Streetsblog Los Angeles

Thursday, February 4, 2010 7 Comments

Today’s Expo Board Meeting Coverage Here and on Twitter

by Damien Newton on February 4, 2010

As soon as today's Expo Board Hearing begins, which should be in a couple of moments, Streetsblog will begin "tweeting" the coverage live at http://twitter.com/lastreetsblog. Once the Board votes on the Final Environmental Impact Statement on Phase II of the Expo Line, we'll post the results at this link. Tomorrow morning a post with more complete coverage of the meeting will come tomorrow morning.

Update, 6:45- It's official. The FEIS is approved by a of 5-1-1. Voting for the motion were Los Angeles Councilmen Wesson, Parks and Rosendahl, along with County Supervisor Yaroslavsky, a Councilwoman from Santa Monica sitting in for the injured Pam O'Conner, and Councilman Maslin from Culver City. Daniel Rosenfeld, sitting in for Supervisor Ridley-Thomas abstained.

7 Comments

Last comment by Yuri Leave a comment »

Drew Reed

Following the live tweets. Here's a real gem: "It's not that we're against light rail, but we don't want the quality of life on the westside to be ruined by it."

I can't assume to know what the commenter meant by this. But I wouldn't be surprised to find that some westside residents define "quality of life" as "a lack of poor people."

February 4, 2010 at 5:42 pm Link # 1
Erik G.

Quality of Life on the Westside? You mean the endless hours of crawl necessary if you want to travel anywhere? As it stands, the only two reliable modes of transport on the Westside are walking and biking.

Oh, and if you have a plane at SMO and can get there, flying.

February 4, 2010 at 6:44 pm Link # 2
Umberto Brayj

Well, they were likely hinting at delayed driving times at crossing gates (which I don't think are that bad, and don't personally care about one iota). Additionally, folks have mentioned that the low hissing sounds and clanging bells at intersections will introduce more miserable noise to go along with the roaring traffic in front of their doors - noise makes you unhappy, so that ties into the quality of life comment.

February 4, 2010 at 9:26 pm Link # 3
Spokker

I don't think it's a bad thing if drivers are inconvenienced a little bit so that transit riders can benefit a lot. Even after the Expo Line, the deck is still stacked against transit, not to mention bikes and pedestrians.

However, Zev Yarovlaswhatever explained that the impact of putting an Expo crossing at grade is no more than installing a street light. If I remember correctly, a street light has 24 minutes of stop time and the crossing has 16 minutes of stop time per hour. Someone should correct me if I'm wrong.

It's a concept I had thought about though, "Don't the stop lights slow down cars more?"

If anything, if you really wanted to clear up congestion on those streets you'd throw down some bus lanes, or bike lanes, or if you're a true stud, suggest banning cars altogether and opening it up to bikes.

Here's a video where bikes keep up with cars just fine. The video's uploader is right. Without all those cars they'd be hauling ass. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecaEo4pJeqE

Sharrows in real-time.

February 4, 2010 at 10:39 pm Link # 4
Spokker

I was a skeptic of those goddamn sharrows at first but the proof is in the video.

February 4, 2010 at 10:40 pm Link # 5
Jerard

Damien,

Point of clarification. The FEIR vote was 6-0-1 with Mark Ridely-Thomas being the lone abstained vote.

February 4, 2010 at 10:57 pm Link # 6
Yuri

Thanks for the tweets Damien! It was great to get the play-by-play of what was happening at the meeting.

February 5, 2010 at 11:47 am Link # 7