Today’s Headlines

  • Two L.A. City Council Staffers Arrested For Alleged Drunk Driving. Cedillo Staffer Fredy Ceja Hit A Metro Bus. Harris-Dawson Staffer Fredy Torres Was In City Car. (LAT)
  • Ethan Elkind On Politics Behind Foothill Gold Line (LAT)
  • Metro Plans To Test All-Door Boarding For Silver Line (The Source)
  • L.A. Council Committees Approve Sidewalk Repair Plan (LAT, NBC4)
  • Mariachis Weigh In On Future Of Mariachi Plaza (KPCC)
  • Portion Of Venice Boulevard Bike Lane Is Now Bollard-Protected (@flyingpigeonla Instagram)
  • L.A. Has the Worst Traffic In the U.S. (LAT)
  • Big Oil Spill At Port Of L.A. (LAist)
  • KPCC Highlights Newly Launching Long Beach Bike Share
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The re:code L.A. project is hosting a series of seven community forums; the first takes place tomorrow night at Metro headquarters.

Calendar Extra: Wednesday 3/16 – The Department of City Planning’s re:code L.A. project is hosting a series of public forums to introduce the city of L.A.’s new zoning code. The first forum takes place tomorrow at 6 p.m. at Metro headquarters, 1 Gateway Plaza, right behind Union Station in downtown L.A. Event details at re:code L.A.

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  • Elkind’s piece is clueless and sounds like a Randy O’Toole mouthpiece. Anyone who has boarded the weekday peak hour trains realizes that the Gold Line is an attractive alternative to driving for many people and that the SGV definitely is not “not dense enough” to support rail. That’s really a bogus argument as many of the SGV communities have densities that are on par with mid-sized European cities that have far more rail than LA, with the bonus of lots more development on the way.

  • Matt

    I think it was a little harsh as hopefully the cities build appropriate transit oriented development around their stations. One problem with the Gold Line here is that the travel is all one-way. Trains are running nearly empty in the opposite direction and too many passengers are arriving via car where they are overwhelming the parking facilities.

  • That’s not a problem limited to the Gold Line, but instead extends to many of the roads in the SoCal region as well, especially in context of the east-west commute patterns.

  • Dennis_Hindman

    The Expo Line had the most passenger boarding’s per mile during weekdays in February of any light-rail line in the LA Metro system at 3.621. That’s due to high amount of boarding’s in both directions during both morning and peak hours. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the average number of boarding’s per mile increase when it reaches the city of Santa Monica. The trains should should have lots of boarding’s well into the evening.

    The Blue Line was at 3,372 boarding’s per mile in February and the Gold Line 2,433.

    The Green Line was at 1,902 boarding’s per mile February and the Orange Line 1,501.

    I would expect the average boarding’s per mile for the Gold Line to drop in April after the Foothill extension has been in operation for a full month and the Orange Line should increase with longer dual articulated buses in about two years. The Orange line is busy in both directions during both morning and evening peak hours.

    Elkind makes a good point, unfortunately creating bus lines instead of rail lines is much less likely to get the needed 2/3+ votes required for a sales tax measure. A better use of the upcoming sales tax money from an additional ballot measure would be to keep the Orange Line a busway and install grade separation for it at the busiest cross streets. Then plow money into creating a rail line that goes over the Sepulveda pass. Trying to do both as rail would probably be too large of a regional capital expenditure for the next sales tax measure.