Streetsblog Los Angeles

President Obama is expected to make a strong push for infrastructure spending during the State of the Union address tonight. Ahead of the address, the Transportation Equity Network organized its members and supporters to write to President Obama, telling their personal stories of why transit funding is crucial to their communities. In all, TEN will deliver 1,000 personal letters to the President asking him to support transit investments. A few have already been sent.

Here’s a sampling:

Lisa T. in St. Louis wrote:

As a high school teacher, I see how our less-than-adequate public transportation system impacts low-income families who do not have dependable personal transportation. Students and families who do not have cars are not able to participate in parent conferences, open house events, and extracurricular activities.

Jan H. of Montana wrote the president about how her hometown has been changed by car culture:

When I was a girl, there were two trains a day: east to Chicago and west to Spokane. Now, there are nothing but freeways clogged with big trucks.

Ann E. in Washington State told the president about the importance of transit accessibility:

I use an electric scooter to get around because treatment for bone cancer has limited my range for walking. Last fall, I went to visit my daughter who lives in Philadelphia. We were able to board the outbound trains to the suburbs using a special ramp but on our return trip we found that the station didn’t have the necessary ramps.

Please include funding in your 2012 budget to make public transportation practical for all who wish to use it.

John C. of Oakland, CA, wrote that transit service is an economic lifeline for working people:

In Oakland, we want expansion of mass transit to include eco passes to provide free mass transit for junior and high school students.

Nancy H. from Wisconsin, wrote about the transit issues in her area:

Funding for transit is a necessity where I live in Racine, WI, located between Milwaukee and Chicago. Anyone without a car must deal with limited bus routes that don’t reach many of the places in the county where jobs are located. Getting from Racine to neighboring communities by bus is impossible in most cases.

For the Racine community to attract new businesses there must be dependable, networked transportation.

Robert Kelly, President of the Amalgamated Transit Union’s Local 308 in Chicago, wrote the president about how transit spurs job growth:

With a staggering set of issues before you, it is easy to understand that some domestic issues might not make the top of your priority list when you have to deal with crisis after crisis. A renewed federal commitment to urban mass transit is an issue that absolutely affects the lives of millions of Americans every single day, the environment and your Administration’s commitment to grow jobs.

Mary J. in St. Louis wrote about her years without access to transportation:

Many years ago I lived in a rural area and had no ready access to a car. My mother and I would “flag down” a Greyhound bus on a nearby road to get to town for groceries, to attend church, and to visit family. Today, living in suburbia, I have a car, but no buses come near my house.

In Los Angeles, Pariss B. wrote about the importance of the bus system:

Bus operations are important to me because I am a citizen who wants things to get better. Bus fares are high and things are only getting rougher. Times are hard. It’s time for a change.

Maybe, once he reads them, Obama should forward these letters on to House Republicans, who are expected to be a tough audience for his pitch to increase investment to “outbuild” other nations.

For many transit riders, there’s another fare hike coming down the track, one that many may not even be aware of.

A provision of the stimulus bill that offered a larger tax break for some transit riders is set to expire at the end of the year. A new report by TransitCenter [PDF], a non-profit that works to provide tax-free transit benefits, outlines just how many riders will be affected by the end of those benefits, and how hard it will hit ridership numbers. By letting the transit benefit revert back to its pre-stimulus levels, Congress would push Americans away from riding transit and pinch the pocketbooks of those who keep riding.

The tax break was slipped into the stimulus bill by New York Senator Chuck Schumer in early 2009. Previously, riders could buy up to $120 in transit fares per month without paying taxes on that income, while those driving to work could deduct up to $230 in parking costs (one example of how the incentive to drive is embedded in the tax code). Schumer’s proviso equalized the caps, but only temporarily. It expires at the end of this year.

TransitCenter found that the higher transit benefit helped increase the number of people who took advantage of it. In 2010, 17 percent more firms offered the pre-tax transit benefit than in 2009, and 29 percent of employers reported higher enrollment in commuter benefits programs while the higher cap was in effect.

Without the higher cap, transit riders paying the national average tax rate of 31.6 percent could see their commuting costs rise up to 18 percent higher. For riders facing such a large effective fare hike, the train won’t look so appealing anymore. The report looked at studies of previous fare hikes and found that an 18 percent increase in price will translate into a five to nine percent drop in ridership among that group.

Read more…

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 Read more…

It seems as though voters would find a “yes” vote for Proposition 22 to be an easy decision.  After all, the proposition would end the state’s ability to decide that “we’re in a crisis” and could raid taxes dedicated to transit funding (as well as other local public services such as the police and fire departments) leading to the massive service cuts that we’ve seen locally and across the state.  Not surprisingly, transit advocacy groups such as the California Transit Association have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to see the initiative pass, and local groups such as the Southern California Transit Advocates have made passage a top electoral priority.

Yet, newspapers from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Sacramento are lining up against the ballot measure.  Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa hasn’t quite declared opposition, but has repeated the basic argument against the measure:

I think that one of the problems the state is facing is too much ballot-box budgeting. What happens when you do this, you break up the budget into lots of silos.

In other words, because the state has been raiding transit, and other locally collected and dedicated tax funds, for so long that creating holes in the state budget by putting them back where they were originally dedicated would damage the state. Read more…

Aging infrastructure across the country has become an enormous safety risk. It’s also becoming an economic hazard.

Last year, the Federal Transit Administration announced that the seven largest rail transit systems had a backlog of $50 billion in maintenance needs to bring them into a state of good repair. In June, the agency determined that nationwide, the backlog is nearly $78 billion.

Though these needed repair and maintenance projects may be less impressive to the public than major expansions, they are key to increasing ridership and decreasing costs.

Last week, FTA Deputy Administrator Therese McMillan told the North America Strategic Infrastructure Leadership Forum that the agency is linking good transit maintenance to its livability initiatives. Keeping systems in good repair, she said, is the foundation of safe, reliable rail service that can help draw new residents to vacated areas.

“When we’re looking at the opportunities for in-fill, particularly in our major urban areas, where we can take advantage of the infrastructure we already have, this is where State of Good Repair becomes a very key piece of a livability initiative,” McMillan said. “So it’s not just about building the new stuff into greenfield. It’s about investing and making transit a real value-added as part of these strategic re-investments in communities.”

Read more…

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. Read more…

Yesterday, the Daily News printed an odd opinion piece by 4th District City Councilman Tom LaBonge which outlined his views on how Metro should grow Los Angeles’ rail system in the coming years.  I say “odd” because the former Metro Board Member has to know that Measure R transit funds have to be spent on the projects listed in the ballot initiative passed in 2008, and it’s unlikely the agency is going to raise the funds for anymore transit projects in the near future.

Nevertheless, LaBonge does have some interesting ideas, such as monorail service to the Hollywood Bowl, an extension of the Red Line to the Valley and an extension of the Purple Line down to USC.  In fact, most of LaBonge’s article is about extending service to major trip attractors that are under served by transit.

So your homework assignment for the weekend is to assume you have a magic transit wand and could make any one change to our system, as it stands or post Measure R, and post it in the comments section.  On Monday, we’ll take a vote on which of the top suggestions is the best.  The overall winner gets a Streetsblog t-shirt!  Incidently, unless the Mayor breaks his arm trying to catch a train, that will be the only posting here until Tuesday morning.

Happy Labor Day!

So you're sipping your coffee and reading the news on your web-enabled phone as you glide along the Expo Line, idly shutting it off as you descend into the downtown connector en route to Union Station. Your bullet train to Sacramento leaves at 9AM, but you're not feeling too pressed for time, because as it turns out, that train isn't departing for several years.

If you can't quite see yourself in that picture yet, a coalition of urban planners and architects has an exhibit for you. Through the month of August, railLA is hosting LA Beyond Cars, "a multimedia experience showcasing concepts, ideas, and musings from around the world on the future of Los Angeles."

Formed by members of the Los Angeles chapters of the American Planning Association and the American Institute of Architects, railLA aims to build awareness of and enthusiasm for the benefits of high-speed rail in California. LA Beyond Cars represents the organization's first foray into helping car- and plane-dependent Angelenos wrap our minds around what a transit-oriented city and state could look like.

Among the installations featured are James Rojas' famous interactive models of Los Angeles, the recently released Piggy Backyard plan to turn an outdated Union Pacific rail yard into an LA River wetlands and park, as well as numerous transit station design concepts sent in from as far away as Italy and the Netherlands.

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David Lazarus, in one of his recent L.A. Times columns on public transit, off-handly laments neglect of the "long-term promotion of public transportation as a practical alternative to traveling by car".

Is that what transit in Southern California in the modern age has had as its goal? My long held suspicion is that transit as an alternative to the automobile is mostly an empty slogan that officials speak of but that as a practical matter receives little attention beyond lip service. And the great danger is trends may actually be leading us toward having transit use widen while officials and others aren't preparing for the many challenges this presents.

Our present public transit system is structured to meet two markets: peak hour commuters and the transit-dependent population (mostly made up of folks of modest means, seniors, the disabled and youth). Over decades service and funding structures have been built up predicated on that being the population it serves.

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The AFL-CIO, a formidable lobbying force in Washington, is throwing its weight behind a Senate bill offered last week that would authorize $2 billion in emergency funding for transit agencies forced to hike fares or cut service in lean budgetary times.

"Unless the U.S. Senate passes" the transit operating legislation, the union's Mike Hall wrote in a Friday blog post, "working families who count on public transportation systems in communities across the country will face even more severe fare increases and service cuts and transit workers are looking at further layoffs."

The president of the AFL-CIO's Transportation Trades Department, Ed Wytkind, also pushed for passage of the Senate bill in a National Journal guest blog post this morning. The Amalgamated Transit Union and the Transport Workers Union, both AFL-CIO members, have aligned with Rev. Jesse Jackson, environmental groups, and civil-rights advocates for a campaign dubbed Save Our Ride that seeks to stave off sweeping transit cuts in major cities.

The unions have several hurdles to clear before the transit funding becomes available, however. The Senate legislation contains only authorizing language, meaning that lawmakers must quickly follow with "appropriating" language that technically disburses the operating money.

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