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November 8, 2006
Westsiders Can't Handle One Busses-Only Lane
It's less than a mile long, and yet the stretch along Wilshire from Barrington to Centinela in West LA that includes a bus lane has driven the westsiders insane(r).
According to the LA Times, some say the traffic the lane causes has made gridlock near Santa Monica "miserably worse".
But that all depends on if you're driving an overpriced, leased Beamer, or being driven in a six figure limo called the bus.
Even now, the 40 seconds bus riders save using the mile-long bus lane can increase during the worst rush-hour traffic to as long as 12 minutes. Transit officials have clocked buses taking just seven minutes to travel those 14 blocks, while cars might take as long as 19 minutes.See, Santa Monica, ride the bus and you can do a seven-minute mile. Aren't you lucky.
This one-mile stretch is just a test case, the article states, for a larger project that includes more of Wilshire that somehow could cost $100 million to re-stripe the road and fill the potholes.
Man, we're in the wrong-ass business.
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more busses and bus lanes? I see so many empty busses already. why don't we just build a tram? oh wait - that's expensive. let's just bike or walk. oh snap that is no fun without a spacesuit in the smog. okay, okay, I'll hop in the car and sit in traffic. sheesh.
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Wait -- I read the LA Times article a bit differently. I thought the main point was that LA City Council Member Bill Rosendahl's backing this anti-bus-lane thing....
As someone who actually takes the Wilshire buses from Santa Monica to LA, I have to say that these buses are rarely empty -- they're in fact often quite crowded. To decrease gridlock, you gotta support more public transport (i.e. fewer cars on the road). In fact, I called Rosendahl's office today -- 213.473.7011 -- and let him know what I thought. I encourage others concerned about traffic and/or public transport to do the same.
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Yes Bill is against the bus lane, it Zev is for it.
LAist is for it, but only because we want the $100 mil to paint the road and fill the potholes - with ground up BMWs.