Video of the Day: Your East Side Moment of Zen
BART Cop Murder Trial to Move to Downtown L.A., Lawyer Predicts More L.A. Riots
Sobriety Checkpoint in Sherman Oaks Tonight
Nearly $10 Million Owed to LAUSD by Teachers Who Were Mistakenly Overpaid
The Great L.A. Walk Treks Adams & Washington Today
Metro began with a slew of options, shown above, and are now down to two
Although Metro has admitted a subway below Wilshire Blvd. could be completed in five to ten years, their most recent staff report suggests that the subway to just La Cienega (that's about 4 miles from the current end of the line) would realistically be built by 2019, to Century City by 2026 and to Westwood by 2032, according to the report that lays out possible timelines to be presented to the agency's board.
The timing of the project, officially dubbed the Westside Extension (join their facebook page), really comes down to funding in the end. If the subway had all the funding upfront there would be a possibility of running crews in shifts throughout the day and night, ultimately speeding up the project to a quick handful of years, said one Metro representative at a meeting last Winter.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa would obviously like the quicker route (so would everyone else), but that sort of funding would have to come from Obama or a very generous business community effort and at the price tag of $5 billion and probably rising, that also seems unrealistic.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Oh well.. at least I can take it when I'm retired..
Whenever I hear public works timelines like this, I always think of the Transcontinental Railroad and wonder why thinging take so effing long these days:
"Authorized by the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 and supported by U.S. government bonds...The building of the railway required enormous feats of engineering and labor in the crossing of plains and high mountains by the Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad, which built the line westward and eastward respectively...Opened for through traffic on May 10, 1869, with the driving of the "Last Spike" at Promontory Summit, Utah, the road established a transcontinental mechanized transportation network that revolutionized the population and economy of the American West."
That's 7 years from passage of the act of Congress to up-and-running. I know we don't use Chinese slave-wage labor anymore, but c'mon! Can we get a little 19th Cent. about this mo' fo', Metro?
Maybe Obama's version of WPA style public works projects will help?
You couldn't have said it better, brainylagirl! Props to user 'Skd's' comments as well...
These timelines are unbelievably long, and TOTALLY unacceptable. Other nations and world megacities will be laughing at us and asking, 'are you serious?' And if fact these timetables represent ‘reality’, the window to seize the moment of public frustration in LA County over traffic, and public support of creating a ‘tipping point’ for a true regional transportation network will close quite quickly once folks realize how lame these timelines are. It would be a shame indeed to squander this moment in LA’s history.
In my opinion, the problem is not the dedicated public servants at MTA or the aggressive lobbying for Subway to the Sea by the Mayor, but to be honest I just can’t figure out why people who do this stuff day in and day out with passion and purpose seem to be setting the bar that low. I know we certainly have had historically low expectations and systemically low prioritization/funding of public transport on local, regional, and national levels, which seems to ‘beat transit boosters down’…. And at first glance, the current cratering of the economy appears incredibly daunting.
HOWEVER:
1. Obama’s team is going to support Measure R, Prop 1A etc…regarding transit, thru the large stimulus package. In theory, this should allow for more aggressive timelines.
2. Aren’t we able to get ANY buy in from the private sector on investment/partnerships to fast track these projects?
These timetables are not only a regional embarassment, they are a national disgrace.
While we proceed at a tortoise’s pace, the rest of the world is creating the first rate infrastructure that will position them as more efficient and globally competitive.
We sent humans 240,000 miles to the moon, taking them from orbit to the moon in less than a decade.
–25 years to push 15 miles from Downtown LA to the Sea? Or should I say, 25 years to push only TEN miles to Westwood/405?—
Wow, have we devolved or what?
I hope that in some way I can participate in helping improve this lame and unacceptable state of affairs.
We are better than that as a region and as a nation.
Jonathan Trachtman
Los Angeles
Chinese laborers built the transcontinental railroad across the entire US in less than seven years in the late 1800's.
Today in China they can build a 20 mile subway in four years under a densely populated city.
Do we need them to build our subway to the sea?
I bet they could do it in two years.
After a year-and-a-half, we are concluding the Westside Extension Alternatives Analysis Study. Later this month, we'll be presenting the study recommendations to the Metro Board of Directors and asking them to allow us to proceed into the next step -- a full environmental review known as a Draft EIR/EIS. If you are interested in seeing what we've evaluated along the way, what we're recommending and why, please check out the study web site at www.metro.net/westide and click on News & Info. You can also click on Contact Us to let us know what you think, ask questions, or add yourself to our database as we move forward. I also invite you to join our Metro Westside Extension group on Facebook.
Thanks.
Jody Litvak
Metro Westside Extension Study Team
Thanks, Jody!
^^ Well, enough SAID!!