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A new blog has appeared on the blogLAsphere called ditch the car, take the metro and blogger, John, has created, revised and tweaked his idea on LA's future subway transit. "My LA subway plan is based upon latent but unrealized relationships that organize Los Angeles," he explains in an early post. "The core of the system is built upon two parallel corridors (the Red and the Purple Lines) connecting three central business districts (Downtown, Hollywood, and Westwood/Century City)."
What excites us: A 405 over the hill solution, a Ventura Blvd line (freaking out those "south of the boulevard") and access to Venice, Silver Lake and Glendale.
What we desire: a line from NoHo or Universal towards Pasadena via Burbank and Glendale on the Valley side.
Image by John at ditch the car, take the metro
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that yellow line seems pretty unnecessary
I have to disagree on the Yellow Line comment -
The part of the Yellow Line along Hollywood seems a bit redundant, but the links down to South Central are critical to providing areas with high transit ridership a higher capacity and better quality transit mode than they have now.
It would also be nice to see some data on demographics applied to this and other posts on transit lines. It's great that there are a lot of visionaries drawing lines on a map, but just because you can build a line doesn't mean that the riders will come - sometimes they will (and exceed expectations like the Blue and Orange Line) and sometimes not so much (like the current Green Line). Looking at population and employment can help you identify where your likely winners and losers will be located.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but love for south central. But we're talking about $1 million a foot to build subways in this town. Therefore something tells me that that yellowline could more easily be replaced by a Rapid line to connect South Central to all those proposed subways. And since those Rapid lines already exist, the yellow line is probably too expensive for what convenience it would accomplish for people who are already quite used to riding busses, on average.
Also the Red Line is not accurately displayed on that map
That is retarded. First of all, the maker doesn't have the benefit of more than 45/90 degrees lines. Second, several of the suggestions are already there, albeit in different forms (ie. Hollywood/Vermont, there is already a station at Vermont/Sunset). A more viable transit system might be envisioned by someone who actually rides the transit we have in place.
If one doesn't use the transit we have, how can we realistically augment the one's we have in use?
"Dream Map" for real...
As someone who just visited NYC/North Jersey, D.C, and is:
1. a NATIVE of South Central Los Angeles
2. someone who grew up in the West Adams/Crenshaw
area, lived in Watts (a stones throw from the
Tower, and currently resides proudly in Leimert
Park
the yellow line is necessary and would be welcome. Of course the "dream" needs tweaking but it is absolutely necessary. Subway service in what I consider to be the heart of Los Angeles should have been a no-brainer years ago.
I love it!
I'd keep the Expo Line going to the Beach and have the line from the Valley go all the way to LAX.
Obviously we all have our own "dream map".
I applaud the increasing demand for real mass transit.
There is a middle ground between Bus Rapid Transit and subways and that is light rail. While light rail cannot carry as many people and as fast as a subway, it is incredibly faster and carries far more people than buses ever built and can be build for much less than heavy rail subways.
Right now we have heavy rail (Red, Purple), light rail (Blue, Green, Gold, eventually-Expo) and Busways (Orange and other transitways), in addition to Rapid Bus and Local Bus.
For the mass transit lines, Southern Californians can already experience heavy, light, commuter rail, and Bus Rapid Transit to decide for themselves by practice and not just theory or fear.
Any multi-lined dream map when constructed would in practice be a mixture of heavy rail, commuter rail, light rail and bus rapid transit. We also need rush hour bus-only lanes on Wilshire, Santa Monica, Vermont, Western and Ventura Blvds., but just try getting single-occupancy motorists with a sense of entitlement to allow a lane of traffic to be transit only, when Rapid Buses would still need to weave around local buses.
Fortunately, the bus-only, anti-rail zealots at the BRU have declined in both influence and credibility, that there is common acceptance that while every major metropolis needs a comprehensive and reliable bus system, buses and bus-only lanes in themselves cannot and will not keep Los Angeles economically and environmentally sustainable and that we need to build mass transit lines for our future with the zeal that we built freeways in our past.
I support everyone developing their own dream map and then joining advocacy organizations like The Transit Coalition and Southern California Transit Advocates and lobbying our elected officials to help implement that dream into a reality.
A dream come true indeed! Now pinch me.
I hope they run 24/7 or at least till 1-2am so I can get my drink on. Bar hoping anyone?
While some of this is logistically impractical (you couldn't create new configurations at Hollywood/Highland or Vermont/Sunset without completely shutting down existing subway operation for well over a year, for example), it is good to see people thinking about future rail extensions.
One hopes that the same people will have some creative ideas for funding the construction of these lines. Given the state's stealing transit funding for other purposes (and, to be realistic, most of the state money goes to offset the costs of operating the service we have now) and the feds tightening their purse strings as well, creative funding strategies are going to be critical if these are ever to be more than colored lines on a computer screen.