as the “transcontinental railroads”? Or did you mean the interstate highways?
Important – surely. But good ideas? Probably not.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
September 4th, 2011 at 3:11 pm
Transcons were definitely good ideas I’m afraid (although, as with anything, implementation could have been better). Speeding up travel and commerce is rarely a bad one.
BruceMcF Reply:
September 4th, 2011 at 10:39 pm
If the transcontinental railroads had indeed been sources of mass net economic destruction, they wouldn’t have been instruments of Indian genocide, since they would have delayed rather than accelerated the settlement of the west.
But if not for the California reference, he might have been referring to the Erie Canal, which allowed New York City to take over from New Orleans as the largest US port city, or the establishment of the US textile industry in the early part of our history, or the establishment of our steel industry in the 1800′s. Inside California, he could be referring to the Golden State Bridge, or the establishment of the aerospace industry or the industries born in Silicon Valley.
There are enough different examples to go around that its hard to narrow it down to a specific example.
Alon Levy Reply:
September 4th, 2011 at 11:15 pm
Settlement of frontier land is not the same as economic development. The Manifest Destiny doctrine holds that the two are identical; the doctrine is wrong – just look at the success of countries that did not base their process of industrialization on imperialism and expansionism, and the implosion of countries that did, such as postwar Britain and early 20th-century France.
The Erie Canal’s impact on New York was positive, but still overrated. The city was already growing faster than Philadelphia and Boston, because it had a better-located harbor. And New Orleans was not a very large city at the time – its fastest growth occurred in the 1820s and 30s, with the progressive settlement of the inland Deep South. What the canal did was enable development in the Great Lakes area.
joe Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 5:55 am
Alon; Yes I’m very interested in the more successful alternative to Britain which used the wrong “doctrine”.
The comment about the Erie Canal impact on NYC being overrated is subjective.
Harbors are nice unless they don’t connect to anything. See Criticism of Miami’s plans for an enlarged harbor without any inland.
For a ranking of harbors, see US Navy – they use many of NYC’s competitive harbors.
Why economic asymmetry? The Great Lakes Region benefits from access to the NY ports but NYC not so much makes no sense. There is no reason to assert economic asymmetry. More so since the great lakes region isn’t confined but transit of goods to NYC, yes very much without the canal.
New Orleans could have grown with the added economic opportunity of the great lakes and great plaines settlement. An example of such growth is Chicago which was founded in 1831, at a southern portage between the great lakes and Mississippi river.
NYC is closer to Europe it was a low cost destination for immigration – a state committed to building infrastructure including the canal for access to goods and foster trade.
Alon Levy Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 11:47 am
Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Denmark. And, even more so, Singapore and Hong Kong, which as city-states did not need to engage in any of the lines-on-a-map exercises of nation-states.
The US Navy’s rationale for using harbors is different from what made cities grow in the early 19th century. New York’s advantage was that it is closer to Britain than Philly, which is located far up Delaware Bay, and closer to the rest of the US than Boston. (And even earlier, it stayed loyalist in the Revolutionary War, making British investors prefer it to patriotic Philly and Boston; its fastest growth occurred in the 1790s.)
In contrast, the Navy doesn’t really care about proximity to Britain, and instead needs very deep harbors, sized for today’s ships rather than for those of the early 1800s. That’s why it uses Norfolk, which was never even a contender for a top city in the early-19th century US. It also involves a lot of pork, as all military base siting decisions do.
If you want one good reason for economic asymmetry, consider what happened after the Welland Canal and road shipping bypassed the Erie Canal. New York remained a top industrial city, and if anything declined less in the 20th century than Boston and Philly; Upstate, which the Erie Canal created, suffered massive population loss and economic stagnation, mirrored elsewhere only in one-industry cities in which the one industry declined, such as Pittsburgh and Detroit. At the very least, it tells us that by the mid-20th century, the Erie Canal was irrelevant to New York, but critical to the economy of Upstate.
All of this is fairly straightforward if you think of it in terms of Jane Jacobs’ theory of urban economy. A vibrant, import-replacing city creates infrastructure, rather than the reverse. If your city’s economy depends on one piece of infrastructure, or one industry, then it’s economically passive, one step above being a colony.
joe Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 9:33 pm
Alon,
I’m stunned to see two UK colonies listed as examples. Areas which benefitted from British colonialism and peaceful transition to independence in the 20th, use that legacy position to dominate economically under PAX Americana.
Sweden I disagree. They sure sent a lot of immigrants to the US seeking to escape poverty – Rockford IL, was full of them. They also had a large 17th Century Empire on the Continent. I’d scratch them off the list.
Norway, Denmark – they were on the losing end of some 18th Century wars – colonialism. Norway was part of Sweden right? Again, thee are examples of what choices made? I don’t see it.
NYC wasn’t loyal to the crown, it was brutally occupied. yes the port is closer, it was an immigrant destination – cheaper fare. Benefited from labor and infrastructure.
By the mid 20th century the erie canal was indeed irrelevant to NYC – the benefit was the advantage it gave the city when it was built. The asymmetry I don’t see explained is the boom to the great lakes region due to trade not being recognized as important to establishing NYC in the proper time context – when the canal was built and as the national industrialized and centralized finance and trade.
I’m unfamiliar with Jane Jacob’s theory but I’d point to Byzantium transforming into Second Rome, the difference being the infrastructure – Wall in particular that enabled the city to grow and secure itself. So I am skeptical. Overall “1491″ and Diamond’s books seem to provide counter examples – as well as Krugman’s economic geography.
Alon Levy Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 1:18 am
You’re going too far back in history. Sweden, Norway, and Denmark all tried to be imperialist, got booted from the game in the 18th century, and then spent the industrial era spending scarce money domestically. Yes, they sent emigrants to the US; the same is true of Britain. With comments like “They also had a large 17th century empire, I’d scratch them off the list,” it sounds like you’re just playing gotcha. I’m reminded by a certain writer, who, wanting to prove the only way to grow is to be protectionist, finds the one interventionist policy in every country that’s successful, even super-laissez faire Hong Kong, and the one neo-liberal policy in every country that’s a failure.
You’re also going too far back with Hong Kong and Singapore. The contrast between them and wannabe empires like Israel goes back decades, not centuries. None has had much of its infrastructure created by the British, at any case; the infrastructure that the British did build (for example, the railroads) has often been abandoned or relegated to secondary status.
Krugman’s economic geography… you misunderstand, rather horribly. I think you’re just quoting a single sentence from his popularization of his work; he does not rigorously talk about how infrastructure megaprojects do or do not create extra growth. And Jared Diamond, who doesn’t say anything about megaprojects either, has two kinds of statements: wrong ones (e.g. the east-west axis theory), and ones he did not invent (e.g. the Native Americans mostly died from diseases). You should read Ed Glaeser’s economic history of New York instead. In general, popularizations are hit-or-miss. Start a conversation with my bioengineer ex-girlfriend about Scientific American vs. PubMed sometime.
Tom McNamara Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 10:34 am
This is all wildly entertaining, but I’d add just this much:
The fulcrum of Manifest Destiny was the realization that an agrarian South needed to grow faster and have better infrastructure to maintain the sort of political advantage sought in the antebellum U.S. The chicken-or-egg dilemma is when and how you build infrastructure in light of growth.
Now, the fundamental misconception is that America can and will grow unchecked. Build it, and they will come. There is of course, a break-even point after which there is no benefit and only risks associated from further expansion.
What separates the great nations and empires from the rest, naturally, is that they know when they have reached that break-even point. Even in the 19th century, American statesman realized that conquering Canada, Mexico, or Cuba was not worthwhile but still added Alaska and Hawaii.
Israel decided to return land after the Six-Day War. The Russians have slowly begun to retreat from the Caucasus. Hopefully, the US can learn this lesson too.
Alon Levy Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 11:16 am
It wasn’t just a Southern thing. The North, too, wanted to expand from sea to shining sea. The call 54-40 Or Fight was in part a call for more expansionism into the Pacific Northwest, and in part a slag at Polk for prioritizing expansion in the south, into Mexico, and ignoring the north.
Israel returned marginal, rump land in the 1970s. The imperialism I’m discussing is partly in the settlements, and partly in Israel proper. The government still gives incentives to build in peripheral areas, partly for facts on the ground, partly for ensuring a Jewish majority in every region, and partly due to an anti-urban ideology among all major parties. The Tel Aviv District, which has a sixth of the national population and the worst housing shortage, only gets 3% of state public housing construction; in contrast, the settlements get a disproportionately high share, followed by the Negev, the Galilee, and other national priority regions. And going back to independence, the country has prioritized national over urban infrastructure; in 1948, Ben Gurion rejected a plan for a Tel Aviv subway on the grounds that it would conflict with the goal of population dispersion.
Tom McNamara Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Alon,
I was not implying that both North and South didn’t want to expand. Rather, because the South was agrarian and land-intensive, it needed to grow faster (in regards to territory) than the North ever did to maintain the political balance in Washington.
Thus, the transcontinental railroad was a opportunity for the South to become more like the North, without becoming more like the North but only if it actually went through the South….
Alon Levy Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 3:16 pm
But, the industrial North wanted to expand just as much as the agrarian South. The transcontinental railroad was a project of the Republican Party and Abraham Lincoln, i.e. Northern business interests; the route, too, was all-Northern – it went to San Francisco, the Northern-like part of California (SoCal sympathized with the Confederacy), from Omaha and eventually Chicago.
In general, imperialism was mostly a feature of industrialized nations, since agrarian ones didn’t have the resources for military domination of colonies.
joe Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
if you pretend there wasn’t a 1849 gold rush and you ignore population density, then possibly the decision to build a RR to NorCal was a anti-confederacy.
joe Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 3:27 pm
BTW the largest global empire eveh was Mongolian.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 3:30 pm
Romans gave it a good shot too and then the Ottomans did a fair job with the remnants.
Reality Check Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 3:40 pm
There was a 1-hour show on the Transcontinental Railroad and what a boondoggle it actually was on KQED Radio FM 88.5 this morning. The mp3 audio archive is here: Railroaded
Alon Levy Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 4:08 pm
Joe, nothing to do with the Confederacy here. I brought up the route choice of the Transcontinental Railroad as a matter of which of the two halves of the US it served, not why.
Peter Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
This is also the guy who trash-talked HSR in a bullshit editorial in the NY Times, lest anyone forget.
Alon Levy Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 5:23 pm
So? His regular research is on the history of US railroad corruption. He saw HSR as having too many parallels, wrongly. It’s important to distinguish between scholarly and popular work; for the same reason, if I quote Glaeser, it’s going to be on the impacts of zoning restrictions, or on the economic histories of New York and Boston, rather than on his fluff-ridden book.
Does anyone know when Desert Xpress will start construction (this year)?
Peter Reply:
September 4th, 2011 at 4:32 pm
As soon as they get their loan from the FRA.
Brandon from San Diego Reply:
September 4th, 2011 at 9:35 pm
If it were only a real project……
No money.
I rode Metrolink to Los Angeles Union Station yesterday and saw signs of construction. The area where the passenger platforms were removed in 1991 for mail handling now displays new excavation for ramps. There are stacks of rails and concrete ties in the area.
Reconstruction of the station tracks is a necessary first step to building any run through tracks at Union Station. The new tracks would provide the capacity to shut down other tracks which need to be raised five feet to pass over the busway and freeway at the south edge of the station. An updated plan for Union Station from Los Angeles Metro is expected in October.
Ben Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 6:38 am
Here’s an article from the San Diego Union-Tribune about improvements on the Surfliner route.
Caltrans awarded $55M to improve Surfliner operations
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/aug/31/caltrans-awarded-55m-improve-surfliner-operations/
Ben Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 6:40 am
A recent article in the LA Times about the proposed downtown LA football stadium also discusses the redevelopment of Union Station.
Critic’s Notebook: AEG’s designs on downtown L.A. stadium
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-stadium-notebook-20110817,0,4623314.story
“Los Angeles is thus poised to create a pair of major downtown gateways: Farmers Field and an updated convention center on its southern edge and a remade Union Station to the northeast. In an ideal world, City Hall would seize on this double opportunity and insist on — or at least do what it can to promote — ambitious architecture at each location.
But that would require that the builders of each facility take a leap of architectural faith. I’m willing at least for now to keep an open mind about Metro’s plans for Union Station, which are in their earliest stages. Farmers Field, on the other hand, shows few indications that it will be anything but a smooth and compliant — if huge — complement to L.A. Live and Staples Center…”
Drunk Engineer Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 9:59 am
Why on Earth anyone thinks a football stadium, with just 8 home games per year, provides an economic boost is a complete mystery. The budget analysts certainly aren’t convinced.
synonymouse Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 10:46 am
panem et circenses
Nathanael Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 7:18 pm
The problem with our elites is the lack of panem. They’re doing OK with the circenses.
bixnix Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 11:32 am
AEG is going after a lot more business than 8 football games – Superbowls, Final Fours, Pac 12 (16?) championships, boxing, X-Games, concerts … the list is practically endless.
Donk Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 4:43 pm
And conventions. It is expected to be used frequently. The Staples Center is used more than 300 days/year. I think AEG knows what they are doing here.
Brandon from San Diego Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 12:44 pm
The stadium will also serve as a convention center expansion. Envisioned is more larger conventions will come to downtown Los Angeles.
Aside from that, the article forgot about the Regional Connector light-rail line. Three more stations wil be added to the light-rail system, and, the Blue and Expo line (which opens in next 6 months) will be be merged with the Gold Line… in 2019. Riders from Long Beach wil have a one-seat ride to Pasadena and people from Santa Monica can ride directly to east Los Angles. The Regional Connector project is about $1.2 billion.
StevieB Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 7:44 pm
The Regional Connector is better positioned to connect the Blue and Expo light rail lines to Union Station. Transferring to the Red Line Subway for a 3 stop trip to Union Station is a major inconvenience. The direct connection will increase ridership on California High Speed Rail at Union Station.
Brandon from San Diego Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 8:43 pm
That it will be – well positioned to serve Union Station.
Nathanael Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 7:17 pm
Whoa, Stevie — that’s news. I knew there was a staged plan to rebuild the Union Station platforms at a higher level to create run-through tracks, but I would not have expected there to be construction going on already. Are you sure it’s for this project and not just routine track repairs or something?
Paulus Magnus Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 7:20 pm
Run through tracks has been a long standing plan for LAUS.
LA transit…
They need to get the green line into the terminals at lax.
They need a line that serves the west side/beach cities/to long beach via something 405-ish
They need something (including a more direct freeway) from long beach area over to anaheim.
they need a subway down the the length of sta ma blvd via weho. to hwd and highland.
Gianny Reply:
September 4th, 2011 at 8:35 pm
Everything you mention is on the long term projects…including the 405 fwy subway from the valley, the extension from the Green Line to Torrance, the new Light Rail to using the Santa Ana Row. I don’t think LA County would oppose an additional tax increase to expand it even more! LA has finally put mass transit as its top priority.
bixnix Reply:
September 4th, 2011 at 10:52 pm
Metro is moving forward with the Green Line / airport connection. LAX will probably be providing a people mover to the Green Line station somewhere near Century Blvd.
http://thesource.metro.net/2011/09/01/to-repeat-the-crenshawlax-line-final-environmental-document-has-been-released/
Im very excited as it seems there is a possible creation of an Infrastructure bank. Los Angeles will surely benefit from that, they are planning to expand the rail network at a high rate. If the subway to the sea had not been stopped in the 80′s by Nymbys, LA would have a very nice network!
1998 was the year the subway was shot down “for good” by Measure A.
2008 is the great reversal and additional sales tax with Measure R.
By the way if you look through the detailed plans for the Merced to Bakersfield section you will see that an awful lot of the cost is due to them keeping their new ROW over 100 feet from the UPRR tracks. They have to take an awful lot of property in the Fresno area to accomplish this. In addition this leads to them having to rebuild a lot of Golden State Blvd and about one mile of CA99.
I’m not sure how they plan to go under CA180 but that will surely be complicated.
trentbridge Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 9:53 am
Union Pacific Railroad has a market cap of $43 billion – what a coincidence! It was the original cost of HSR in California. Let’s buy UNP and take their tracks for CAHSR. It might be cheaper. No new ROW. It saves farm land. We can run the freight trains at night.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 11:09 am
Can we seriously stop with this absolutely idiotic suggestion?
And no, you can’t run the freight trains at night. That route sees 50-100 freight trains per day (more than double by 2035) and is already at an E Level of Service (rated A-F, A being best and F being worst). You would essentially kill much of the freight rail traffic, resulting in a very large number of trucks on Highway 99, and far more environmental and fiscal cost than this harebrained notion could ever possibly save.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 11:28 am
How wide is the UP ROW that’s hard up against the SR99 ROW through the Central Valley much of the Central Valley? if there’s enough room for three highway lanes, two or four tracks of passenger rail and four tracks of freight rail there wouldn’t be much of a problem would there?
synonymouse Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 12:03 pm
I can’t imagine that Jerry Brown would want to go to war with the Union Pacific what with his political popularity down and after all those UP jobs are union.
Instead the CHSRA will go to eminent domain war with the various property owners along the neo-99 alignment. And after they have spent a fortune on the ROW they will still put it on stilts. Iconic Brutalism, ya know.
Barack wants to throw more money away on poorly conceived “infrastructure”. Projects produced by local influence peddlers and ward healers of the general ilk of BART to SFO, any and all BART under-utilized extensions in the far reaches of its empire or more currently the Palmdale-Tehachapi detour. These projects are a long-term drain instead of an asset as they produce little income yet entail on-going maintenance and operating costs. This is an issue that cannot be ignored in the face of dwindling revenues.
Alan Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
Didn’t catch the sarcasm, did you?
Paulus Magnus Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 2:16 pm
Too many people advocating that idea seriously I’m afraid.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 3:36 pm
The real opportunity for this was in 1990, at the time California Proposition 116 made available $2bn of public money for rail. Southern Pacific (owned by Anschutz) was as basket case and worth a fraction of that. Instead we pissed the money away paying SP-then-UP to upgrade their dilapidated and systematically run-down infrastructure while getting nothing (a handful of slow and unreliable Amtrak trains is indeed nothing given the scale of “investment”) in return.
A public buy out, followed by sell off of most of the pieces while retaining the real public rights in rights of way, would have been (and for that matter still might be, in some cases) a spectacular public policy success, both fiscally and in terms of freight and passenger transportation outcome.
Instead, the system functioned exactly as it designed: public squalor, private opulence.
Risenmessiah Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 12:51 am
…except that I belive, in Southern California a similiar ballot measure allowed the Metropolitan Transit Authority to buy right-of-ways which they have used for both Metrolink and new rail projects like EXPO and the Gold Line.
Therefore, your idea wouldn’t work unless there is actually freight demand on those ROWs that would have been affected. Given that the most valuable ROWs are for port traffic… I don’t see how this could have worked. Sure, perhaps bailing out SP was not the right decision…but I’m not sure what the alternative was….
Nathanael Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 7:20 pm
Metrolink and two different agencies in San Diego successfully bought all the SP lines within their jurisdiction at the time, for a pittance. Caltrain also bought its corridor, under rather less advantageous terms.
So, basically, they did what you asked. The problem is that only *some* parts of the state did what you asked.
Joey Reply:
September 7th, 2011 at 12:52 am
Ehh? IIRC all the trackage used by the Coaster (and Metrolink south of Fullerton) is ex-ATSF.
Nathanael Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 7:22 pm
The right thing to do would be to buy UP, sell off the parts outside California (thus recouping most of the cost of purchasing it), then replace the existing rail line with a new four-track line, two freight and two high-speed passenger. License the operation of the freight tracks to UP, or if they can’t make a reasonable bid, BNSF.
Sigh. But that would require a state government with a “Mayor Hylan” attitude.
Alon Levy Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 9:40 pm
I don’t think anyone should ever copy what Mayor Hylan did, unless their goal is to eviscerate all rail service.
Used the San Joaquin service this weekend.
Anyone know why service is so slow in the bay area where it goes right next to the water? IE, around Martinez? Double tracked, but we were moving at a very leisurely speed. Train hauls ass in the valley.
The amount of padding in the schedule is also ridiculous. We left Emeryville 32 minutes late…and arrived in Fresno 10 minutes early. If the trains could run “on time” with no padding, the entire Bakersfield-oakland trip could probably drop an entire hour. Not insignificant.
Improving Amtrak California service NOW is one great way to get people excited (and supportive of) HSR. It’s a good product. Get people on the trains today, and theyll be willing to pay for money for the future. One way to do that is to make the train more time competitive with driving. Thats how getting people to accept taxes work. Like if you have a “library tax”. Hold events at libraries, and get people in them so they say “my money is being put to use”. If come poll day you think “I dont use this, ergo, it’s a waste” we have a problem.
Its pretty sad when the amtrak buses make the same run in less time than the train does. See the 6am amtrak southern departure from Fresno to LA. Its a bus, and beats every single scheduled train.
thetuck Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 10:20 am
The speeds just west of martinez are lower due to the sharp curves along the waters edge. Much straighter in the valley. Schedule padding is necessary before major stops to improve on-time performance. The freight railroads demand this extra time so they still get their incentives from delivering Amtrak on time (at least to the terminus).
Jon Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 2:53 pm
San Joaquins run slow through the Bay Area because the track is extremely curvy. It’s curvy because the cheapest way to access to Bay Area from the Central Valley is following the coastline between Stockton and Oakland, and that coastline is curvy. For Union Pacific, who own the tracks, cheap is more important than fast.
Tilting trains would help but the only real way to improve rail access to the Bay Area is to build tunnels through one of the mountain passes that connect to the Bay Area, namely Altamont or Pacheco.
Joey Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 3:13 pm
Tilting trains might not even help that much because UP doesn’t like passenger trains running faster than its freight trains on its tracks. Bad for capacity.
A couple of SJV rail related items I ran across this week.
**Central California Railroad Authority – The Assembly and Senate both passed SB325 creating the authority, its awaiting Brown’s signature. Covering Fresno, Tulare, Kings, and Kern Counties the CCRA would be authorized to take over short-lines at risk of abandonment to preserve freight service and “for the improvement of short-line rail service, including passenger service connecting to high-speed rail stations, extending from Kern County to the Port of Oakland.”
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_0301-0350/sb_325_bill_20110824_enrolled.html
**Kern County has decided to conduct a preliminary commuter rail study of routes from Bakersfield to cities like Delano and Shafter. They also want to study the potential of extending Metrolink to Rosamond in Kern County to provide service to Edwards AFB.
http://www.bakersfield.com/news/local/x254542504/Study-will-look-at-expanding-Kern-commuter-rail-service
JJJ Reply:
September 4th, 2011 at 9:44 pm
Those Kern county commuter line studies already exist and are available downtown.
Theres no chance in hell theyll ever happen. Waste of money to even draw up the damned documents.
The Westside Subway Extension will end at Westwood, not Santa Monica.
Some day it may make it to SM.
Alon Levy Reply:
September 4th, 2011 at 10:26 pm
My understanding is that the plan is to end it in Santa Monica, but Measure R funding is only enough to get it to Westwood.
Brandon from San Diego Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 12:14 am
Pending available funding, and approval by the Board… That is right. Measure R only funded through Westwood.
Some political discontent over Muni’s Central Subway botchjob:
http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/diaz/
But of course nothing will come of the obvious critiques. It will be built and the exceptionally poor design will be apparent once operations begin. Muni has always had its problems but this achieves a new level of the dysfunctional. You have to wonder how long an institution can last when political hacks, and in this instance a particularly clueless one, impose a scheme that has so many blatant shortcomings. Even BART was unhappy with the Pak’s needlessly deep tunnels.
Many will come to question whether Muni management can be trusted to do any more major civil works after this failure to be.
Alon Levy Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 11:48 am
Some? I was under the impression all transit advocates in SF were against it, to the point of marginalizing potential Chinatown interests who really want it.
synonymouse Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
The pathetic fact is that the original 3rd & Kearny route serves Chinatown better with a perfect site for a station at Portsmouth Square and right next to the new City College highrise. You are only talking about a block or so. But it means they could have crossed BART-Muni at the mezzanine level and cut-and-covered on Kearny, just for starters. dumb, dumb, dumb
William Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 1:53 pm
The Central Subway is needed, but what caused the cost to soar? Was it unpredictable soil conditions, unmarked utilities, cost to protect surrounding buildings?
The current alignment was support by Rescue Muni, and they still seems to support it.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Stop right there. Why?
For the last 7 or 8 years Rescue Muni has been a paper organization that functioned purely as a Gavin Newsom endorsement machine. (I was on the board back ages ago when it was a transit riders’ group.)
William Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
Why not? There is no direct North-South link in SF. Last time I visit SF it took me over one hour to travel between Fisherman’s Wharf and Caltrain 4th & King on 30 Bus. Even before that 30 and 45 buses often drop riders short of Caltrain. At least light-rail is more reliable.
Wasn’t the current alignment proposed by Rescue Muni more than 7 or 8 years ago as the LPA?
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 3:13 pm
Great Highway …48th Avenue … 47th Ave, … Arguello … Stanyan … Masonic … Divisadero .. Steiner .. Webster … Gough … Franklin … Van Ness … Polk … Larkin … Hyde … Leavenworth … Jones … Taylor .. Mason … Powell .. Stockton … Grant … Kearney … Montgomery … Sansome … Battery … Front … Davis … Drumm … Embarcadero.
(Nice to see you’ve visited SF. Please feel free to spend lavishly to boost our local economy.)
So, not an impossible observation. But now ask yourself, as an evidence-based analytical contributor to the most technically astute blog on the planet, exactly in whose interest might it might be for this to be the case?
FYI the entire best-case advertised trip-time “savings” “value” of this rapidly-approaching $2bn PBQD fraud-fest (hey, it’s only 1/30 the size of PBQD’s CHSR fraud-fest and only 1/5 the size of PBQD’s BART-SJX fraud-fest! so that’s OK!) could be realised just by banning right hand turns from THird Street onto Market Street! One intersection. Two signs, a few gallons of paint. One day’s work and $5k. But … exactly in whose interest might it might be for this not be done, eh?
William Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 10:00 pm
Well, Central Subway is certainly useful for all trips from north SF to Caltrain 4th & King.
Clem Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 10:11 pm
For $1.6 billion, you could certainly expect some redeeming qualities, such as serving a transportation node that will sooner or later move away, to Transbay.
William Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 10:48 pm
Yeah, that’s why I’d like to find out why the high cost, was it too risky to dig under 100+ year old plus land fills, or else…
Central Subway would certainly be more useful if it goes all the way to Fisherman’s Wharf.
William Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 10:50 pm
That’s why I think Central Subway takes away some need for Caltrain DTX, given that 4th & King has much better development opportunities and easier alignment for the new transbay tube…
jimsf Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 4:50 am
just keep ignoring the rest of the city’s plans.
Joey Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 2:58 pm
The Central Subway has some utility, but prioritizing it while Geary and Van Ness get downgraded to (yet unfunded) BRT is just depressing.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
So — other than being slower origin-to-destination for nearly every trip in the corridor, and other than punching an extra $15 million annual additional operating cost hole in Muni’s catstrophic budget, and other than enriching the mafiosi by a billion or two of your tax dollars — what “utility” is project supposed to have?
It quite literally serves nobody other than those promoting it. (Same story and the very same people being HSR to Los Banos, as it turns out.)
Again, it increases operating costs while failing to improve real world trip speeds. Another astounding piece of work from the Finest Transportation Planning Professionals In The World, who all just happen to work in God’s Own US of A.
Neville Snark Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 3:28 pm
What about the hoped-for (amongst some, quietly) continuation to Ft. Mason? That would be more useful, you have to admit, and it would (will?) be much cheaper (on the surface down stockton, and there’s the tunnel through Ft. Mason already waiting). Not that they shouldn’t have built out Geary instead.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 3:37 pm
Are you serious?
The first rule of holes is to stop digging.
Neville Snark Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 3:48 pm
But then the world would unholy.
synonymouse Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 10:12 am
The Central Subway, even following the much preferred 3rd & Kearny alignment, is not in my estimation the highest priority by any means. Geary cries out for upgrading – at the very minimum trolley coaches should already be in place there. Geary Carhouse-Presidio bus yard needs a major expansion – if the neighbors can cope with that they will just have to get used to crappy public transit in their area. A bigger facility there is simply the price of good service to the Richmond. There is no need for diesel buses to deadhead from Dogpatch. At some point Muni has to tell the Geary crowd, particularly the merchants, to either put up or shut up.
The N has problems; extending the Sunset Tunnel in both directions is an obvious idea which could have been sold.
I would have to assume that deep mined tunnels on Stockton Street will produce unnecessary problems for a subway on Geary or Post. How stupid.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 2:14 pm
Correct. The same cast of people were/are against BART to Millbrae, BART to San Jose, HSR to Los Banos, Caldecott Tunnel, “congestion ending” freeway expansions, the Bay Bridge East Span, the 1997 RTP, the 2001 RTP, the 2005 RTP, the 2009 RTP, etc.
Failure is guaranteed!
Nathanael Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 7:29 pm
There was a savage 3-part article about SF political culture not long ago which basically said that it wasn’t just Muni, it was everything done by the SF political culture — the attitude was “Give *all* the vested interests what they want, every single one, and if it isn’t working throw more money at it”.
The point was made that this is not how things are done in LA, let alone cities outside California, and that they’re getting better results for less money.
Even NYC is getting better results than the SF political scene, and it’s got some very serious problems with ability to do things for reasonable prices, and it’s got political interference to build badly-thought-out pet projects (7 line extension?), and it’s got giveaways to vested interests (Atlantic Yard land deal?)…. but it’s still doing better than SF.
Nathanael Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 7:29 pm
Wish I could find the link — perhaps Richard knows the one I’m talking about :-)
jimsf Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 4:02 pm
SAy all the people on this blog who don’t even ride muni….
Joey Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 4:05 pm
Objection
jimsf Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 7:05 pm
I know you live out there and want a subway. but again as Ive pointed out time and time again.. where as the geary corridor will grow little and very slowly, the eastern neighborhoods plan and 4th st corridor are where the bulk of the city’s growth is being planned. They acutally did something right by putting in the transit ahead of time instead of waiting until after the fact. If you look at it today, it seems pointless but its being built to serve future needs and in the context of a larger plan. I can’t go over it again. You have to study the neighborhood plans.
Joey Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 7:43 pm
I’m not disputing anything about future growth. For the most part, I’m looking at present day demand, and concluding that Geary has the potential to support high ridership (even the buses give it more riders per day than nearly any other corridor on the city) and the demand for better service (existing buses are crowded and travel times are slow). Even given a lot of development at Mission Bay etc, I don’t think the Central Subway could support nearly as much ridership, or spend public money as efficiently given the prices of things.
Oh, and I don’t live in the Richmond either.
jimsf Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 4:43 am
and then there’s the fact the central subway is what there was money for and there is no money for geary. The cc is mostly a federal project from I understand. And lets not forgot that chinatown WANTS it and geary has lots of opposition. not total opposition, but when faced with the choice and with the feds writing a check, of cours the T/cc which serves two communities and two parts of the city that have been historically ignored when it comes to getting any perks in this town. It s politics, but politics is everything in america. politics will always come first,
Joey Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 12:21 pm
It’s 100% politics, but it has less to do with who wants it and more to do with politicians thinking they know what’s best.
jimsf Reply:
September 7th, 2011 at 5:19 am
and again – opposition in one part of town versus a history of neglect in two other parts of town warrants resolution…. and then plus the development plans plus the funding.
jimsf Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 4:49 am
“Oh, and I don’t live in the Richmond either.”
oh ok I guess I always just pictured you standing out there in a cold damp fog at 42nd and Geary waiting for the 38 as you stared at the distant downtown skyline. I lived in the the richmond back in the day so I know the horror of the 38, I still have to ride it a couple times a month) The bad part of the 38 isn’t the trip time its the school kids who take up all the room and put graffiti everywhere. Their parents should be taking them to school instead of clogging up muni.
Once people on this blog make up their mind. Nothing else matters right?
The completion of HSR will catapult Union Station to among the top of the world’s greatest transportation hubs. The Transbay Terminal in SF is more of an endpoint than a hub, and doesn’t even connect to BART. San Jose Diridon Intergalactic station will be a nice transfer station for Caltrain, and that is pretty much it (I’m not going to count VTA). Anaheim ARTIC is supposed to be another major hub, but only connects to buses and Metrolink. They will probably botch the downtown San Diego station and put it at the airport.
LAUS will have HSR connections to SF, SD, Anaheim, and Las Vegas; 6 Metrolink lines, 5 Metro lines, and tons of bus lines. Yet all the attention (and funding) is on the SF, SJ, and Anaheim stations.
Alon Levy Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 6:02 pm
So, you mean HSR could get Union Station’s ridership up to the same level as JR East’s 40th busiest station?
jimsf Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 7:06 pm
it does connect to bart embarcadero. ( will)
Andrew Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 7:57 pm
Forget the Transbay terminal and put the money toward Transbay tube 2 instead. Northbound/eastbound HSR passengers from SF can make the Bart-HSr transfer in Oakland.
VBobier Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 9:34 pm
That’s not going to happen, You’d have to pay for Tube Yerself Mr Multi Billionaire, Besides It’s a dead subject.
Drunk Engineer Reply:
September 5th, 2011 at 10:49 pm
Running train service to Emeryville instead of to the SF Financial District? Good luck with that.
Risenmessiah Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 1:06 am
Well Union’s Station problem is that it doesn’t have a big political champion shepherding it through the process. Nancy Pelosi says TransBay will be the “Grand Central Station of the West”… Mlynarik is certain that the specific gravity of Diridon Intergalatic will be equal or greater than of a black hole…and Curt Pringle was the mastermind behind ARTIC even if it’s means the heart of Orange County is nowhere near an actual downtown….
Again though, HSR’s current plan for Phase 2 is going to be very disruptive to Metrolink’s service. Also, it will be very difficult to get from LAUS quickly to LAX…but it’s going to be real fast to get off HSR in Burbank, Ontario, and maybe even Irvine to catch a flight.
TransBay, for example, is going to offer really quick service to SFO, BART, and Muni. LAUS meanwhile, is still waiting for the infrastructure to be built….
Donk Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 10:55 am
I am not concerned with connecting airports to HSR stations. It is much more important to connect LAX to the Green Line and a 405 line to provide access to the Westside and Valley.
There has been talk though in converting the future Century/Aviation stop at Manchester Square into a “Union Station West”. This would have access to LAX, South Bay, Inglewood/Crenshaw/Expo Line, and ideally a Lincoln Blvd line to Marina Del Rey/Santa Monica and a 405 line to the Westside/Valley.
elportonative77 Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 7:43 pm
I think they are considering a nonstop LAX Express using the Harbor ROW. So from Century/Aviation to Union Station in 15 minutes or less is pretty good considering the alternative is either nothing or take the Crenshaw Line to the Expo Line and Expo Line to downtown (lots of time wasted).
jimsf Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 8:31 pm
from union station there is 24 hour half hourly service for 7 bucks to lax (hourly during late night hours) 30 minute trip
jimsf Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 8:32 pm
of course that doesn’t help if you are trying to traverse the rest of the basin.
Alon Levy Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 9:37 pm
Bleh. Are they going to even try to build local stations and run trains serving Inglewood?
Joey Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 10:16 pm
If my analysis of Metro’s tendencies is correct all we will get is light rail. The alternatives analysis says that options are not mutually exclusive, so theoretically a combination of the regional and express alternatives is possible, but both are assumed to be at-grade (with grade crossings) and 100% freight compatible. HSR isn’t mentioned once with respect to the express alternative.
Alon Levy Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 11:33 pm
I don’t think it’s bad that they’ll run light rail. In a world of perfect regulations (in this case Japanese more than UIC), this line should be mainline-compatible and there should be frequent local service, express service with timed overtakes, and some HSR runs acting as the express service. However, the presence of HSR is strictly a nice-to-have, and it’s not worth it to even try to get a waiver just to let it run on the tracks; once there’s no need for mainline compatibility, it doesn’t really matter what they call it, as long as the frequency and service patterns are good.
elportonative77 Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 11:34 pm
Crenshaw Line has one station serving Inglewood at La Brea but there might be one built at Aviation and Manchester which I think is technically still Inglewood. Where else in Inglewood would you consider putting a train line through?
Donk Reply:
September 7th, 2011 at 12:23 am
The LAX express idea is basically out of the running. If you read the report, the problem with the idea is that it would be very expensive to get the infrastructure in place (mostly viaducts) to accommodate such a service. Also, since it goes thru poor neighborhoods, an at-grade option that barrels thru these neighborhoods would be portrayed as being racist, and therefore it will never fly. You are going to have at least some local stops, such as Inglewood/Crenshaw Line, Slauson/Blue Line and Slauson/110.
The options that are on the table are the following:
1. Green Line extension from Redondo Beach Green Line SE to Torrance
2. Crenshaw Line extension from Inglewood along Slauson to the Blue Line
3. Regional Rail DMU from the 110 in Avalon, NW to Torrance/Redondo Beach/LAX, then NE to Inglewood/110/Blue Line/LAUS. This would overlay the Green Line and Crenshaw Line for a portion of the route.
If you are interested in more detail and maps, go to the link below and scroll to the very bottom to pages S-63 – S-66, starting at “CONCLUSIONS OF AA STUDY”
http://www.metro.net/projects_studies/harbor_subdivision/images/AA_study/Executive-Summary.pdf
elportonative77 Reply:
September 7th, 2011 at 2:42 am
Would it be to much to ask that service be an EMU instead of a DMU?
Donk Reply:
September 7th, 2011 at 8:26 am
Yeah I think the EMU mode is still on the table for option #3
elportonative77 Reply:
September 7th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Sweet.
Thats right, how come no money has been given to LAUS? Instead Artic and the Abomination that is the SF Transbay got everything!
Re TBT the political machine that runs California divvied up the funding as they saw fit. If you haven’t noticed the anointed apparatchiks constitute a sort of de facto gosplan.
Rose Pak and Muni’s Central Subway epitomize the new paradigm of transport planning hereabouts. Ward healers, be they in SF or Palmdale, have the power to demand routes to their liking and the juice to cast the decision in stone, no matter how abysmal.
About Amtrak California after CAHSR: I think it might be a good idea to have a government-owned operating company to run and fund both CAHSR and Amtrak California lines.
San Joaquin can be preserved as a local service connecting smaller cities to HSR stations in central valley. San Joaquin most likely will have much smaller operating ratio, as the current >50% ratio is primary due to higher number of long trips. So it makes senses to be operated and fund by the new State Rail company, possibly even cross-selling with the HSR line.
Capitol Corridor most likely will not face HSR competition for at least 5 years after phase 1 open, but CCJPA has a lot of upgrade project that need funding. It would be good idea for the new State Rail company to fund these project toward the goal to create a passenger only ROW along the Capitol Corridor.
Risenmessiah Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 12:52 am
Problem is, Prop 1A prohibits Authority from contemplating a service that receives a public subsidy…like Amtrak California.
Joey Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 1:41 am
The restriction really only applies to what is designed and built with Prop 1A money. The CHSRA will not be the operator of any services.
elportonative77 Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 3:14 am
So does that mean a government organization other than the Authority can run it with subsidies or does this project have to be run without subsidies and privately operated completely?
Risenmessiah Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 7:43 am
Neither. A government entity could run it…just not at a loss….
synonymouse Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 10:58 am
In the real world of California machine politix a franchised operator will not last long. The unions will not put up with it and throw a strike. In short order the CHSRA will devolve into a BART with revolving door half-a mil general managers, politicized Board of Directors yada yada.
Indeed if we do go into a quasi-depression we could very well have a our own version of Hugo Chavez. Ironically a government-run economy could not afford union scale. I wonder if the Hoffas et al are aware of this.
trentbridge Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 11:36 am
I think someone like Virgin Trains will be happy to have a franchise and make it profitable. After all, we already have Virgin America based in SF.
synonymouse Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 11:55 am
PB’s frankenrail cannot be profitable. At best it would require airline flight crew wages to even think about breaking even – something the unions with friends in the highest places would never accept
I am not the only one who thinks the country may become Chavez-world. Of course the same brain death prevails in both Reagan and Pelosi parallel universes
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44405678
Peter Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 12:49 pm
Claiming something to be true doesn’t make it so.
Eric M Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 1:54 pm
“PB’s frankenrail cannot be profitable”
That one statement just shows you have NO IDEA about high speed rail and all the comments you make are worthless
BruceMcF Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 10:35 am
That only means they’d have to be able to account for the CA-HSR services as a distinct service, such as by having two distinct departments, one for the subsidized services and one for the subsidized services.
Whether rail service for Madera, Corcorran or Wasco make sense, an interurban rail service in order to provide rail service to those three makes no sense. If Hanford Station does not get built, Visalia / Hanford / Fresno might or might not make sense, but in any event would make more sense than Fresno / Hanford / Corcorran / Madera / Bakersfield.
Nathanael Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 7:32 pm
Hint: what do you think the new Central Valley Railroad Authority is for? Yeah, yeah, I know, preserving shortlines and freight access, but what do you bet it takes on responsibility for the money-losing local service once the HSR service is up and running?
Fresno State has a 7 week seminar course this semester about California’s HSR project. Over 200 students including engineering students and Honors College President’s Scholars are enrolled in the weekly seminars for course credit.
The weekly course seminars (closed to the public) include speakers about HSR such as Reolof van Ark; Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin; Fresno County Supervisors Henry Perea and Susan B. Anderson; Reps. Devin Nunes and Jeff Denham or their staff representatives; and Fresno County Farm Bureau Executive Director Ryan Jacobsen.
The course concludes with a public Town Hall meeting on Oct 27 @ 7PM in the Fresno State Satellite Student Union. Scheduled participants at the Town Hall include Assemblymember David Valadao (R-Fresno), Elizabeth Alexis from CARRD, Bryn Forhan from the High-Speed Rail Authority, and Daniel Krause with CA4HSR.
http://www.fresnostatenews.com/2011/09/course-on-high-speed-rail-attracts-200-students/
Dear Southern Cousins,
So tell me, please advise… If one were to relocate to socal, is or is not, a car free lifestyle attainable? Inquiring minds want to know….
Nathanael Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 7:33 pm
Depends on where your job is. Very very much so.
jimsf Reply:
September 6th, 2011 at 8:30 pm
If I worked at union station… and had to be avail for shifts around the clock….. and lived in say…. hollywood proper…
Donk Reply:
September 7th, 2011 at 8:30 am
As long as you don’t mind taking the bus from time to time.
jimsf Reply:
September 7th, 2011 at 6:47 pm
plus I have a feeling that leisure time in la requires a car. Ill have to bite that bullet.
Donk Reply:
September 7th, 2011 at 10:24 pm
Are you moving to LA? You could try it out for a while if you leave near a Red Line station in Hollywood, then bite the bullet later if you can’t handle it.
The key would be to live near a rail line and near a couple major bus lines. I never bother with buses unless they are on the streets where they come every 5 min, like Wilshire. But now they FINALLY have real time bus info available on your phone, so this should make things much more manageable. There is nothing worse than waiting outside on a busy street in LA without shade waiting for a bus that never comes.
jimsf Reply:
September 8th, 2011 at 5:33 am
In sf its normal for normal people to be waiting around for the bus. In la people drive by and satrea at you and think you’re a loser who can’t afford a car. I think to fully enjoy the socal lifestyle one is going to have to get a car. probably a convertabble. I took a bus from long beach to newport – 2 buses actually. the places where you wait to transfer are intersections teh size of texas without so much as a bench or a tree. there were no english speaking people on the bus to newport it took forever but nevertheless – it did get me there. and dropped me off in another huge concreted location. socal is surreal but I theres something attractive about it nonetheless.
bixnix Reply:
September 8th, 2011 at 8:04 am
Well, us cagers commute in stop-and-go traffic and it ain’t all fun, either. If you blow by on a train, we’ll think you’ve got it made.
OC is very limited when it comes to transit …. when you cross the county line (roughly, east of the 605), you’re going to into a transit desert.
btw, LA Metro has real-time data available for buses – http://www.metro.net/around/mobile-resources/
jimsf Reply:
September 8th, 2011 at 6:26 pm
thanks. Im just going to have to spend a lot of time down there to make sure I wanna take that plunge.
yeah, you sure could do that… Hollywood has a ton of bus connections to the west side as well as the rail. There’s also a number of places to live on the rail transit corridors besides Hollywood – Pasadena and downtown L.A., for example. The current rail construction will link into the nicer (but expensive) foothill suburbs and take you to the edge of the more expensive westside neighborhoods. If your ideal is city life in SF, then I would think Hollywood, Pasadena, and downtown would be the most urban and comparable, though certainly different in some aspects.
It’s my observation that a car is needed in L.A. as much as a person believes they need it…. there are many people in L.A. who are willing to walk, bike, ride transit, or whatever… rather than drive.