Trains

USDOT Deputy Secretary John Porcari kicked off the Transportation Equity Network’s “One Nation, Indivisible” conference yesterday with a call to think long-term. By 2050, he said, we can expect the U.S. population to grow by 100 million people, and nearly all of them will live in large urban centers. Problems like crumbling infrastructure, inadequate transit systems, grinding traffic and pollution will be much worse then if we don’t start acting today.

Bill Lind is a big man. The director of the Center for Public Transportation at American Conservative stands well over six feet tall, and when he really gets going, he seems to loom even larger. Maybe that’s why he hates buses so much. “Those seats designed for garden gnomes,” he said.

(I noticed an uptick in press discussions about "density and transit" and "density and West Hollywood."  To respond to these articles, many of which are predicting doom for anyone foolish enough to try and densify their cities, I asked Dan Wentzel, a transit advocate who resides in West Hollywood, to take take a turn at the Streetsblog helm.  His article is below.  For more Wentzel, you can pretty much read any transit-related story's comment thread here on Streetsblog.  Or check out his personal blog at Ride the Pink Line. - DN)

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.

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 18th 2010.  Instructions on how to comment can be found at the end of the article.

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.

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.

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.

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.