Metro Looking at a Broadway Transit Mall

Much agreement from me. Broadway is a redundant street as far as vehicles go - there are the one-way Main and Spring to the east and the two way Hill to the west (though Hill’s capacity would need to be upgraded down near 12th-Olympic and north of 4th - very do-able). I never saw B’way as a 3rd St. Prom type of place - it is too big, too long (10-13 blocks of the prime area) and there are too many businesses that still depend on B’way for deliveries and access. It is also unique in downtown as it is very popular, and crowded all weekend, with heavy foot traffic all week. It is a wonderful opportunity to work with the dynamic, well established Latin marketplace environment there.

Great cities worldwide have sometimes several recognizable marketplaces, from the amazing souks in Fez, Cairo and Damascus, to the mercados of Mexico, to the great shopping districts like Tokyo’s Ginza and New York’s Fifth Avenue. Many of these have a reduced vehicular presence (the souks tend to be strictly walking places, due to their antiquity and narrow streets), and B’way has an opportunity to bring the sidewalks way out, have lots of outdoor seating and develop a very diverse, multicultural vibe. Imagine that in LA!!! I think our smaller sister county seat to the south, Santa Ana, has done quite a good job with this along 4th St. We in LA might look at the lessons learned there. B’way doesn’t want to be a pseudo theme park ala 3rd St, Prom, or (Uggh) Universal CityWalk, but, wow - the potential. San Diego has done a very nice job as well in the Gaslamp, and LA can (again) learn a few things from SD. Is this city able to be a little humble and actually learn this time? I hope so.

Having a pedestrian oriented LARGE street lined with great historic buildings, theatres, Latin and other stores, restaurants and such, would be a wonderful way to help LA really embrace its climate, diversity and literal brawn as a serious city.

I saw passing mention of this in the recent issue of Metro Connections. I have no idea what exactly this means. Details, please. The devil will be in the details here.

What is the proposal? What would be the objectives? The impact on transit cooridors needs to be thought through very carefully. Unless you use it on a regular basis, I think it is very easy to overlook it. I think any plan to improve Broadway must be very thoughtful in preserving the street’s existing vitality. Consulting the stakeholders is crucial. The Latino heritage ought to be celebrated and strengthened. (It is puzzling to me that this strip is not treated like Little Tokyo or Chinatown.) Ideally, any such plans for a transit mall should anticipate the coming of the proposed trolley system.

This was attempted on State Street (that great street) in Chicago for many years during the 70s-80s and the area continued to decline. About 10 years ago, they reopened it to cars and the area has bounced back.

Denver’s 16th St. Mall wasn’t considered a great success until it actually linked the CBD with LowDo, or lower downtown, as that area of historic and empty/underused commercial buildings redeveloped into the loft/nightlife/sports core it is today.

The mall was, however, a key element in what was (up until what L.A. is now experiencing) the most successful downtown rebirth in the country. I suppose it’s a chicken-and-egg thing. The mall didn’t fuel the rebirth, in fact downtown declined for some time after. But having that transit corridor there helped a great deal in my opinion focus and funnel the later growth once LowDo started up.

Denver/L.A. downtown similarities:

-a large stock of historic buildings ripe for adaptive reuse.

-new sports stadia drawing crowds back into downtown (Coors Field, Pepsi Center and whatever they call Mile High Stadium these days/Staples Arena)

-a Union station transit hub for developing mass transit (Denver is way ahead on light rail)

-a young creative residential migration downtown

-lots of new bars and restaurants serving them

-existing and expanding cultural amenities—concert halls, art museums and the like

-an emerging Latino political elite with vision, including mayors (Pena’s “imagine a great city” campaign of the mid ’80s in Denver)

-an expanded convention center complex re-establishing the center city as a tourist/business destination/headquarters

Differences: -the Denver sports amenities included a new baseball stadium downtown near the historic core, easily accessible to transit and freeways, which was key in fueling the creation of a pedestrian street scape in Denver’s lower downtown. The voters supported taxation for a new football stadium too.

-more retail in downtown Denver earlier.

-no major physical barriers between the business district and the emerging LowDo loft district, as with Bunker Hill.

-L.A.’s downtown hipster dresses better. Denver is still all about ballcaps and fleece.

-but Denver has the Broncos.

Still, depending on the plan, I’m all for a Broadway transit/pedestrian mall.

In 30 years Broadway may be our Las Ramblas…mmm Barcelona. I love that place!

Basically what it comes down to is Stadiums and concert Event venues. These things produce pedestrian activity, more than just a street mall. Staples Center and LA Live do that. Dodger Stadium does not help the surrounding community. Want more activity downtown? Put a new stadium here like San Diego with Petco Park.

A great fit for Broadway would be a frequent service streetcar between 1st and Olympic which on the 1st street end would head up to Grand Ave. and on the Olympic end would go to LA Live and Staples. This is a trunk line being studied by the CRA and Central City Association.

The problem with the concept of The Broadway Transit Mall is that it doesn’t connect well with rail service–Red Line service at Pershing Station is about the closest, at a 2 block walk, but it’s 6 or 8 blocks from Broadway to 7th/Metro and Chuck Hearn stations and the Blue Line. And while downtown IS gentrifying, I seriously doubt many people are going to be all that jazzed about walking 6 blocks over to Broadway to connect to the Blue Line, or about catching the Red Line just to transfer to it one stop later.

Unless LADOT is planning on seriously revamping the DASH system to provide quick, virtual doorstop, access between this theoretical transit mall to the rail lines, I doubt this is going to get off the ground.

Take the example of Long Beach’s Transit Mall: it works–and pretty well, I worked in Long Beach for 5 years–because downtown Long Beach was basically REDESIGNED around the the southern loop of the Blue Line. And Long Beach put about 3/4 of their eggs in that basket in order to make it work as well as it does. But do you really think LA City Hall is going to put anything like the same kind of time, effort, money and political capital into redesigning their downtown that Long Beach did? Especially when downtown is already gentrifying, without any kind of long term plan? Even if long term–say 25 and 50 years and more down the line–it would make the city itself more livable and workable?

Never gonna happen. Because there’s no way Los Angeles is ever going to elect a mayor with enough foresight AND enough disregard for his political career to make those kinds of decisions. Certainly the one they have now isn’t going to touch it.

It’s nice to dream about, but given the financial constraints that ALL public transit is operating under–especially now that Snoble’s Pie In The Sky fare increase has been shot down–the money spent on ‘studying’ a Broadway Transit Mall could be better spent in other places.

Maybe in exploring additional north/south rail corridors within the county, like from PCH to Hollywood/Vine, or from San Pedro to Sylmar; and in how to transition the Red and Purple lines out of tunnels and onto elevated train lines like Chicago’s. Elevated rail lines would cost probably a third of what tunneled rail lines would cost, and would be a whole lost faster to build, even down Wilshire.

the pershing square station is only one (short) block from broadway, both at 5th and hill and 4th and hill.

Broadway as a pedestrian friendly transit mall makes good sense for the merchants along Broadway, the City Of Los Angeles overall and especially with revitalization of the downtown core. With the proposed downtown streetcar circulator running from Chinatown, Union Station or even a new Dodger Stadium at Cornfield on the north and Staples Center, the new South Park or even USC on the south would tie the ends of the cities with its new developments and transit centers with the traditional downtown core.

With many of the north south bus routs routed to the Broadway Transit Mall along with the streetcar circulator would bring our Broadway back to an exciting pedestrian friendly area of our city to walk, shop, dine, and see a movie or live stage show at one of the many reopened Broadway theaters.

Perhaps in addition to the downtown streetcar circulator there could be a line to the new Grand Avenue development and the Disney and Dorothy Chandler complexes.

This is just one of the pieces of the puzzle to bring back Downtown to a lively center of living and entertainment.

This is an inexpensive win win for all of the people of Los Angeles and the surrounding areas.

Alan Fishel

Long Beach CA (at the other end of the Metro Blue Line)

Another potential transit link to this Broadway Transit Mall is the proposed “Downtown Regional Light Rail Connector” that will tie together the Little Tokyo Gold Line station and 7th/Metro Blue line station.

See this page for details:

http://www.thetransitcoalition.us/TTCMetroRailGap.htm