Streetsblog Los Angeles

When we last checked-in on the status of the proposed bus-only lanes for Wilshire Boulevard, Metro staff was conducting outreach needed before the project could receive it's environmental clearance.  At the time, staff hoped it would be completing the needed studies in the next couple of months.  However, they're now estimating that, at best, the studies won't be completed until June of 2010.

Next Wednesday, the City Council Transportation Committee will hear a request from LADOT to fund the city's half of the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the bus-only lanes project.  The hearing could prove interesting because the bus only lane, runs through the heart of the districts of both the new Committee Chairman, Bill Rosendahl, and new Vice Chairman Paul Koretz.  While Rosendahl has stated support for the project in the past; Koretz has been more vague and has certainly been lobbied by residents in affluent parts of his district opposed to the project.

According to the report for prepared for next week's  hearing, there are two reasons that the bus-only plan will require EIR and not the shorter studies originally recommended and already completed.

...a number of intersections along the Wilshire Boulevard and parallel streets would experience traffic impacts that could not be mitigated to a level of insignificance.  In addition, public outreach in November of 2008 indicated both strong support throughout the corridor and strong opposition in several communities.  Based on these findings, staff at Metro and DOT determined that an EIR should be prepared for CEQA clearance.

In other words, the Wilshire bus-only lanes, a project that might have seemed a virtual lock a year ago might be in some trouble because of car traffic concerns.  At the very least it now faces more obstacles to overcome than it did in 2008.  In addition to needing a green light from an environmental standpoint, the project will need to survive another alternatives analysis and another round of public outreach in some areas where a bus only lane instead of street parking is a scary proposition to local residents.

The public hearings will be scheduled soon for late this month or early in October.  Since I most likely won't be able to attend, anyone interested in reporting from the meeting should contact me at damien@streetsblog.org.

Curitiba, Brazil first adopted its Master Plan in 1968. Since then, it has become a city well known for inventive urban planning and affordable (to the user and the city) public transportation.

Curitiba's Bus Rapid Transit system is the source of inspiration for many other cities including the TransMilenio in Bogotá, Colombia; Metrovia in Guayaquil, Ecuador; as well as the Orange Line of Los Angeles.

This video illustrates how Curitiba's public transportation system operates and the urban planning and land use principles on which it is based, including an interview with the former Mayor and architect Jaime Lerner. Current city employees also discuss the improvements that are being made to the system to keep it up to date and functioning at the capacity of a typical subway system. Curitiba is currently experimenting with adding bypassing lanes on the dedicated BRT routes and smart traffic lights to prioritize buses. They are even constructing a new line which will have a linear park and 18km of bike lane that parallels the bus transit route.

While in town last month, Streetfilms took its second look at Los Angeles' Orange Line as a model for BRT's around the country.  In his summary of the above Streetfilm, Clarence Eckerson doesn't hold back his praise for the Orange Line calling it "one of the best Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems in the U.S" and "really fabulous."

And despite some of the well-documented problems with trash along the bike path and the debate about whether or not it should have been designed as light rail; it really does have some technological features that are above and beyond what many cities experience with their "Bus Rapid Transit." But perhaps the best part of the film is Metro bike coordinator Lynn Goldsmith talking about the importance of multi-modalism in solving our local transportation crisis.

As always, the comment section is open to discuss the film or the Orange Line itself.  Have at it.   And if anyone wants to explore the Orange Line Bike Path they should join the LACBC, Metro and Councilman Tom LaBonge for this month's "Car Free Friday."  For more information on that ride, you can read LACBC's press release after the jump.

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Last night Metro and LADOT updated bus riders and travelers along the Wilshire corridor of their efforts to bring Bus Rapid Transit to Los Angeles' West Side.

If everything goes well, the project could enter its design stage in about a year.  In the meantime the agencies will be placing the project under an environmental review, select a final project description and approval from the Federal Transit Administration.  After a successful pilot program that ended last year and given the FTA's high opinion of Bus Rapid Transit projects; advocates hope that the nearly ten years of discussion and study will lead to bus only lanes from Valencia Street in the Downtown to Centinela Boulevard just outside of Santa Monica excluding the section in Beverly Hills.  Also, federal, state and local funds are already allocated for the project.

So what would Metro's BRT project actually do to Wilshire Boulevard?  The plan is to re-stripe Wilshire Boulevard to make the curb lanes in each direction bus only lanes.  In some areas the lanes would require no paving and in others there would need to be a slight widening of the street.  Seventeen intersections will be redesigned to improve timing and expand signal priority for buses.  Non-Metro buses would be able to use the bus-only lanes as well as Metro buses.

By removing buses from the snail's pace of rush hour traffic, Metro will be able to sweepingly reverse the trend of longer commutes for transit riders along the Wilshire Corridor.  Rex Gephardt, who oversees the Rapid Bus program for Metro, noted that bus speeds are declining by .5% to .75% every year in the corridor.  In 2007, LADOT experimented with a pilot program for 1 mile of the corridor and, unsurprisingly, the buses moved faster and ridership increased.  While the pilot program was canceled, the segment will be part of the final BRT project if approved.

Unsurprisingly, upper-class enclaves Santa Monica and Beverly Hills seem uninterested in putting bus-only lanes on the parts of Wilshire Boulevard that run through their cities.  While both have expressed interest in moving forward with a bus-only lanes after seeing how they fare in the City of Los Angeles and County parts of Wilshire Blvd.  Both municipalities followed a similar pattern when the city and Metro worked together to bring signal prioritization for buses to Wilshire Blvd.  Prioritization has been operating on Wilshire in Beverly Hills for nearly a year and will be in operation on other Beverly Hills streets  within the next 6 months.   Given the rave reviews BRT has gotten around the country and locally, it's too bad we won't see a full BRT route along Wilshire until after the city and Metro re-prove its worth.

The handful of speakers who spoke last night were excited about the project and, if anything, wanted to see it expanded.

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Cleveland's first venture into Bus Rapid Transit -- a 10-mile route called the Health Line -- was turning heads before it fully launched, attracting planners from other cities looking to boost transit ridership. Now that the ribbons have been cut, the Plain Dealer's Steven Litt hails the finished product:

The core section of the line, from Public Square to University Circle, has center median stations on raised platforms designed to enable riders to step directly onto buses, as if they were rail cars. An innovative precision docking system makes it easy to align the buses with precise spots on the platforms, so riders know where to queue.

The 34 stations along the line are smartly tailored gems. They have a light, transparent feel that makes them look both elegant and safe. They complement the architecture of nearby buildings, rather than obscure views.

Less noticeable are the ingenious ways in which landscape architects from Sasaki Associates in Watertown, Mass., redesigned the avenue from building face to building face to include 5-foot-wide bicycle paths and tapering islands with flower beds at the bus stations.

Intended to spur economic development along the city's historic but struggling main drag, Euclid Avenue, the Health Line figures to get even more attention from other cities if the Obama administration commits to increased federal investment in transit:

Financed primarily by the state of Ohio and the federal government, the project shows how smart investments in mass transit and public space can help struggling cities turn themselves around.

The project also is a reminder -- after the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis and the catastrophic failure of levees in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina -- that America still has the ability to tackle high-quality, large-scale infrastructure projects with style.

That's important at a moment in which the country has elected a new president who wants to invest heavily in urban infrastructure to create jobs, jump-start a sputtering economy and revitalize cities.

Just two weeks after the ribbon-cutting, the Euclid Corridor project is becoming a national model. Joseph Calabrese, director of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, which masterminded and built the bus line, said the agency has recently entertained large civic delegations from San Antonio and Nashville, Tenn.

Photo: Steven Litt/Plain Dealer

We Won't Have to Worry About Local Buses on Rapid Routes after Wilshire Get's BRT

It's been exactly eight months since Streetsblog last checked in on Metro's plan to place a bus-only lane on Wilshire Boulevard, but now Metro is ready to discuss the preliminary results of their environmental studies and solicit feedback from the community on the Bus Rapid Transit treatments for Wilshire Boulevard.  While the final result won't be another Orange Line, there's a lot Metro can do to make buses move more quickly on Wilshire Boulevard such as providing signal prioritiazation for all buses or having dedicated bus lanes.

The schedule for these meetings can be found after the jump.  For more information on the Wilshire BRT project, check out Metro's project website.

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For the third installment in her series of Paris, France Streetfilms, Elizabeth Press checks out Le Mobilien, the Parisian version of Bus Rapid Transit. Le Mobilien features curbside and onboard bus arrival info, mid-street boarding kiosks, a MetroCard-esque payment system, and -- perhaps most crucial to its success -- lanes that are physically separated from car traffic.

All that dedicated space means Le Mobilien faces remarkably few impediments compared to New York's fledgling Select Bus Service, which, while a marked improvement by local standards, is struggling to establish itself atop the street-level vehicular hierarchy. Remarkable what a little curbing can do.