Regional Connector Debate Ready for Round 2

Eric...are you serious that the connector will be at-grade or is that your hypothesis? There is no possible way the connector can be at-grade until it reaches Little Tokyo (which I personally believe should be a grade-seperated little tokyo/arts district station). Plus, all the comments in the first round supported grade-seperated.

If you or any of our neighbors attend (I suspect I won't be able to), please report the various recommendations.

I agree, at-grade routing seems to be a complete non-starter.

The next question that should be asked is whether a 300' platform can actually FIT at-grade on streets in Historic Core?

If they are promoting at-grade, I would recommend No Build over that option. We can continue hobbling along as we are right now, but I don't think we can do with at-grade in this part of Downtown. The at-grade on Flower and Washington was at least in a less-dense part of the city.

It's got to be below grade. To make it more affordable, put no stations at all in it. That would be my solution and I will try to make it there to the meetings to say so.

Scott, the whole reason for proceeding with a connector and the idea of not having any stations within said connector seem to be at odds. This project should be given second priority to the subway extension to Santa Monica (terminate for now the Exposition Corridor line at Venice Boulevard and dedicate funds for engineering the subway extension. In the distant future, the Exposition Corridor line should be extended out Venice Boulevard all the way to the circle at Venice. Re-construct the 405 bridge over Venice Boulevard so that bus and car passengers can transfer to light rail.)

The Downtown Connector ought to complement the Redline. Ask yourself if, in retrospect, the Redline should have been constructed with no stations in Downtown.

I say spend the money, but only after The Subway To The Sea is underway. The ability of Westside residents to get into Downtown by subway would be an extraordinary economic boon, above and beyond a resolution to so much Wilshire Corridor congestion. Otherwise, I'd hazard that establishing dedicated Redbus bus lanes along Wilshire will cause gridlock during rush hours. I once hiked six miles round-trip every workday for three years between my apartment in Westwood Village and the office in Bev. Hills. Spend money on the subway, not on dedicated bus lanes. The sooner the subway opens, the sooner Downtown will bloom, really go BOOM!

And if anyone seriously promotes the connector as an at-grade solution, they need a resounding wakeup call.

Yikes, many people moved Downtown to escape the Westside and, Westsiders.

The Westside fought the subway to the sea. But now that gas prices fluctuate many find their not so affluent after all. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people are already using mass transit.

Spend the money on the systems people already use in the places they already use it because at least you don't have to speculate as much on fare box recovery for long-term operating costs.

Build elevated rail to the Westside on Wilshire west of Western, it'll be the only way to get it done in the next decade.

Yikes, they're instead of their! Damn flu pills.

Actually, if the river spills over the floodwalls through Downtown, like in a 120-plus year flood event, the subway will become a drainage conduit. The elevation of the tunnel at the Civic Center Station (the highest point of the Redline through Downtown) is below the crest of the river where the portal to the metrorail yard is located. And there is no floodgate to the portal to protect the system. The Union Station station will become the city's new aquarium. Imagine subway cars and passengers washing out of the west end of the Subway To The Sea at Palisades Park. The historic shift of Rio Porciuncula of 1815 to 1825 will have happened again! In the last time around, the village of YAAnga was wiped out. Next time, a lot of passengers will get floated out, into the Pacific.

Food for thought. Food for sharks! You heard it here first, folks.

An elevated system down Wilshire would need to be way over-engineered to withstand serious seismic tremors and be operational immediately thereafter, as like a subway. Otherwise it is useless for a year or more. Consider how long it took to replace the elevated freeway in Oakland following the Loma Prieta earthquake. The subway in Mexico City was up and operating the day following the great October earthquake of 1985.

Construct an elevated freeway down the middle of the premiere boulevard in southern California? The day they start construction of it is the day I become the Che Guevara of L.A.

# 6 John: why won't you take a bus when the bus lanes come online? Why will you still drive when there is buses with their own dedicated lanes? And, especially when the 720 comes every 2 minutes during rush hour and 5 minutes during non-rush hour? I fully support bus lanes down congested corridors, it prevents people like me to drive and puts me on a bus. Wouldn't you prefer that?

My thought is that to have stations along the Downtown Connector creates opportunity, the possibility of improving or redeveloping the despicable environs on the west side of Bunker Hill. There would be patronage by residents and workers surrounding these stations. There is the thought that there should be no stations, so that light rail patrons can get from South Pasadena to Long Beach faster, not having the delay of their trains stopping at one or two stations along the Connector. However, surface street/freeway congestion will ever continue to increase. This continuing increase negates the perceived need for no stations along the Connector. Spending more for stations provides the opportunity to partake of urban design possibilities, to counteract past mistakes of redevelopment. The seismically unsound World Trade Center has got to go!

Buses: if my main client hadn't accidentally overdosed, I would still be working on his San Simeon South, walking back and forth to the office every day and driving to the job site in the company car. Sidestreets and parallel streets in the Wilshire Corridor have been heavilly used during rush hours in recent years due to the intense congestion on the boulevard. If there were a continuous, rectilinear grid of streets all the way to the ocean, I think that dedicated bus lanes would be an option. However, that is not the case. When the Diamond Lane was first implemented on the Santa Monica Freeway during Jerry Browns governorship, there was such a public outcry that these were scrapped in short order. Restricting the curb lane for buses only will result in so much congestion that there will be a public safety issue. Police, fire and ambulance vehicles will not be able to get to where they need to get fast enough. The congestion between LaCienega and the 405 will cause so much outrage that the MTA will be forced to backtrack. Taking all of those buses off of the boulevard in favor of a subway ought to be the foremost priority.

Let me add a little more based on Eric's comments:

Yes the Connector would be no stop, but there would still be two stops downtown that are already (almost) there: 1st and Alameda and 7th Metro. So, there would be service to downtown, and you could transfer to the Red/Purple line at 7th/Metro, just like people are doing today, to reach Pershing Square, the Civic Center, or Union Station.

Like Eric said, this would be non-optimal. I'd prefer stations at 5th/Flower, Disney Hall and City Hall/LAPD HQ (1st/Spring). And I'd also like a pony for Xmas.

Stations are the most expensive part of subway construction. If a no-station connector would keep the thing underground due to budget constraints, I would promote that option over an at-grade routing.

Juanito..honestly..taking buses off a blvd? You think that's pedestrian friendly? How many more times do we need to keep the car on a pedestal? Getting out of the way of fire engines, police, etc... what's the difference with more cars on the road? If you remove buses, you're asking for more cars on the road. You think those 80 - 100K bus riders are going to vanish? Nope. They still need to go down Wilshire.

Plus, it's not just the efficiency of bus lanes I want, but the social atmosphere. Today, I was on the train and chatted w/ strangers, made some texts, slept, etc... Where's that in a car? Yes, I can actually read on a bus and chat with strangers. It would LA build a COMMUNITY; not maintain a segregated lifestyle.

Yes, we all want a subway, but let's start thinking PUBLIC transit and not PRIVATE transit. Bus lanes are a good start and will get CARS OFF THE ROAD. You just won me over on the 720.

Wilshire needs more room for Rolls and Bentleys, especially for Burt Reynolds'. The morning after he was nominated for Boogie Nights, he near ran over me in the driveway into the 76 Station west of the Hilton. Seriously, it is my apprehension that after the subway is completed, that the Red Bus line along Wilshire will be eliminated..

Juanito...with that attitude about buses, you should live in the suburbs. The city is not for you.

MTA, City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County

To do list:

1. Create dedicated bus lanes along major boulevards from downtown to the ocean a. Synchronize traffic lights during rush hour towards the direction of the heaviest traffic
2. Create dedicated bus lanes within downtown so that the DASH can be an efficient and economical alternative to driving and parking downtown
3. Extend the “Purple Line” to the ocean
4. Build the “Expo Line” to the ocean
5. Forget the regional connector. Most major metro systems have a few long terminal connectors. Although an inconvenience, one or two transfers to get through downtown are not the worst things in the world. The cost benefit to now build a regional connector to integrate various rail lines is not efficient. The money could be better spent on extending existing rail lines or creating additional lines.

Hey Mr./Ms. Mouse, I'm so far beyond the burbs you'd crap and laugh in your pantalones if you knew where I live. There are no scenesters in this zip code and we know bullpucky when we see it.

I like to walk and stroll through the urban inferno (Ms. Sontag's apt adjective). My interest for over thirty years has been to witness the construction of a Subway To The Sea. And I can only hope to live so long to finally see it. I've lived just off of Wilshire Blvd. in Mid Wilshire, Miracle Mile, Westwood Village and Santa Monica plus thirteen other locales in L.A.. I've witnessed all of the east-west congestion including other pedestrians getting squashed and nearly been squashed myself a couple of times. So when I see the headlines regards the latest MTA bus squashing a pedestrian, I don't wanna hear 'bout it. I imagine that there are many Westsiders who do not want to see Wishire turned into a rip-roaring Redbus freeway. Forget about bus lanes, they will only delay the subway. Let traffic chaos reign and the result (along with an Obama presidency) will be a rapid, all-out effort towards The Subway To The Sea. Hallellujah. Let's all sing the subway chorus and stop pouring billions down the drain in Iraq.

So...buses kill people, but cars do not? I swear there was a death on the 10 freeway just this last week with a passenger car. And, a few more in LA county over the last week...and dozens in California, etc...But, of course you don't hear that in the news, you only hear it when the MTA is to blame.

Urban Bruin,

'Dream with me' for a moment, let's take a look at item #5 on your list in relation to #3 and 4. Let's say we build the Purple Line west without the connector and now Expo Line is built all the way to Santa Monica and they're operating on short headways on a small facility at 7th Street Metro.

Now you have all the transfers between Gold/Blue/Expo along with the extra new Purple/Red Line riders between 7th St/Metro and Union Station and we create operational delays on all the lines! This further impacts the subway extension westward because now there's little room to add more trains and more seats to for the westward expansion because ridership is through the roof in this one area, that is unless they add a third or fourth track parallel or beside Red/Purple line. That third/fourth track is this connector!

Here's an short list on top of the cost-effectiveness factor.

1)Better turnback operations for Blue/Expo Lines for improved on time performance. Improved on-time performance reduces operation costs on a very cost-effective LRT lines.

2)Increases reserve capacity on the existing Red/Purple Subway for future extensions such as the Purple Line to Westwood or Red Line into Van Nuys or Sun Valley. This is important if we're trying to build an extensive transit network.

3)Reduces trip times for many riders THROUGHOUT the region in the same vain of the subway because of better trip connections. This is really relevant at night when those extra transfers adds upwards of 45 minutes of travel time a time where transit agencies should be convincing new riders to use a time competative and less stressed way to get where they need to go.

4)Doubles ridership on the Gold Line from opening day because the trip during rush hour and after Staples Center events are time competative with the Auto.

5)Improves network connectivity because more direct trips are made and fewer transfers are needed improving network ridership.

Eric: Do all the lines share the same track size? If not, I assume the connector would only link the Gold to the Blue Lines. That would mean a person on the Red/Purple Line would still have to switch at either 7th Street Metro Center or Union Station. At most we are saving a transfer through downtown for a Blue or Gold Line rider with little or no benefit to the other lines?

Also which station will be the systems “Metro Center”? 7th Street Metro Center, Union Station or the above grade connector of the Eastside Gold Line with the Blue?

I agree with the concept but unfortunately this should have been planned for in the original metro system design.

FYI – if metro is going to connect two lines together they need to link up the Blue and Green lines at Imperial Station. Trust me you don’t want your family and friends to make that transfer to the airport at night with all their Disneyland goodies. If we could take the Blue Line directly to the airport it’ll be great asset to the entire county.

If I had the choice, was up against the wall during a McCain administration, I'd rather be squashed by an out of control Burt Reynolds than one of those stinking Redbuses.

Jerard: THANK YOU for your very informed input. You should be put in charge of transportation in an Obama administration.

Do all the lines share the same track size? If not, I assume the connector would only link the Gold to the Blue Lines. That would mean a person on the Red/Purple Line would still have to switch at either 7th Street Metro Center or Union Station. At most we are saving a transfer through downtown for a Blue or Gold Line rider with little or no benefit to the other lines...

Eric, save your breath and fingers.

The LRT has the same track gauge as the Red/Purple but the vehicle widths are narrower (8"9" vs 10'0") and the heights on the platforms are shorter (3'3" vs 4') so they couldn't share the same platforms unless we rebuild them to be hydraulically lifted platforms like the stage of Radio City Music Hall set up that shortens and raises it's height when a Red/Purple Line train comes or reduces it's height and increases the platform edge for the narrower LRT.

Yes they would still have to switch if their destination started at Civic Center or Pershing Square, but you're reducing the number of passengers having to make that transfer which improves boarding and loading times on that station and improves capacity for future demands such as extending the subway towards the Ocean! But not only does it link Gold to Blue it could link two under construction East LA and Expo together.

Also which station will be the systems “Metro Center”? 7th Street Metro Center, Union Station or the above grade connector of the Eastside Gold Line with the Blue? I agree with the concept but unfortunately this should have been planned for in the original metro system design.

Metro Center is more of an iconic focal point where the first two newly built rail lines from Prop A met. In a sense every transfer point in a Polycentric regional system could be called a Metro Center. How come you're not faulting DC for not calling Rosslyn , Rosslyn Metro Center or, in King Street in Alexandria as King Street/Metro Center? I'm being sarcastic because it then becomes a petty game of semantics.

7th St/Metro Center will still be a Metro Center and transfer. For example, if you have East LA riders trying to reach Mid Wilshire and Hollywood they could still make the transfer and save time close to 6 minutes of time at 7th St Metro then by travelling up to Union Station going through the four levels of stairs to make the transfer instead of spending the time travelling to 7th St and then walk down one level of stairs to the platform.

Regionally it's a significant benefit because future LRT lines such as Crenshaw or Burbank/Glendale which have been on many Long Range plans and extensions would benefit from this operation, instead of severely constrained with no room to grow.

FYI – if metro is going to connect two lines together they need to link up the Blue and Green lines at Imperial Station. Trust me you don’t want your family and friends to make that transfer to the airport at night with all their Disneyland goodies. If we could take the Blue Line directly to the airport it’ll be great asset to the entire county.

They can just as easily do this by building the Crenshaw Corridor (which are going through the study/meetings, the last one will be on Monday 2/25 in Mid-Wilshire)and have a train operate through the under construction Expo Line and tie into this line so there's the direct airport connection without having to transfer late night from Blue to Green. But for now the Flyaway buses do a good job of that.

Norbie 7:

Elevated rail requires far less engineering than a subway to be seismic-safe. The BART in Oakland runs on elevated platforms and survived the same quake you reference with respect to the double-deck freeway collapse.

The numbers spitted out during the Red Line construction were something like 10+ miles of seismic-safe elevated rail could have been built for the price of one mile of seismic-safe subway.

Mountain Girl:

The great floods of old will not happen again because of the Los Angeles River and the flood control engineering in place at higher elevations in the water shed. And if the water accumulates in the subway, you just move the trains to higher ground. They actually have subway lines that go through tunnels below water in New York City and they've operated for over a century.

Jerard: Agreed, the Flyaway is a great program. Only bad thing is getting back to Union Station after 12:30 am when the metro has stopped running. Had to take a cab the last few miles home.

They still need to connect the Blue and Green Lines for those coming up from Long Beach to the airport and maybe the "Crenshaw Line" will work but that's years away. It'll be much easier to build a connector now to link the Blue and Green. That way people can get to the airport without having to go to Union Station first.

Once upon a time on April Fool's Day, there was this guy who wrote a letter to Sue Larris at the Downtown News. He related that on that same day, the MTA ought to have taken the opportunity of announcing a planned extension of the Wilshire subway all the way to Avalon. Then he really poked fun: following that, he claimed, Tom Haden would have gone apoplectic and decried a dewatering threat to his beloved Santa Monica Bay and then Supervisor Antonovich would have jumped into the fray and demanded that such an extension be constructed above grade.

The entire Redline tube south of Hollywood runs at elevations below the edge of the river floodwall at the maintenance yard portal, southeast of Union Station. If ever there comes a repeat of the flood of 1825, no dam or flood control basin will save the lowlands of the L.A. Basin. There will be tens of thousands of bodies floating in the Pacific. The effect of Katrina upon New Orleans will be a pittance in comparison.

I'm glad to see all the comments. I hope to see you all at one of the community meetings! The alternatives will be presented, maps and all. If you don't get a chance to get to the meeting, be sure to keep an eye on the website: metro.net/connector

Also - remember you can sign up for the distribution list, submit comment and, request more information by visiting:

http://metro.net/projects_programs/connector/form.htm

(I work on the project, and I'm my own stakeholder...I'm at 6th/Main)

They still need to connect the Blue and Green Lines for those coming up from Long Beach to the airport and maybe the "Crenshaw Line" will work but that's years away. It'll be much easier to build a connector now to link the Blue and Green. That way people can get to the airport without having to go to Union Station first.

Are you sure it would be easier to have to create an EIR and study to build a series of flyovers to connect the Blue Line track to the Green Line. Not to mention the impacts of clearing space to build the inclines and flyover bridges to connect the tracks.

The effect is different - the seismic impact on a station/tube embedded or dug into the earth as opposed to a lengthy/linear structure constructed above ground on supporting pylons. Anything constructed beneath the surface simply rides with the movement of the earth. The application of seismic stress is general in this case. For elevated structures, the stress applies from the ground up. Elevated structures then sway in the air. There is nothing to contain the movement. Codes are such that they are designed/engineered so as to not collapse or overturn. That is all. This doesn't mean that there will be no damage. Repair of damage can keep an elevated transit system shut down for a lengthy period, right at the time that a mass transit system needs to be relied upon in the face of damaged freeway structures. Plus, there is the cost of repairs. Imagine if the Loma Prieta quake had occurred on the Hayward Fault in Oakland, rather than northeast of Santa Cruz...

Now with highrise steel frame structures, if the wrong type of welding flux is utilized, flux which results in the welds being too brittle, you've got a problem. The cities of Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Los Angeles still have not mandated repairs to cracked welds and joints of highrises damaged in the Northridge quake. Lists of damaged structures have been kept TOP SECRET over the past fourteen years. If those lists were to be published, jaws would drop. Moving vans would be in very short supply.

“Are you sure it would be easier to have to create an EIR and study to build a series of flyovers to connect the Blue Line track to the Green Line. Not to mention the impacts of clearing space to build the inclines and flyover bridges to connect the tracks.”

In comparison to building an entirely new line? Yes, I think it would be much easier. Regardless of what they do, there’ll need to be an EIR and maybe acquire some land through eminent domain but since the project impacts only one rail station (Imperial/Wilmington) I don’t see it as that difficult of a project. “Relatively speaking”

That’s not to say we don’t need additional lines. I’ve said it before; L.A. needs a circular rail line (Loop route) in addition to the traditional north/south and east/west routes.

UrbanBruin,

Let me ask you some questions and see how this would be resolved.

1)Is there any surplus right-of-way on the 105 Freeway Green Line right of way to connect this flyover bridge?

2)Would we have to take any right of way from the 105 Freeway to create the right of way?

3)Would this require takeover of any property to build the column supports?

Believe it or not it wouldn't impact one line, you're impacting two lines and if you have to encroach on the Caltrans right-of-way (105 Freeway) we'd be in for an uphill battle to build that piece when a timed transfer on the evening hours could do the job there since the headways are the same. The Gold/Red/Blue connection is trickier at night because of track maintenance issues in the Red Line tunnels. In addition the reconfiguration of the existing transfer station (Imperial/Wilmington) to build this flyover would cost a lot of dough not to mention a lot of coordination to build temporary platforms, time track gates and crossing lights.

Here's another difference, Crenshaw Corridor is going through the EIR process right now as we are discussing this, which gives it a good minimum 2 year headstart to this idea, 2 years that add up to a considerable amount of money.

Actually Norbie, when liquidification occurs it is usually most dangerous around areas where two or more of the NEHRP soil classes (including artificial elements like subways) meet because there is feedback when the more ground magnifying substance hits the less ground magnifying substance. The Red Line is sound but there may be an tell-tale sign of surface damage atop it as a result of it absorbing energy.

Something tells me there are seismic activated safety switches that close the BART (or Metro) system down depending on magnitude -- certainly if there were a break in the track circuit from a broken rail or platform.

Elevated rail is less expensive and quicker to construct than subway. It's likely more workers would be killed in a subway construction than would die in a large magnitude earthquake on an elevated rail system.

There is also the visual impact of watching an elevated train zip by while you wait twenty minutes to work through traffi at Wilshire and Fairfax in the morning.

p.s. Everyone knows LAPD's Parker Center is one strong wind away from collapse, it's no SECRET let alone TOP SECRET -- two national security classifications no one in the City of Los Angeles' government has the authority to apply.

Yes, liquefaction is exactly what you should be concerned about with elevated structures. That's when you wish that your footings were a mile wide and had hydrogen-filled floatation capsules embedded in them when the rock and roll begins. Otherwise, everything either sinks into the soup or falls over, if the shaking lasts long enough. The shaking during the Northridge quake lasted twenty seconds; it will last a minute or more in The Big One. In the Northridge event, sand boils began to pop to the surface in Venice and Manhattan Beach areas. There is one spot on the Blueline down near the 405 where the track elevates way high in the sky. I wouldn't want to be in a subway or light rail vehicle in The Big One on an elevated track, one without sidewalls to keep the vehicles from falling into space. No way Jose.

Norbie 7: So then the elevated parts of the Gold, Blue and Green lines were all built without any consideration of seismic survival? Unlikely Jose.

Doesn't mean it'll be the ideal place to ride out an 8.0 but given the odds it will likely be safer than the absolute mayhem that will hit the streets as cars collide while avoiding falling debris and/or people. Imagine what chaos the four level, let alone the 405, will be that day? Rail lines may be the cleanest easement paths available.

Eric Richardson quoted in LA Times story on Downtown Connector:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-underground25feb25,0,23157.story

The nonsense about how awful a surface route would be ignores such famous examples as downtown Zurich, where the surface transit mall is wonderful. Sounds like money is supposed to grow on trees?

BOB2

To compare Zurich with Los Angeles, to compare central Zurich with Downtown Los Angeles is beyond The Valley of The Nonsensical.

Let me do my best Friends 4 Expo impression:

I must say you guys are really starting to sound like a bunch of NIMBYs. Don't you know that light rail operates fine in other downtowns throughout the country?

/end snark/

That is the primary difference between trying to operate at-grade transit mall down Second Street are the street blocks in Historic Core aren't long enough to berth of a 3 car LRV. In addition we are talking about a minimum 3 LRT lines (Foothill Gold, Blue and Expo) running through with an option of 2 more (Burbank/Glendale, Silver Line)in the Long Range Transit Plans.