Streetsblog Los Angeles

The Dictionary of Terms compiled by Metro’s Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library defines BOARD BOX as “an interoffice memo to board members that does not require board action. The board box provides an avenue for staff to track status of projects or programs, and includes information of upcoming workshops and other special events.” While not posted on the Metro website access has been provided in some cases to Board Box items via the Metro Board Archives.

The U.S. Senate Banking Committee wants more info on BRT and other transit projects. Photo:Light Rail Now!

One agency that does post its Board Box is Access Services, the consolidated Transportation Services Agency for Los Angeles County that also administers on behalf of the fixed route transit agencies in Los Angeles County complementary paratransit mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The December Access Services Board Box includes an intriguing bit of news in the report of Andre Colaiace, who is Deputy Executive Director for Planning and Governmental Affairs at the agency. Colaiaice attending a meeting of the American Public Transit Association (a trade group) Legislative Committee in Washington, DC.

At the meeting he learned that this past summer the Senate Banking Committee requested the Government Accountability Office (GAO) undertake studies on Bus Rapid Transit, Paratransit Services and the Coordination of Transportation Services (see pp.4-6 of the Board Box for a reproduction of the letter from the Senate to the GAO). Colaiaice notes “I have already talked to the researcher for the Coordination Study and am planning to discuss Access Services with the group who is working on the paratransit study.”

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Villaraigosa re-emerges as a leader on bus issues. Photo: Los Angeles Times

This morning, Mayor Villaraigosa’s last term as Chair of the Metro Board of Directors got off to an efficient and relatively controversy-free start as Supervisors passed motions on studying the impacts of Metro’s bus cuts and Bus Rapid Transit expansion, a second study on the costs and benefits of a bike share program, the approval of a green construction program and even a preferred route for California High Speed Rail.  The only real debate among the Board Members came when Director Diane DuBois challenged Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas on the definition of “local” in the local jobs program and on whether or not to give free Metro passes to uniformed Girl Scouts during the group’s 100th birthday party.

Here’s a quick roundup of the major happenings.

Review of bus service and Bus Rapid Transit Opportunities – Nobody can accuse Mayor Villaraigosa of thinking small.  The new Board Chair introduced a motion to examine the impacts of the hundreds of thousands of hours bus service cuts that have occurred since the expiration of the Consent Decree between the agency and Bus Riders Union in 2007.

“We see this as a tremendous opportunity to reverse some of the damage that has been done in South L.A.,” testified the Bus Riders Union’s Sunyoung Yang.

To secure unanimous passage, Mayoral Appointee to the Board Richard Katz clarified that this motion “doesn’t undo anything that this Board has already done.”  When questioned directly, Metro CEO Art Leahy confirmed with this interpretation.

A second part of the motion called on staff to examine the possibilities to expand the agency’s Bus Rapid Transit program.  Yang confirmed the BRU’s support for this strategy, “We should continue building on the victories and the massive breakthrough we had on the Wilshire Bus Only Lanes.”

Also testifying in favor of the motion were other BRU members, the Sierra Club Transportation Committee, and Kymberleigh Richards of the San Fernando Valley Service Council.  The LA Times had more on the Mayor’s bus plans in this morning’s paper.

Green Construction Program – Even critics of Metro have to concede the agency has become a leader in promoting green transportation.  Metro was the first big-city transit agency in the country to have an entirely natural gas bus fleet, and they’re beginning to move towards a zero-emissions fleet.  Today, they finalized a “green construction policy” for Metro projects.

Support for the policy was near universal with the Clean Air Coalition, NRDC, Sierra Club, Bus Riders Union, and East Yard Community Groups for Environmental Policy all voicing support.  No construction or contracting groups expressed opposition.  In fact, the only complaint about the program was that it doesn’t apply to LADOT or Caltrans projects.  The policy passed unanimously.

Basically, the new policy is just what it says it is.  Metro contractors now have to use construction equipment, vehicles, and generators that meet modern clean air standards.  This will improve health for residents and construction crews by requiring equipment that emits significantly less air pollution than older models.  Contractors can meet either retrofit old equipment or purchase new equipment.  The NRDC Switchboard has more details on the program.

Bikes and light rail and high speed rail, all after the jump. Read more…

Bogotá's Transmilenio system. Photo: Streetfilms

In suburban Maryland, the debate about transit has often been cast as a decision between a light rail “purple line” and bus rapid transit. Democrat Martin O’Malley and local environmentalists lobbied for light rail while Republican Bob Ehrlich’s push for bus rapid transit was largely seen as an effort to “obfuscate, alter, study and delay” the progress on light rail. So in the D.C. area, BRT is sometimes seen as the choice of people who don’t really want transit to succeed.

But that’s selling BRT short, according to a panel of experts at Brookings this morning. For inspiration, they looked to Latin America, the motherland of bus rapid transit, housing 26 percent of the world’s BRT systems, according to Dario Hidalgo of EMBARQ, the sustainable-transport arm of the World Resources Institute.

It all started with Curitiba, Brazil, which pioneered BRT in 1972, reducing congestion, improving air quality, and shortening travel times. The Curitiba system has been a model for others, including powerhouse systems like TransMilenio in Bogotá, which carries 44,000 passengers per hour per direction during the peak period. Car use has gone down, and traffic fatalities have declined by 56 percent.

“What’s important isn’t if the tire is a steel tire or a rubber tire,” said Hidalgo. “What’s important is the service that’s provided to the people.”

Logic like this flies in the face of entrenched biases in favor of one mode or another. Rail, especially, has its adherents among those who think buses are a lower-class form of transportation, ridden only by those with no other option. But more than 20 percent of TransMilenio riders own cars. “We can’t be religious about modes,” said Robert Puentes of Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program.

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Late yesterday afternoon, the news broke that the federal dollars needed to construct the Wilshire Bus-Only Lanes project would not be put in danger if the one mile just west of Beverly Hills were excluded.

This means that the “Condo Canyon” residents who don’t want bus-only lanes outside their condos and County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, their representative to the Metro Board, may be free to remove their “back yard” from the project.  Such a move would widen the hole in the bus only route that already exists because Beverly Hills has already opted out of the plan.  A vote on the final route for the project is expected at the December 9th Metro Board Meeting.

However, now there’s push-back to the push-back.

After it appeared that the bus-only project might be endangered, a group of Bruins, bus riders, cyclists and environmentalists banded together to support the project and counter the pressure being placed on the board by the Condo-Canyon NIMBY’s. Read more…

It won’t be separated as this BRT in the PRC, but it will be nice.  Photo:我爱铰接巴士/Flickr

Sometimes I enjoy having dinner at the Wilshire/Western Denny’s for the
opportunity it affords to watch the amazing dynamic transit action
occurring at that intersection. This includes frequent and very busy
bus lines (local and Rapid) along both streets plus hoards of people
entering and exiting the rail station. It reminds me how tremendously
heavy transit use in the Wilshire corridor is. And partially
explains why a Wilshire Bus Rapid Transit Project has been in gestation
and has now reached the draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental
Assessment stage.

Next week Metro is holding four public hearings on the proposed Wilshire BRT project. Details on time and place are below. But
please
indulge me as I lay out some of the history behind it all. I hope you
are comfortable because it takes a fair amount of exposition to
sketch out, stretches back decades and includes a mind-boggling number
of zigs and zags to where things stand now. But trust me, I have a
purpose in laying out the highlights of how we came to this point and
the significance of the project. And yes despite the several lengthy
paragraphs of history that follow this is just the cliff notes version
of what has happened. Which is sort of a scary thought in itself.

Improving
transit service in the Wilshire corridor has been a regional goal since
at least the 1970s. Originally the hope was for it to have mass
transit. In fact the original subway alignment was to run along
Wilshire as far west as Fairfax. Then in 1985 a methane explosion
occurred in the basement of the Ross Dress for Less near the Farmer’s
Market. This provided the pretext for subway opponents in the Miracle
Mile and Hancock Park areas to champion a ban of federal funds being
used in what was dubbed the "methane zone" along Wilshire essentially
between Crenshaw and Fairfax. The subway instead was re-routed along
Vermont and Hollywood Blvd. with a stub west on Wilshire ending at
Western.

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This week's Transportation Committee hearing doesn't have all of the agenda items that we hoped to see, but does have an interesting one concerning use of Measure R funds to widen a road in the San Fernando Valley.  Along with a report on the Wilshire Bus-Only program and one directing LADOT and City Planning to move on Bike Corrals, this item is a highlight on an unusually small committee agenda.

Image from the Bike Corral motion.

Bike Corrals -  If you're not familiar with the concept of a bike corral, you should read this article by Joe Linton and Ramon Martinez on the subject from last week.  Basically, a corral takes a automobile parking space, fences it off, and becomes a separated and extended place to park a bicycle.

What's interesting about this week's motion is that it actually directs the Department of Plannning and LADOT to get working on a pilot program for bike corrals in Northeast L.A.  It doesn't direct a study, but action.  With some local business owners chomping at the bit, let's hope that Bike Corrals don't become the Sharrows of the next decade.

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Photo: LA Wad/Flickr

I'd like to begin by stating I have nothing but admiration for activist Harold Katz's nearly 40 years of involvement with traffic and transportation issues in Los Angeles. But respectfully I think he is wrong headed in his recent commentary for CityWatch titled "Bus-Only Lane will Turn Wilshire into Traffic Mess."

I am not going to engage in a battle of statistics--my focus is on the larger picture.  I would have to believe to some extent the concerns raised about auto accidents being caused by the bus lane can be addressed by their design and associated mitigation measures. I don't see a fatal flaw in the basic concept of the lanes. And I don't know why there is a concern the project will result in a unending stream of LAPD motorcycle traffic officers giving out traffic tickets to poor innocent auto drivers victimized by the big bad bus lanes.  

The unstated premise is that facilitating automobiles is the ultimate goal of improving mobility. When Harold decries that in his view a "bus rider will save 5 minutes and the thousands of auto drivers will lose 26 minutes" he avoids the question how many bus riders will benefit and whether the improvement for bus users exceeds the cost to auto drivers.

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Bus lane free. Photo: LA Wad/Flickr

The city of Los Angeles’ Wilshire Boulevard Bus-Only Lane project
took another step forward at this morning’s full city council hearing.
The project would implement peak-hour bus-only lanes from Pico Union to
Santa Monica. It’s calculated to speed bus times by about 25%. More information at Metro’s project website.

Last week, despite John McCain’s best efforts, the
U.S. Senate appropriated $13.5M in FY2010 funding for the
Wilshire project, bringing the project’s total federal funding to
$23.3M.

The City Council’s Transportation Committee recently approved a motion that clears the way for the city to move forward
with a full Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the project. After
Transportation approves it, the bus lane motion goes before the full
city council.

At today’s council meeting, nobody showed up to speak in
opposition to the Wilshire project. At the very start of the meeting,
the motion actually initially passed quickly via consent calendar. Just
when a half-dozen Bus Riders Union advocates were getting ready to
leave, Councilmember Rosendahl moved for the motion to be reconsidered,
so that the Department of Transportation (LADOT) and project proponents
could speak. A couple hours later, LADOT and bus riders spoke on behalf
of the project. Councilmember Koretz again expressed skepticism;
Councilmember LaBonge again expressed ideas for other alignments. The
full council unanimously approved the motion.

LADOT will soon be hosting a series of public hearings to get input on the EIR. Hearings are  expected to begin in October.