Bringing the band back together? Measure R never would have happened without Mike Feuer, standing to the left of Supervisor Yaroslavsky at this Measure R victory party. PhotoMetro Library/Flickr

Yesterday was the first day that state legislators could introduce new legislation and Assemblyman Mike Feuer wasted no time introducing a pair of bills designed to speed up Los Angeles’ rail expansion plans.  In 2008, Feuer introduced and tirelessly lobbied for legislation that allowed the Measure R transit tax to be placed on the ballot.

Feuer’s first transit speed-up bill, A.B. 1446, would allow L.A. County voters to vote on an extension to the Measure R transit tax which is slated to expire in 27 years.  This extension would enable Metro to bond against future Measure R proceeds and build those transit projects much sooner than originally contemplated, without relying on federal or state funding.

“If you like Measure R, you’re going to love Measure R plus,” says Move L.A. president Denny Zane in a phone interview.   Move L.A. led a coalition of transit backers, unions and other groups to support the Measure R transit sales tax in 2008 and rail planning acceleration for the last three and  half years.

In 2008, rail expansion advocates believed they had the perfect storm at the voting booth to earn the two-thirds support needed to pass a tax increase.  The same two-thirds super majority would be needed to extend the tax this year, but it remains to be seen if the same perfect storm exists.  In addition to the uncertainty concerning whether or note President Obama will turn out the same number of younger and transit-savvy voters that Senator Obama did is one factor.  The increasing unpopularity of High Speed Rail, which could also be on the ballot in some form, could also work against what one transit advocate termed “another train proposal.”

But Zane remains optimistic.  ”Tax extensions generally fare better at the ballot box than tax increases,” he notes.  ”In the past couple of years similar extensions have passed in Orange County, Riverside County and San Bernadino County and those areas aren’t as transit friendly as Los Angeles County.”

There’s a lot that has to happen before the tax can reach the ballot.  First, Feuer’s legislation has to be approved by both the Assembly and Senate in Sacramento and receive the backing of the unpredictable Governor Jerry Brown.  Then an extension proposal has to be approved by the Metro Board of Directors.  Only then will voters get a chance to weigh in themselves on whether they want to pay a half cent sales tax for transit for the next 27 years or sometime longer.

And all of this says nothing of 30/10 or America Fast Forward, the Mayor’s plan to change federal funding formulas to benefit areas that can fund portions of their own transit expansion.  The proposal has been popular with politicians, but Washington seems unable to move forward on any real transportation funding proposal.

In the meantime, Feuer and transit backers have proposed a heck of a “Plan B.”  Last Summer, Villaraigosa laughed off a question about whether or not there was a backup plan if 30/10 and he laughed, “there’s always a Plan B, but I’m not going to tell you what it is now.”  Well, now we know.

Feuer’s second piece of legislation, A.B. 1441 would take the benefit from Governor Brown’s legislation that allows for expedited legal challenges to environmental reviews for large projects and applies them to transit projects as well.

Under CEQA, environmental impacts of development projects must be identified and mitigated.  The Act also guarantees the public an opportunity to review and comment on the environmental impacts of a project and to participate meaningfully in the development of mitigation measures for potentially significant environmental impacts. AB 1441 would maintain these protections while reducing the timeline for judicial review, thus allowing more environmentally friendly projects to be built more quickly.

“This bill would create thousands of desperately-needed jobs, and give commuters and residents environmentally sound transit options as alternatives to sitting in stopped traffic,” said Feuer. “We’ve got to reduce the congestion that chokes our metropolitan areas,” said Feuer.

A.B.1441 is probably a surprise to Senator Alex Padilla who claimed that the legislation he introduced on Brown’s behalf that allowed for expediated legal challenges for large projects such as stadiums also applied to transit projects.  Streetsblog readers argued that Padilla didn’t understand his own legislation.  Apparently, those readers were right.

The Beverly Hills newspaper of record, the esteemed Beverly Hills Courier, has been doing its best to rile the residents of the 90210 against the Westside Subway route that would take the Subway under Beverly Hills High School The paper all but declared the Mayor a traitor to the city for trying to negotiate with Metro. More recently, the paper has slandered the professors and other experts that weighed in on the geotechnical issues facing the subway.

But today, the paper has a big scoop, Metro mailed some fact sheets to people living near the tunnel area. From the Courier:

The Courier has learned that the Metropolitan Transit Authority will mail to each resident of Beverly Hills a four-page color brochure summarizing its case for a tunnel under Beverly Hills High School for its Westside Subway Extension. The Courier obtained an advance copy.

Must have been some cracker-jack journalism involved to discover that Metro had done a major mailing the day before. Or is it two days before? It’s hard to tell when a story is posted on “Thursday, November 18.”

The nefarious piece of Pravda propaganda is readily available on Metro’s Westside Subway website, but to make it really easy to find we’ve also embedded it above.

The pamphlet itself is pretty bland. It provides a summary of the two technical reports presented last month to the Planning & Programming Committee, notes that copies of the technical reports have been placed in the Beverly Hills and Westwood public libraries and also informs the public where they can find the reports and other information online.

This is the 13th fact sheet for this project since environmental planning began in 2007 and the 4th fact sheet produced during the current Final EIS/EIR phase. It is, however, the only fact sheet that covers a specific geographic portion of the alignment. Due to the interest in the results of the technical studies regarding the findings, Metro chose to complete this mailing in the impacted area to get their version of the story in the news.

Senators in Appropriations have to ask, Who rides the train cross-country anymore? Photo: Pignouf

The idyllic cross-country train trips that many Americans still take could get derailed by today’s “slash and burn” federal budget policies. Meanwhile, fears for the safety of rail passengers in the post-bin Laden era are drumming up political support for costly security measures and raising, once again, questions about why the federal government funds rail routes without any promise of profitability.

At this morning’s Senate Appropriations hearing on budget requests for the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and Amtrak, the three senators in attendance were unified in their support for funding rail transportation. They’re working on the funding request for the FRA for 2012, not the rail piece of the overall transportation reauthorization. Still, with huge disagreements over spending levels in Congress still raging and a showdown looming over cuts as a quid-pro-quo for raising the debt ceiling, next year’s funding is a significant question.

So the three senators present wanted to know how they could be expected to defend rail funding without more transparency in the budget allocation process. They also asked pointed questions about what the administrators of the FRA and Amtrak were doing to keep riders safe from the terrorist attacks threatened by Al-Qaeda.

The FRA has taken on a greater role in the allocation of funding for rail projects over the last several years and senators appeared frustrated over a lack of clear information as to where the funding would come from. Indeed, some security projects appear in the FY2012 budget request but the FRA is also requesting a USDOT loan to for the same thing.

Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) was quick to commend FRA Administrator Joseph Szabo for his efforts, but called him out for not improving transparency about how, when, where and why projects are funded. “I support investments,” she made clear. “Now is the time to address critics head on. We must communicate with the people.”

Murray and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) presented a grim future for surface transportation if funding does not keep up pace with booming population growth. The only other senator to speak, ranking Republican Susan Collins of Maine, agreed and reminded her colleagues that the ambitious national rail plan proposed by the FRA, including high-speed rail, has yet to be followed up with any cost estimates, for construction or operations.

Szabo, for his part, could only promise that studies to be released within “the next couple of months” would present the “broader business case” for funding both high-speed rail and individual projects across the country. Szabo, the first union railman to hold his position, was proud of what his agency was doing to keep hazardous freight secure – but admitted that there are still unimplemented security measures that date back to 9/11. He pointed out that for every $50 spent on aviation security, only $1 went to surface transportation.

Mr. Szabo’s predecessor and the current president and CEO of Amtrak, Joseph Boardman, was noticeably more willing to get into details. He agreed that a disproportionate number of Amtrak employees received overtime in the last few years, particularly during ARRA-funded projects, but said that it would have actually cost more to bring on new employees with Amtrak’s full benefits packages (54 percent of the salary-related cost) and train them for the required 24-30 month period, only to lay them off as soon as projects were completed. He said that Amtrak was already addressing overtime, as well as other operational overhead, wherever it could be reduced, but it was clear he did not see these among the biggest budget problems.

Sen. Collins presented Boardman with a pointed question: “How, given that you are serving more passengers than ever before, each and every month, are you losing more money than last year?” His answer began with a awkward nod to rail advocates.

The pro-rail folks always shudder and get concerned when I talk like this, but you are not going to be able to cut costs enough on long distance trains to make them profitable. It becomes more a question of policy of whether we are going to have border-to-border, coast-to-coast connectivity.

Despite record increases in ridership, Amtrak continues to rely on federal funding to keep all of its trains running. Collins wanted to know what Boardman thought of former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell’s ideas for severing the budgetary ties between Northeast railways and the rest of the country. As he has said before, Boardman believes this would only decrease ridership by disconnecting what should remain a unified transportation system.

He was also quick to remind Collins that long-distance routes are, for many rural Americans, their only connection to regional and local transit systems. Congress mandates that Amtrak operate those routes, which no private carrier would, as a public service although they do lose money. Boardman warned that while cutting those routes may seem like low-hanging fruit, it would be painful to those who most need transportation options — and would inevitably yield negative affects on ridership elsewhere.

The sequence from 1:00 to 1:35 was filmed at the corner of Venice and Sepulveda. Look all those trees!

And here I thought the most interesting part of that intersection was that it was home to a Kwik-E-Mart.

A government shutdown could empty out the D.C. metro system. Photo: Examiner

Just a month ago, AASHTO sounded the warning that the transportation sector could lose up to $100 million a day in case of a shutdown. However, Congress’s extension of SAFETEA-LU through the end of the fiscal year (September 30) has put their minds at ease. Now, AASHTO spokesperson Tony Dorsey says spending for federal highway programs will continue unabated, despite a shutdown. “At this point,” Dorsey said, “we’re not anticipating any issues.” Still, he said, they’re hoping that “should there be a shutdown, it will be a very, very short one.”

But that’s not the whole story. According to a detailed DOT shutdown plan, the vast majority of the Federal Transit Administration would shut down, keeping only 54 out of 575 positions working. Already-awarded stimulus grants would continue to receive oversight and the Lower Manhattan Recovery Office would continue to function. The $270 million that the FTA normally remits to transit agencies every week would cease.

Jeff Rosenberg, government affairs director for the Amalgamated Transit Union, says the SAFETEA-LU extension only continues government’s authority to pay for transportation programs. But “if the FTA isn’t authorized to open the door,” he says, those payments will cease. That could be especially damaging for smaller metros that receive operating assistance, not just capital funds, from the feds. However, he’s hopeful that a potential shutdown would only last a couple of days and would just be “a blip on the screen.”

What else can you expect to happen if the government does shut down as of midnight tonight?

• At least 800,000 federal employees would be furloughed immediately. That would cause a massive drop in transit ridership, especially here in D.C., where Metro is predicting a five to 20 percent drop in case of a shutdown. Michael Perkins of Greater Greater Washington estimates that this would result in a loss for Metro of a quarter million dollars a day.
• Amtrak’s federal subsidies – up in the air for months now anyway as Congress debates whether to eliminate them, reduce them, or maintain them – will stop. However, Amtrak CEO Joe Boardman recently assured employees that the rail operator can keep going on ticket revenue alone in the short term.
• The Federal Highway Administration will stay open, with no positions furloughed, according to the DOT shutdown plan. The FHWA is funded with contract authority and has enough funds available to operate in that way for about a month.
• More than half of the Federal Railroad Administration’s workers would be furloughed.
• The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will keep operating with a full staff.
• As a result of the colonial arrangement by which Congress controls D.C.’s city budget, some core D.C. city functions would grind to a halt. A new campaign to “take your trash to Boehner’s house” in case a shutdown stops garbage collection already has nearly 5,600 Facebook fans. (The city would resume trash collection after one week, when uncollected garbage constitutes “a danger to public health.”)
• D.C. Street sweeping, taxicab regulation, most road repairs, the DMV, and public libraries could also be suspended.
• D.C.’s metro system would keep running, and would even keep a rush hour schedule, but might reduce the number of cars.
• Circulator buses and Capital Bikeshare would also keep running.
• The Federal Housing Administration would stop guaranteeing new home loans. FHA loans account for 30% of the housing market.
• Most of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which issues auto recalls and makes grants to states for safety campaigns, would close, with about 65 percent of its employees furloughed.
• The air traffic control system would keep functioning.
• Long project delivery times and construction delays are already a major concern of Congress, and the House Transportation Committee has prioritized eliminating delays. Well, so much for that – the EPA would cease conducting environmental impact reviews in case of a shutdown, slowing the approval for construction projects.

We’re continuing to monitor developments, but at this point, we’re bracing for a shutdown. A few hours ago, Reid took to the Senate floor to declare that the “one issue remaining last night” was the GOP rider defunding women’s health services. Boehner’s office maintains that the issue is, as always, spending cuts. Both sides are hoping the public will blame the other party in case of a shutdown. Reid hopes people will be as “appalled,” “frustrated,” and “personally offended” as he is if the GOP is so dead-set against cancer screenings for women that they’ll shut down the government over it. The Republicans hope to portray the Democrats as being so unwilling to budge on just a few billion dollars that they’d even let U.S. troops overseas go without pay.

Whoever’s to blame, it looks like the rest of us may be forced to go without some government services for a while. The longest government shutdown in modern history – the Newt Gingrich episode – lasted 21 days, but there’s no telling whether this one will break that record.

Remember, even once Congress is able to come to some kind of agreement over the FY2011 budget – whenever that may be – there’s still the FY2012 budget to worry about.

“Are we doing right by the next generation?” Porcari asked. “We know we’re not.”

Echoing President Obama’s “winning the future” rhetoric, Porcari framed the administration’s push for a six-year, $550 billion transportation bill as a potential watershed that can reform a transportation system which has become increasingly burdensome for lower income Americans. “If you make between $20,000 and $50,000 a year,” he said, “odds are that transportation is your number one household expense, higher than housing.”

With the GOP-controlled House making noise about a much smaller reauthorization bill than the one Obama has proposed, better days for affordable transportation are not here yet, nor are they necessarily around the corner. Transit agencies have already been through a couple of years of widespread service cuts and fare increases. The brunt of these cuts have been felt by people of color — who make up at least 60 percent of public transit ridership.

So in addition to not doing right by the next generation, our current policies are not doing right by today’s generation.

Some of the most pressing questions in transit policy today have more to do with allocating diminished resources than investing in expansions. Marc Brenman, former Senior Policy Advisor in the U.S. Department of Transportation and co-author of The Right to Transportation, led one workshop at the TEN conference focused on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in federally funded programs.

Title VI protects everyone, including non-citizens, and it applies to transit agencies that receive federal funding. If individuals or groups have been discriminated against by local transit policies, they can file administrative complaints with the Federal Transit Administration which must be investigated. Thanks to the Bush Administration FTA, there’s a massive backlog of such cases. “Civil rights wasn’t exactly a priority under Bush,” said Brenman.

Questions of discrimination have recently played out in Oakland, where the FTA found that BART had failed to sufficiently analyze the impact on fares of building an elevated tramway to the airport, and in Atlanta, where some business interests are pushing to restore shuttle bus service to Braves games while leaving lines used daily by city residents untouched.

“When there are cuts, the people who take it on the neck the worst are usually people of color and low-income people,” said Brenman. “We should be asking, ‘How is the entity using its resources? Are the cuts being distributed in a fair way? Is everyone being hit equally badly?’”

Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff, addressing the entire conference, reaffirmed his agency’s commitment to serve the communities who depend the most on public transit, and are always the hardest hit by cuts and under-funding.

“For some people, a reliable transit system is the difference between seeing their kids at night or not,” he said. “It’s the difference between having dinner as a family or not. The difference between being able to supervise homework or not. These are the passengers that have no choice of whether to endure whatever service we serve up—clean or dirty, convenient or inconvenient, reliable or unreliable.”

Rogoff, who was the recipient of TEN’s Rosa Parks Transportation Equity Award in 2010, assured the audience that the FTA’s priority is “preserving service for the communities that need it most.”

Gabe Roth, left, and Bill Lind battle out the bus vs. rail question at yesterday's roundtable. Photo courtesy of the Mobility Choice Coalition

A roundtable discussion yesterday sponsored by the Mobility Choice Coalition on ways to make public transportation align with principles of fiscal conservatism quickly morphed into an all-out brawl over buses vs. rail.

Lind is a rail guy. “Most Americans will not ride a bus if they can drive,” he said. “Buses carry primarily transit dependents.”

When others tried to “defend the honor” of buses, Lind stepped up his rhetoric, first declaring, “buses have no honor!” and then this stunner: “Live like a roach, ride a motorcoach.”

That was more than enough to raise the hackles of Daniel Hoff: “The American Bus Association represents those roaches.” He said bus riders in the Northeast Corridor make over $60,000 a year. And modern intercity bus service is clean and comfortable and has wi-fi.

Lind acknowledges that it’s the urban transit buses, not the intercity coaches, that he’s calling “rolling torture racks.” But still, he says, middle class people want to ride trains and streetcars, not buses. “Basic fact of life,” Lind said. “You can call it rational or irrational – it’s a mixture of both – but it’s a basic fact of life.” He said the user experience of buses just isn’t pleasurable enough to encourage people to leave their cars at home.

He chalks it up to “the stink factor.”

“Somebody gets on who hasn’t bathed for three months,” Lind said. “If this happens on the train, you can get up and move to another car. On the bus, you’re breathing it for three hours.”

Train travel, Lind said, is travel. Buses make you feel like you’re being packaged and shipped.

“Why should we subsidize snobbery?” asked Ed Braddy of the American Dream Coalition, who earlier had made it clear that he thinks cars are next to godliness. “If people are too good to take a bus, why should we subsidize that?”

In a conversation about how to make transit less dependent on public subsidies, intercity buses come out head and shoulders above rail. Much of the intercity bus market is entirely private, requiring no public money at all (except, of course, for the massive public subsidies that go to the construction of the highways they ride on.)

“Fine, lets go to ox-carts,” Lind said. “They’re even cheaper than buses.” And he contends that urban buses aren’t as easy on the public purse as their intercity counterparts. The average urban rail transit system covers just over 50 percent of their operating costs from user fees – “same as highways,” Lind said. But urban bus fares cover only 25 percent of their operating costs, on average.

Plus, Lind said, “Rail transit, but not buses, has a tremendous effect on development.” That’s a large factor in the appeal of streetcars: permanent, fixed lines reassure businesses that transit will be there for a while, whereas a bus route can change overnight, leaving that commercial corridor unserved.

Lind met his match in the form of Gabe Roth, a conservative transportation economist from the Independent Institute.

“We love train travel but not the costs,” Roth said. The cheapest Amtrak fare from Washington, D.C. to New York that he could find on a given day was $76 one way; $139 for a higher-speed Acela. But there are multiple bus companies competing to give you a seat for under $20 – and without a public subsidy.

Part of the problem, Roth contends, is that there’s not enough competition in rail. Railroads don’t carry competing rail companies’ trains, whereas highways don’t pick favorites among bus carriers.

But more importantly, Roth said, rail requires its own dedicated right of way and can’t be packed as full as a freeway. “A high-speed train requires miles of empty track in front of it because a steel wheel on a steel rail cannot stop quickly,” he said. “But you can have buses every 10 seconds on the road and you would not think that road is over-crowded.”

Even Lind acknowledges that “high-speed rail is killing us.” It’s “icing without a cake,” he said. “What we need is a much denser network of intercity buses and passenger trains so you can go from anywhere in America to anywhere else in America without flying, without driving, where the buses feed the trains.”

“Buses have to be more than just a feeder network to a rail vision that’s 20 to 50 years and hundreds of billions of dollars away,” said Hoff of the ABA.

Anne Canby of the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership took some of the heatedness out of the debate with these words of wisdom: “There are very different markets. I have a grandchild who takes the bus wherever she goes. I take the train.”

Both/and, not either/or. Now, people, was that so hard?

To see the full image, click here.

This above map was an attachment to an initial review of connecting the West Hollywood Transit Corridor to the Crenshaw/LAX Transit Corridor via San Vicente, and possibly going south all the way to Long Beach (or San Pedro). The next step would be a full study of this corridor, of which the Santa Monica Blvd./Beverly Center portion has already been studied as part of the Westside Subway extension project. Metro has stated that while it did not recommend the West Hollywood corridor as part of the Westside Subway Extension project at this time, that the West Hollywood corridor has high potential as a transit corridor and a light-rail subway might be more competitive for federal funding, as reported here.

West Hollywood voted for Measure R more than any other city in Los Angeles and this is a very pro-transit area with lots of “YIMBYs”.

While the map shows both a La Brea alignment and this Santa Monica / San Vicente alignment, it is really a no brainer. The La Brea alignment would miss all the ridership generators further west, and the San Vicente / Santa Monica alignment would make it easier to get to the Beverly Center, Cedar Sinai, the City of West Hollywood, the Grove/Farmer’s Market and even the Sunset Strip.

Interestingly enough, there have been a couple of recent blog posts bashing the City of West Hollywood over development projects approved in expectation of an eventual subway through the city.

Patrick Range McDonald continues his anti-subway rants at the now anti-subway LA Weekly.

Former City Councilman Steve Martin, possibly looking for an issue to mount an attempt at a political comeback, rags on the City Council on the WeHo news website. That he singles out Lindsey Horvath might mean he thinks she is the vulnerable incumbent he can beat. (I wouldn’t bet on the ex-councilman winning.)

Both articles seek to berate the City Council for approving development projects before a subway was approved, as if development wouldn’t continue to take place if there weren’t a West Hollywood subway. Their focus is on traffic, as if traffic wouldn’t get worse anyway without a subway. Mass transit does not reduce traffic as much as it provides alternatives to having to drive in traffic.

I don’t take the LA Weekly seriously as this once-good rag now is no longer a progressive alternative news source and now takes an anti-subway posture. Martin’s article shows that even in a city that supported Measure R by 86%, there are still a handful of NIMBYs here as there are everywhere that care first and foremost about their automobiles, and politicians will be willing to pander to them.

Personally, I look forward to the LaBrea/Santa Monica development as will many residents of West Hollywood who will now be able to walk to the cinema. If I were running for City Council, and this is not an announcement by any means, I would say I envision a West Hollywood that is designed for the people who live, work and play here, not the motorists who simply drive through here on the way to/from somewhere else. I’d advocate continuing to support building some form of subway through West Hollywood, but in the meantime building transit-only lanes on Santa Monica Blvd., where new modern streetcars may run along with buses, possibly with the support of the City of Los Angeles and Beverly Hills (using that right-of-way), allowing a transit way between Century City, West Hollywood, Hollywood, Sunset Junction, Silver Lake, Echo Park and Downtown. I would state in my campaign platform that we can no longer and should no longer socially engineer West Hollywood or anywhere else in the area for automobiles. Of course, that would doom my candidacy, but I would say it and mean it.

As we all move forward in Southern California, we will all need to ask ourselves, what kind of cities do we want? Are they ones that puts cars as our highest priority or one that puts liveable streets as our priority?

In either case, I believe that the Westside Subway Corridor Extension Study has captured the imagination of West Hollywood, and the 86% support for Measure R indicates there is strong support for some kind of Metrorail project in the West Hollywood corridor, as development will continue upward here and throughout Southern California.

The review map above indicates an alignment that is a long way from being any kind of done deal. If we can get a Hollywood-WestHollywood-SanVicente-Crenshaw-LAX-SouthBay-LongBeach light rail line studied, in the Long Range Transportation Plan, approved and built, which are all big IFs of course, I think we should rejoice and take it.

I will continue blogging about the West Hollywood Transit Corridor as events unfold on my blog, Ride the Pink Line.

If Downtowners want to see a Regional Connector Station at 5th and Flower, they're going to have to find the money themselves. Photo:Clovis Bouhier/PBase

Here’s a quick rundown of the major votes by today’s Metro Board. Each of these five motions were discussed at Streetsblog over the last couple of weeks, and links to those stories can be found at the end of each summary.  Streetsblog will have links to all news reports on today’s meeting tomorrow.

Westside Subway Locally Preferred Alternative/Environmental Studies
As expected, the Metro Board of Directors unanimously voted to approve the Westside Subway “Locally Preferred Alternative” as the 9 1/2-mile route to the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Brentwood from the current end of the Purple Line at Wilshire/Western in Koreatown.  Despite over an hour of public comment from the Beverly Hills’ NUMBY’s, there was no decision made on whether the subway should have a stop on Santa Monica Boulevard in Century City or Constellation Avenue.

Yaroslavsky’s motion, which seemed to place the concerns of Beverly Hills regarding the Constellation Avenue/Santa Monica Boulevard debate ahead of those of other communities, was amended by the author to urge the staff to provide a detailed account of the impacts of both alternatives through the Westside.  This would have happened regardless under the Final Environmental Impact Statement that the Board approved funding for today.  For background on this motion, read yesterday’s Streetsblog story or an update on today’s vote from LA_Now.

Regional Connector Locally Preferred Alternative/Environmental Studies
The Metro Board also approved the “Locally Preferred Alternative” and funding for the environmental studies needed for the Regional Connector.  The debate was dominated by Little Tokyo business groups concerned that “cut and cover” subway construction would disrupt the community and cost them business. Downtown interests and LA City Councilwoman Jan Perry also expressed concerns about the exclusion of the 5th and Flower stop from the LPA.  The Board narrowly voted to exclude the 5th and Flower for now, but left the door open to include it in the environmental studies, if local businesses raise the roughly $2 million needed for that part of the study.  For more background, read this story at Streetsblog or an update on today’s vote from Blog Downtown.

“BikeWood” Hub at Hollywood and Vine
The motion allowing the creation of a street level, highly visible Bike Hub a the Hollywood and Vine Transit Oriented Development passed without much discussion.  Streetsblog provided the background for this motion on Monday.

Ridley-Thomas Grade-Crossing Motion

Good use of everyone's time, Supervisors. Photo: Los Angeles County

The Metro Board quickly passed County Superviser Mark Ridley-Thomas’ controversial grade crossing motion that appeared to introduce a more “subjective” tone into the analysis of whether light rail should run at-grade or grade-separated at major street crossings.  Board Member O’Conner asked that the motion be tabled for a month so Board Members could have more time to analyze the motion.  But, after Metro staff argued that the motion was just a re-emphasis on community concerns from the current grade-crossing policy and that it would have no impact on how these decisions are actually reached, the Board voted to accept Ridley-Thomas’ motion.

During a public discussion segment, Southern California Transit Advocates’ policy director, Kymberleigh Richards, warned that the changes would lead to “days of public comment” over controversial crossings when communities felt their concerns weren’t being addressed.  We’ll have to wait and see if that prediction holds true once debate on specifics of the Crenshaw Line reach the Board in 2011.  For background on this motion, click here.

710 Tunnel Cost Estimate
Ha!  Najarian was listening to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, siting his “wisdom” as a reason to get a new cost estimate.  The official estimate was based on figures from 2006.  While Najarian was able to read his motion into the record, the motion won’t have a full hearing until the next Board Meeting.  For background on this motion, click here.

Note: If you choose to share your thoughts at the bottom of this article, I would also urge you to “make it count” and put it on the official public record by sending your comments directly to Metro by October 18^th 2010.  Instructions on how to comment can be found at the end of the article.

Relishing the fact that evening ocean breezes were taking back the air from the day’s stagnant heat, a packed audience filed into the downtown Santa Monica Public Library auditorium on Wednesday night to review the status of the planned Westside subway extension and to make official public comments on it.

Just two days ago, the prevailing aim of comments at Metro’s subway hearing in Beverly Hills was to slam a proposed route that would tunnel under a residential area, which would occur if a station were built in the heart of Century City at Constellation Boulevard.  By contrast, at Wednesday’s hearing each person who commented on the proposed Century City station supported locating it at Constellation Blvd., citing that location’s improved access to jobs and entertainment, as well as the higher projected ridership.

More broadly, the comments in favor of the Westside subway extension advocated building as much subway west of the 405 Freeway as soon as possible.  Under the current schedule, an extension of the subway would only reach Westwood or the VA in the next 30 years (assuming no 30/10 project acceleration).

Alignment 5. Alignment 3 is the same thing for Santa Monica residents, but loses the spur through West Hollywood.

Undeterred, several speakers urged Metro to push forward on subway Build Alternatives 3 and 5 (PDF: EIR Executive Summary, pp. 15-21).  Both of these would have the Purple Line continue down Wilshire from Westwood and terminate in downtown Santa Monica at 4^th Street.  Although Metro currently lacks the funding to build the line past a Westwood or VA station, adding a “segment to the sea” would boost ridership on the whole extension by 28 percent and likely add an four more stations.

In contrast to those who commented on how they want the subway to be built, six speakers from the Bus Riders Union voiced strong support for the two non-subway alternatives for transit on the Westside, the “no-build” and “Transportation Systems Management” options.  The former is literally what it sounds like, and the latter (TSM) entails increasing the frequency of existing bus service on the Wilshire Corridor.

The main objections to the subway boiled down to three points.  First, the money that would be spent on this extension (roughly $4 billion) would be better spent on other capital, service, and infrastructure improvements, namely more buses, more night and weekend services, and more Wilshire-style bus-only lanes throughout LA County.

Second, the expense of building and operating the subway would benefit a predominantly white and affluent part of Los Angeles County at the expense of transit service in working class non-white neighborhoods.

And third, picking up on the LA Times and LA Weekly’s attempted controversy, BRU representatives argued that the subway extension’s inability to reduce road congestion several decades from now made the project unsupportable.

While I deeply value the BRU’s advocacy for socially equitable transportation and view them as an ally, I want to add some caveats to their arguments.  Regarding the first, while all of those transit improvements they mentioned are critical to building out a complete transit system in Los Angeles County, the voter-approved Measure R funding for the subway has to be used specifically for rapid, mass transit on the Westside.  I too am on a mission to get bus lanes on Olympic Blvd, Venice Blvd, Ventura Blvd, Whittier Blvd, Foothill, La Cienega, and all the rest.  But that’s a different battle (mainly with LADOT and other cities agencies).

BRU representatives huddle in the front as Jody Litvak presents for Metro. Photo: Carter Rubin

Regarding the second point, while residents of the entire Westside are more white and affluent than the rest of LA County, I think it would be a mistake to conflate the demographic profile of the whole region with the profile of those who use transit to get around it.  Indeed, only 25% of Metro Rail riders in Los Angeles County are white (source) compared to the overall populations of Santa Monica (72% white) or Beverly Hills (85% white), for instance.

Granted, with no existing Metro Rail in West LA, it’s hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison.  But in all likelihood, those who will use the subway, even on the Westside, will still mostly be typical LA area transit users.

While I don’t have data specific to overall Westside transit ridership demographics, my own daily experience riding the Big Blue Bus suggests that we riders are a diverse lot that reflects Los Angeles County as a whole (with a bunch of SMC students sprinkled into the mix).  Additionally, a subway that allows people to travel from Union Station – with its rail, bus, and Metrolink connections – to Westwood in 25 minutes will benefit transit users coming from every corner of LA County to jobs and schools on the Westside.

Which brings me to the final point: if you accept the fact that the subway extension will not reduce local road congestion in the long run because it won’t get people out of their cars, then doesn’t that necessarily mean that the subway would primarily continue to serve existing transit users, the majority of whom are working class and non-white?  The fact that some LA Leaders promised that the subway would reduce traffic – even though the data never really supports that – should not discredit the entire project, especially in light of its benefits to transit riders.

Again, I would hate for this piece to be construed as an attempt to discredit the BRU; their members do an exceptional job keeping Metro honest and focused on those who depend on transit.  However, I do believe that building this subway is truly compatible with those goals.  The extension will serve the densest corridor in LA County, where the 60-foot buses on the 720 Rapid Line look like this at 10pm, even with buses arriving every ten minutes.  At rush hour, they look the same with buses coming every three minutes.

Of course, please let me know if I’ve gone astray in my analysis.  I look forward to reading your thoughts and criticism in the comments section.

Lastly, I’ll give a shout-out to the Santa Monica resident who biked to the meeting from Westwood and managed to stay ahead of one of those very 720 buses the whole way over.  His account is distressingly plausible.  As this was the final Metro meeting for public comment, from here on out you’ll have to turn to your email, phone, or favorite postcard of Los Angeles.

All official public comments on the Westside Subway Extension, specifically the preliminary Environmental Impact Report, are due to Metro by October 18^th.  Don’t forget to tell ‘em Streetsblog sent you!

Update: Metro has now posted the presentation it has given at these public comment hearings online, here – September 2010 Public Hearings Presentation [PDF]

Online: Complete our electronic Comment/Question Form

By US Mail:
David Mieger, Project Director
DEO, Countywide Planning & Development
Metro
1 Gateway Plaza, 99-22-5
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Tel: 213.922.6934
Phone messages are retrieved at least once every business day.

Email: WestsideExtension@metro.net
Please be sure to include all of your contact information in the body of your e-mail.

Members of the Beverly Hills High School School Board present a resolution asking that the Subway run below Santa Monica Boulevard

There is one thing that is clear about the position of the residents of Beverly Hills when it comes to the future Westside Subway.  No matter how many guarantees they receive about the negligible impacts of tunneling ninety to one hundred fifty feet below the ground, they don’t want it to run underneath their residential area nor their schools of their city.

Last night in Beverly Hills, Metro hosted the fourth of its five public hearings on the Westside Subway Extension’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement.  After a fairly brief presentation, where the depth that subway drilling would occur at was mentioned an even dozen times; the staff turned the floor over to a parade of homeowners, renters, doctors, School Board Members, City Council Members, grade school students, business owners, homeowner’s associations, civic groups and even a Monsignor ready to condemn even the suggestion that the Westside Subway should run underneath the homes and schools of Beverly Hills.

For Metro, there are two issues that need to be addressed along this corridor.  The first is which corner of the intersection of La Cienega and Wilshire to put a rail station.  The second is whether it makes more sense to tunnel under Beverly Hills for a station at Avenue of the Stars and Constellation Avenue or Avenue of the Stars and Santa Monica Boulevard.

Metro tried to make the case that tunneling underground is safe and will not effect air quality.

Wearing red buttons that read “No Subway Under BHHS” a parade of speakers took to the microphone to castigate the study of the “Constellation Avenue” route and stop.  The most common themes of the testimony were the fear that the pollution that would come from tunneling 50 to 100 feet below the earth’s surface, the feat that the vibrations or construction would cause buildings to sink into the ground or collapse, or that construction would cause a significant impact to the quality of life.  Speakers went out of their way to claim they weren’t N.I.M.B.Y.’s because they liked the routing that took the subway farther away from, uhm, their back yards.

While fear was a staple of the impassioned speeches heard last night from residents, science was not.  Only one speaker, Ken Goldman, bothered to take on Metro’s assertion that the fault line under Santa Monica Boulevard should be considered active.  Metro points to this fault as a reason to tunnel farther south along constellation, but the state doesn’t consider this fault to be active because it will only yield a major earthquake once every 7,000 years.

Another speaker took on Metro’s ridership projections, which show a small bump in ridership if the Constellation Avenue stop is approved.  Kathy Reeves noted that if the .2 miles difference between the proposed Avenue of the Stars stops is the difference maker in choosing the route, than Metro needs to look at the stop planned for Westwood which is a full .8 miles from the UCLA campus.

Other than that, the testimony may have been emotionally satisfying, but is unlikely to produce any change between the Draft EIR and the Final one due next year.  Metro has already studied the air pollution that will be caused by tunneling scores of feet below the ground, and found it to be negligible.  Metro has already weighed in on whether or not they can tunnel safely under Beverly Hills’ residential areas and schools.  Just testifying that one doesn’t believe them isn’t going to change their minds or even merit more than a cursory response.  Goldman and Reeves at least raised valid queries that have to be addressed.

I was also somewhat surprised by the raising of Rosenfeld’s $1.5-billion proposal for two 46-story skyscrapers holding hundreds of condominiums and offices to be built on Avenue of the Stars as a bogeyman.  While they were careful not to mention Rosenfeld by name, the “well heeled developers of Century City,” as Beverly Hills City Councilman John Marsh referred to him, was a constant punching bag.  The argument is that Metro has bowed to political pressure to put the stop near this development to increase its value.  Whether that’s true or not hasn’t been proven at this point, but this argument does little to make a case for a change in environmental studies unless, as Msgr. Thomas Welbern predicted, the towers aren’t built reducing ridership at the stop.

Personally, I agree with the people of Beverly Hills that it makes the most sense to build the Subway stop at Santa Monica and Avenue of the Stars and not on Constellation Avenue.  The Westside Subway is going to be an iconic part of Los Angeles for generations and it should be in a place that will attract maximum visibility and maximum ridership.  How it’s going to do that on lesser used, and lesser known Constellation Avenue, unless we are building a subway stop just for Rosenfeld Towers is beyond me.

But that being said the arguments heard over and over again last night were the environmental hearing equivalent of putting on a mask and yelling “boo” at children and claiming they’ve seen a ghost.  On my way out of the hearing I asked one speaker if she was worried about the impact construction of the subway would have on traffic patterns on Santa Monica Boulevard and got the response that people aren’t that worried because most of the construction would be underground.  That was one of the more logical points I heard from speakers that night.

Update:

A couple of commenters have pointed out that my assertion that the Santa Monica/Avenue of the Stars stop would be the better of the two stops is complete crap.  Here is a google picture of the intersection:

Iconic?

Ok, looking at that picture, I’m not sure what I was thinking.  Point taken everyone.  The subway stop should be at Constellation and Santa Monica.

Earlier this month the L.A. Times headlined its coverage of the release by Metro of the draft environmental studies for the Purple Line westward extension “Proposed Westside subway will do little to relieve traffic congestion, report shows” as if this was a searing revelation. Just proof again of the sad decline of the Times these past few years.

The follow-up anti-subway drum beat started up immediately. Richard Lee Abrams is a lawyer who has been of late placing ranting opinion pieces on the CityWatchLA website denouncing mass transit as 19th century technology and a scam to aid and abet developers and their evil plans to densify the city. His article on the subway draft environmental report doesn’t merely carry the ominous title “Westside Subway Study is Defective” but has the subheading “The Manhattanization of LA”. His solution is telecommuting which he claims is on the cusp of being a real way to do most of your business from the convenience of home. He calls it Virtual Presence. I call it a pipedream.

Then the L.A. Weekly engaged in a hit piece on the subway, quoting well known anti-rail zealots James Moore and Wendell Cox along with a smattering of statistics bent to make it appear the project is an utter disaster in the making.

The latest to join the anti-subway dogpile is Mark Lacter,  who writes on business for LA Observed. As a long-standing critic of the project it is no surprise his commentary is titled “Cracks start to appear in subway boondoggle” while the piece itself includes such words and phrases as “nonsensical”, “this project is as good as dead”, “ supporters are desperately looking for cover” and “politically inspired flim-flam”. He even hints a Republican takeover of Congress resulting from the upcoming midterm elections would spell doom for the project.  I guess he doesn’t remember the original Red Line was able to get federal funding in the midst of the very anti mass transit Reagan administration. Given the cost effectiveness numbers prospects for federal funding are fairly good if and when the transportation trust fund situation is resolved (hopefully next year).More than a few have asked who said the purpose of rail transit is to solve the problems of auto congestion? Also I see the entire argument as a strawman: Traffic is not a static situation. Any relief would be unnoticed as latent demand (drivers who otherwise would decide not to drive due to congestion) refilled the roads. New York has a stupendous subway system yet still suffers from gridlock. Does that make the subway a failure?

Congestion pricing like they have in downtown London is the real means by which to solve the problem of crowded roads and the subsidies that create same. But don’t hold your breathe for that one here any time soon–it would be truly visionary and challenge the status quo if a leader promoted pricing for L.A. Moore in the Weekly promoted expanding road capacity when if he had any understanding he’d have instead touted pricing. And note the critics say zero about ridership, therefore obscuring what a tremendous amount of use this subway line will have from day one. That truth will soon reassert itself and the collection of naysayers will go back to their grumbles and gripes while the process continues to move forward.

The subway might be full, but extending it to UCLA won't make a dent in the 26,000,000 car trips added to the Westside in the next 30 years. Photo: Spokker Jones/Flickr

Traditionally, the Friday before a holiday weekend is considered the time to release news that you don’t want to get traction in the public.  Sure, the story could get picked up, but there’s less people watching the news that night or reading the newspaper the next morning than any other time.

Both the City and Metro went for a Friday info dump, although I’m sure neither agency would admit it, last week.  Metro released the draft environmental documents for the Westside Extension of the Purple Line.  Meanwhile, the city released the dates for the public meetings for the most recent draft of its Bike Plan.

For Metro, the reason was obvious, the Draft Report showed that automobile congestion will not see a significant reduction after the Purple Line is extended from Wilshire/Western to Westwood.  While this seems like a somewhat obvious “revelation” to people who follow transit issues; after Metro and politicians have spent years promising that transit would unlock Southern California’s streets to smooth flowing traffic, it might come as a shock to everyone else.  Remember the “Yes on Measure R” ad campaign that talked about freeways more than anything else?  Let’s just say transit officials and boosters didn’t sell Measure R based on creating a twenty five minute trip between Union Station and Westwood.

Metro’s fears were probably well founded.  The Los Angeles Times’ coverage led with the “bad news” that the subway won’t be the savior for Westsiders trapped in their cars.  Unless, said westsiders are one of the thousands of people who will use the subway everyday that is.  If you go through the entire Times article, it repeatedly discusses the subways benefits for “transit riders” before sadly telling us those benefits won’t be there for everyone else.  It’s almost as though the Times believes train riders are an entitled group of people that commute in a private freeway under the ground and don’t even have to drive, while everyone else is forced into their sad little cars and won’t see any benefits of this billion dollar boondoggle.

As expected, most of the news reports that followed picked up the Times’ take, although Curbed did follow The Source and focus on the twenty five minute commute between Westwood and Union Station promised in the documents.  For the record, the public hearings for the DEIR are scheduled for later this month (check out our calendar for more information), and you can read the environmental documents themselves at http://metro.net/westside.

For City Planning, the issue was different.  This is the third time they’ve released dates for hearings on the Bike Plan, and the last two times the meeting schedule was met with outrage from the cycling community after only four meetings were scheduled for a city with four million people.  Because there were only four meetings scheduled again, Planning did the only thing they could and released the schedule not just on the Friday before a holiday weekend…they did it at 5:40 P.M.

You can see the full schedule at the official Bike Plan Website.

On Monday, the Passenger Rail Symposium kicked off with an impressive display of train technology, most of it being used in Europe. But the problem of how to effectively implement train stations, European or otherwise, remains. Fortunately, Tuesday's speakers had plenty to say on the matter, both describing successful stations elsewhere or the prospects for better ones here.

Session 3: Rail’s Role in Connecting and Building Communities

Brent Riddle

Maria Ayerdi-Kaplan and Alex Kalamaros

After that, Metro's Alex Kalamaros led off his presentaion with a not-entirely-convincing plea that "We're doing interesting stuff in LA too". And while metro doesn't currently have any train station development programs on the level of SF or Stuttgart, there is something to be said for the work they've done in Transit Oriented Development. The presentation basically went through each of Metro's TOD projects one by one, with little new information other than how difficult it was for him to deal with Studio City NIMBYs. He reluctantly admitted that he wasn't entirely pleased with the way Metro handles parking in TODs, something Streetsblog has been critical of in the past, but he seemed to think there was little that could be done in the near future to change that. When asked whether Metro's development department had anything in store for the arrival of high speed rail, he expressed hope that a project similar in scale to the SF terminal could be built, but said that it would all depend on the route chosen for the HSR line south of union station. But he felt that most development would probably take place east of the station, which would be beneficial as it would potentially obscure the view of Metro's aesthetically challenged "Taj Mahal" building. He also made reference to the Park 101 project, as well as the LA River redevelopment project - is there a chance that all of this could be built as part of one massive TOD?

Session 4: Regionalism, Passenger Rail’s Emerging Role

Walt Stringer and the Sprinter Route

Last up for the conference was a session on regional rail, more specifically Sprinter-style commuter/light rail which uses self-propelled passenger cars. And who better to begin this session than someone from Sprinter? Walt Stringer, the Light Rail Manager from San Diego's North County Transit District came to talk a bit about how the Sprinter came to be. He covered many of the details about station construction, signaling, and the construction of the line's rail cars. Perhaps the most interesting detail was how popular the route had become with students at CSU San Marcos. And in general, the example of a train line which operates on freight lines with a service level closer to light rail, especially so close to home.

Next came a presentation from a new NorCal rail line which is something of a "Sprinter North": the Sonoma-Marin Area Transit District, with the very highbrow acronym SMART. Lillian Hames, SMART's general manager, layed out the details of the upcoming project. It begins at Larkspur, a ferry terminal ten miles north of San Francisco, and continues seventy miles north to Cloverdale at the northern edge of Sonoma County. Self propelled passenger cars, similar to the Sprinter, will run every 30 minutes on weekdays, and the project also includes construction of a parallel bike path for most of the line. It will be interesting to see how this line works out; Metro is currently planning a commuter rail line to Cerritos and Orange County which may use Sprinter-style cars instead of locomotives, and a Sprinter approach may be the best way to bring a light rail level of service to other routes in Orange County. If the SMART line succeeds, we'll have another good reason to pursue that approach here.

A

(Drew Reed is usually our volunteer Long Beach writer.  However, he volunteered to cover the CTA’s rail transportation symposium in Long Beach that took place Monday and Tuesday.  Here is a review of Monday’s coverage.  Tuesday’s will come tomorrow.  With the exception of the above graphic, all images are by Drew Reed.)

Last Monday afternoon, at the same building which one month earlier bore
host to the Long Beach Grand Prix, an entirely different (and
thankfully quieter) event was about to take place: the Passenger Rail
Symposium. Hosted by the Community
Transportation Association of America as part of the larger EXPO
transit convention, this is the first year this event has been held.

Scott Bogren, Editor in Chief of CTAA’s Rail Magazine and one of the
main organizers of the event, said that he was pleased that this year’s
EXPO took notice of rail transportation; in previous years, the event
had primarily focused on buses. But attendees seemed enthusiastic to see
what the rail symposium was all about, most coming from transit
agencies across the country with a few local rail fans sprinkled in.

Session 1: Setting the National Rail Agenda

Borgosian

The symposium began with an introduction from Bogren, who set the
tone of the event by pointing to the multifaceted benefits of rail. As
an example, he pointed to the Empire Builder, the train which runs from
Chicago to Seattle. While many complain that the train doesn’t attract
many riders between Chicago and Seattle compared to airlines, he points
out that the train also provides necessary service to riders in rural
Montana and North Dakota. The benefits of rail are also economic. In his
home region of Washington DC, the Orange Line in Arlington Co connects
to an area which used to contribute 16% of the county’s tax revenue, now
that area contributes 60%. But the benefits of rail aren’t just
economic, or even environmental, but also cultural. Bogren referred to
train stations as "cathedrals of transportation", and praised the Metra
stations of Chicago as examples of how a train station can benefit
communities in ways that are difficult to measure, but are significant
nonetheless.

Next to speak was James McCommons, author of the extensive Amtrak
survey Waiting on a Train. McCommons’s speech outlined
much of what he covers in greater detail in his book, which gives a
history of US rail travel while simultaneously giving an account of his
year’s worth of traversing the country by train. He covered the
essentials of the country’s rail history, from the first railroads in
the east to the rise of interstates and plane travel. He characterized
the creation of Amtrak as being similar to a "bailout", but judging from
his tone, he doesn’t think the term doesn’t carry the negative
connotation it does for other people. He was quick to point to Amtrak’s
flaws, as well as the historical reasons for them: outdated equipment,
ineffective stations, frequent delays. But he ultimately was hopeful for
the future. In his view, one of the most effective ways for train
travel to be improved was by individual states taking an active role in
rail development, as has happened in North Carolina, Pennsylvania,
Washington state, and California. In the long term, he hoped for the
development of a "steel interstate" system, a network of
government-constructed train lines crossing the country which would
increase train speeds and avoid conflicts between passenger and freight
trains.

Session 1. Rod Diridon, left, and James McCommons, right

Next up was Rod Diridon, a board member of the California
High Speed Rail Authority and the namesake of San Jose’s Diridon
Train Station. He began by asking the audience to raise their hands if
they thought high speed rail would make it to California, about 50%
agreed. He then proceeded to give a barnburning speech about the
apparently glowing prospects of the rail line; how he and a team of rail
supporters had approached Barack Obama with high speed rail plans while
he was still a senator, fully expecting him to forget them when he made
it to the presidency. According to Diridon, even Gov. Schwarzenneger
was willing to go to bat for the train in closed door meetings. He then
laid out the plans for the line itself, many of which we’ve all seen
already at the CAHSR media page, but were somehow made more interesting
by his impassioned description. At the end, I found myself wondering if
we couldn’t name a train station after him in Southern California too.

"You Can’t Sneak High Speed Rail Into Town" : Session 2, The
Industry Response

Session 2 began with Barry Goodman, currently
the leader of The Goodman
Corporation, a transportation planning firm. Before coming to the
magazine, he had an extensive career in public transportation in Texas,
including serving as the executive director of Houston’s Metro.
His enthusiasm for rail was tempered somewhat by his years facing
Texans’ ambivalence to rail. nonetheless he maintained that in Texas was
a place where "if you got four of the right people in a room, you could
accomplish anything". He was pleased at the creation of Houston’s light
rail, but lamented the fact that many of the stations were surrounded
by vacant lots – the kind of transit oriented development that makes Los
Angeles look good by comparison. His view of rail is that it’s not
enough to simply lay a train line next to a busy freeway, but if trains
are effectively woven into a larger urban fabric they will ultimately
become very effective. He called for a more unified approach by the
federal government to urban rail, going so far as to say that since
trains reduce oil usage they should be seen as a national security
issue. He urged the government to stop using "sustainability" as a
buzzword and become a leader in instituting truly effective train
systems, and better mobility overall.

Session 2. From left: Jerry Premo, Charles Wochele, Barry Goodman, and Rail Magazine publisher Dale J. Marisco

Following that came an extensive discussion of high speed rail from
the next two speakers, beginning with Jerry Premo, the global transit
director at AECOM. His take on high
speed rail? It’s not for the faint of heart. "You can’t sneak high speed
rail into town. It’s a major commitment to build," he cautioned. But
though the costs of investing in HSR are high, it pays off in
environmental friendliness, economic development, and improves people’s
lives by filling a gap between short distance travel and air travel. He
echoed Goodman’s desire for strong political leadership, and also
stressed that it was very important that HSR stations have excellent
local connectivity options. He concluded by asking the question that has
probably occurred to all of us at some point: "If the Chinese can do
it, why can’t we?"

Last up to speak was Charles Wochele, the vice
president of Alstom
Transportation Inc. He began by pointing out that in France, despite
their current reputation as a mecca for high speed rail, plans were as
difficult to initiate there as they are here. French citizens balked at
the cost, and provincial farmers worried about what a high speed train
would do to their cattle. But the plans went through, and now HSR is
widely popular in France; the French take pride in not having to fly for
short trips, and farmers’ concerns were alleviated when the french rail
authority decided to build grassy "cow overpasses" connecting pastures
divided by rail lines.  He also highlighted benefits of high speed rail:
it has the capacity of eight lanes of traffic and takes up the space of
two lanes, it is the most energy efficient form of long distance
transportation, it is very safe, the interiors are comfortable.
According to Wochele, California is a "sweet spot" for HSR; it is nearly
the same size and population as France, and HSR could potentially be
added incrementally, with certain sections becoming high speed before
others. He wrapped up with a slick video of the record breaking test run
of an experimental TGV – designed by Alstom.

At the end of the
first day, the overall outcome was a high level of enthusiasm over high
speed rail, though it remained unclear how exactly HSR would fit in to
larger communities. Speakers stressed the importance of all intercity
rail (high speed or otherwise) integrating seamlessly with community
transportation, and highlighted the benefits of transportation from city
center to city center. But is it enough to simply drop a train station
in the center of town? If HSR becomes a partial substitute for air
travel, improperly constructed stations run the risk of becoming mini
airports, with plenty of car rentals and shuttles but no real connection
to the city. How do we make train stations as effective as they can be?
More about that on day two of the Passenger Rail Symposium.

The
first public meeting will be held Wednesday in Kansas City, followed by
a Thursday meeting in Atlanta, according to a release sent today by the
Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). Rail officials will stop in New
York City on May 26, Salt Lake City on June 3, and Portland on June 4.
More information, including locations for each meeting, is available on the agency’s website.

A
police officer monitors New York City subway commuters last month, part
of stepped-up security after the Moscow attack. (Photo: AP/CSM)

The
report was released in March by the Mineta Transportation Institute
(MTI) at San Jose State University, which gets funding from the U.S.
DOT and the California state legislature. The MTI, named for the
Bush-era Transportation Secretary,
is in the process of assembling the first database of terrorist attacks
specific to U.S. surface transport modes, supplementing existing
government statistics with its own research.

The MTI’s latest report on its database analyzed more than 1,600
terrorist attacks on or threats to surface transportation — only 15 of
which occurred in North America. Of those, four were directed at public
buses, three at bridges, and eight at trains.

Transit’s lack
of prevalence as a terrorist target in the United States, according to
the MTI, is due in part to the more widespread public use of rail and
buses in Asia, Latin America, and Europe. From the report:

Most of the attacks take place in countries in which train or bus transportation is either
the primary means of public transportation (e.g., in Israel) or, along with trains, a large
part of it, and in rural areas, the only public transportation.

This
is far from the situation in the United States, where aviation is the
primary method of long-haul transportation, and with the exception of
high-density urban centers such as New York, Boston, and San Francisco,
the automobile is the primary method of local transportation. Where
train or bus transportation is extremely important, it becomes an
obvious terrorist target. Conversely, where it is not so important, it
may be a less likely target.

Even so, the MTI noted that transit remains in the sights of terrorist
groups seeking "soft targets," buildings or elements of infrastructure
that may not be as tightly guarded as government property but would
carry a risk of significant casualties. Recent attacks on transit in London, Madrid, and Mumbai "were considered major terrorist successes," the report’s authors warned. "Past success makes future attempts more likely."

Rep.
John Mica (R-FL) opposes the White House safety plan, but he also wants
to see it debated as part of broader transport legislation. (Photo: Orlando Sentinel)

Speaking
to the American Public Transportation Association’s (APTA) annual
conference, aides to both House infrastructure committee chairman Jim
Oberstar (D-MN) and Rep. John Mica (FL), the panel’s top Republican,
said they aim to make the White House’s proposed transit safety
legislation part of the broader debate over restructuring federal
transport programs — an issue that may not come before Congress until next year.

But
an adviser to the Senate Banking Committee’s senior Republican, Richard
Shelby (AL), said he wants the transit safety bill to be "a
free-standing piece of legislation and not wait until" lawmakers can
agree on a long-term federal transport bill.

In remarks
that touched on the continuing impasse over that six-year transport
bill, Oberstar aide Amy Scarton asked APTA members to provide input on
the White House transit safety proposal, which has gotten mixed reviews
from transit officials. The safety legislation is set to move through
the House "as part of the long-term surface transportation bill," she
said.

Meanwhile, Mica remains opposed to the Obama team’s
strategy of asking state transit overseers (known as SSOs) to submit to
federal supervision if their programs are deemed out of compliance with
minimal safety standards, according to aide Joyce Rose. The Floridian
would prefer to bolster individual SSOs with grant money to avoid
"creating a new federal bureaucracy," she said.

But Rose
agreed with Scarton that transit safety should move as part of the
broader transport bill, a perspective that runs counter to the
administration’s hopes for quick passage of its proposed legislation.

After
the House aides spoke, Shannon Hines — who served as Shelby’s chief of
staff before moving to the Banking panel in 2007 — expressed her boss’
differing view on the transit safety debate.

It remains to
be seen whether other senators share his view on the timing for safety
legislation. An adviser to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) did not mention the
retiring Banking chairman’s preferred approach yesterday, and a
spokeswoman for Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), a leading voice
on transit safety, told Streetsblog Capitol Hill that the Maryland
senator is "looking at all the options" in order to approve the
administration’s safety plan "as quickly as possible."

(Photo: Model D Media)

APTA President William Millar portrayed the new ridership figures as a win for transit, given the economic recession and the fact that fuel prices declined last year relative to their 2008 highs.

"Considering that nearly 60 percent of riders take public transportation to commute to and from work, it is not surprising that ridership declined in light of the many Americans who lost their jobs last year," Millar said in a statement.

Since 1995, APTA has reported a 31-percent increase in transit ridership nationwide, compared with a 15-percent increase in population over the same period and a 21-percent increase in highway miles traveled.

Nine cities reported light-rail ridership increases to APTA: Baltimore; Oceanside, CA; Memphis; Seattle; Philadelphia; Tampa; San Francisco; Portland; and New Orleans. Heavy rail networks in Los Angeles, D.C., Chicago, and Philadelphia also saw more riders last year.