Metro recently held Community Meetings to gather feedback on the Foothill extension of the Gold line from Sierra Madre to Ontario airport. This would be an extremely misguided project and, like the Crenshaw line, reveals the lack of a coherent plan or guiding vision for a transit system for LA. Like it or not, if LA intends to reverse its unsustainable course of uncontrolled sprawl and irrational decentralization, it will not suffice to simply build a bunch of train lines chasing after growth and hope that people will ride them. Transit development must be part of a larger region-wide strategy of re-concentration and recentralization of the core. Rail transit can play an essential role in that strategy, but only if pursued in accordance with those larger goals. This is not an easy, short term or politically-expedient endeavor but it is a vital one for the region’s long term survival and prosperity. People need to be educated, informed, and engaged on the issues at hand and the strategy to be pursued. This current strategy of proposing projects willy-nilly with no overriding concept or logic rightfully leads citizens to be confused and defensive and wastes the agency’s time and resources in putting out political fires and arguing its case over and over again.
My objections to the Foothill Extension specifically are as follows:
1) It will further promote sprawl and decentralization: A Foothill extension would basically act as a surrogate highway, improving access for commuters to and from the San Gabriel Valley but doing nothing to reduce automobile dependence, promote wiser land-use policies, or recentralize transit, commerce, and housing in the core where such resources would most equitably serve the entire region.
2) It will be of limited usefulness: The Foothill extension would stretch approximately 24 miles over several low-density districts and will almost exclusively serve commuters who will arrive by car to the stations. As such, it will serve a REGIONAL function. Metro is and must remain a LOCAL transit system.
WMATA polycentric rail system -- Belmont, originally uploaded by rllayman.
Regional transit goals are different from and fundamentally at odds with local transit goals. Local traffic provides travel within a single jurisdiction and relies on frequency of service to a high number of closely-spaced stops within a limited geographic reach. Local transit also serves both work- and non-work related trips. Regional transit on the other hand serves commuter traffic almost exclusively, moves across multiple jurisdictions over a large geographical area, serves a limited number of stops and drops off markedly in service frequency after work/commuting hours. Local and regional services may overlap and interconnect, but for either to remain effective they must remain separated.
3) It is a waste of resources: Proponents of the Foothill extension will most likely tout the cost effectiveness of this route due to its use of right of way along the 210. However, this is a false economy that hides longer-term detrimental costs. Firstly, the area this line would serve lacks the population density to support expensive rail investment and service. The first table below shows the population density (by zip code, pdf for reference) of the Foothill area from Highland Park to Azusa. The second table shows the combined population density (by census tract) of Hollywood, West Hollywood, and the Wilshire district (minus three tracts covering the Hollywood Hills that otherwise dilute the measure of density for this area). While both areas have similar population counts, central LA has a population density five time that of the Foothill area. The Foothill area's low-density (coupled with the poor design of the line running along the center of the 210 for much of its length) pretty much ensures poor ridership.
Secondly, the Foothill extension does nothing to confront the larger structural issues of the land use policies and auto-dependence that drive sprawl and decentralization in the San Gabriel Valley and the region as a whole. Thirdly, even if the line were appropriately designed and accompanied by up-zoning and densification around the stations to levels that would support transit, the costs would be exorbitant and constitute a gross mis-allocation of resources that would better serve to recentralize, revitalize, and repopulate the core. Recentralizing the region's resources is a much more effective (though admittedly longer-term) strategy than dispersing those resources throughout the region, effectively placing them out of reach for the majority of the population.
4) It undermines long term transit goals and effectiveness: With all the projects given public hearings in recent months, Metro is needlessly churning the political waters and squandering its energies. Rather than generating community anxiety, opposition, competition, and befuddlement that serves only to undermine the objectives for effective transit, Metro must come to the table with a coherent transit strategy focused on building the core infrastructure from which the system can then extend outward. The Regional Connector is a prime example of the logic of this strategy as well as the backwards approach Metro is taking. All the political and financial costs of a line like the Expo come to nothing if that line doesn't plug into a coherent and effective system. Rather than constantly having to reinvent the wheel in explaining their objectives for these projects, a coherent plan would be self-explanatory and ideally galvanize public support rather than generate anxieties and opposition. In the short term, Metro would likely confront opposition from outlying jurisdictions that would see no benefit in supporting a system from which they believe they would derive no benefit. Regardless, this is an argument Metro must confront if it intends to create an effective transit system and avoid having it deformed and compromised by LA’s numerous and notoriously vocal parochial interests.
Later this week, I hope to present my own current proposal for a transit system centralized on Downtown, Hollywood, and Westwood.
2 comments:
1) Is the San Gabriel Valley really "sprawl", or is it an older-ring suburb that could get denser around transit, as opposed to sprawl in the Inland Empire? There are extensive station area plans for transit-oriented development around Foothill Gold Line stations, especially in Azusa.
3) True it's lower density than the near-Westside, but it's also light rail on an existing right-of-way, not a much-more-expensive subway. Also, its right-of-way leaves the 210 freeway only 2-1/2 miles east of the current end.
4) A likely source of funding for expanding transit is an additional LA County sales tax. Extending the Wilshire subway is a core project, but it will also need to offer meaningful projects across the county to pass.
I've been saying for a while now that this could be funded if the municipalities in the SGV would step up and find the money. If the cities along the route would get together about 25% or 33% of the needed funds, building the line would make a lot more sense.
There are 14 municipalities along the line. The total cost of the line is probably about $1 billion by now. Divide that by 14 and you have 71 million dollars for the whole nut. They could even get that together if they tried, but 333 million divided by 14 is only 23 million per city, an amount which could be scraped together by each city. They could sell some municipal bonds if they had to.
The reason to build this is the massive political support for its construction in the SGV. Yes, it doesn't make the best sense. But, if the local cities pay for a chunk, and the Fed pays for a chunk, MTA would get a new light rail line for a stone bargain.
Yes, it is a regional line versus a local line, but I don't see that as too much of a problem. The Pacific Electric system we used to have also fulfilled both of those functions in different locations.
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