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Wilshire Subway Watch: WeHo Gets Shafted
As Beverly HIlls gets ready for their meeting tonight, Boi from Troy ponders about the city of West Hollywood being the only Westside city without any purple tunnel love:
Rather than shoot straight down Wilshire–an easy proposal–why not consider taking to subway to places people want to go? How about building the Subway to the Grove, then to Cedars Sinai/Beverly Center/West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, UCLA, Brentwood then Santa Monica, linking in with the new Exposition line?
He continues to suggest a congestion style pricing on Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevards for vehicles not registered within West Hollywood. As he admits, impractical it would be.
However, he is right to bring up the WeHo traffic clusterfuck problem and what solutions are being thought of today to put in place tomorrow. As much as West Hollywood is a more ideal place of a subway stop destination for many people, the fact that Wilshire is one of most, if not the most, congested streets in America has a lot of pull.
Take this story from MetroRiderLA about how well the new Metro Rapid Express along Wilshire Blvd. works when it hits Beverly HIlls:
While the subway's chances of reaching the sea are bobbing between "slim" and "none," Wilshire Boulevard has both road and transit congestion. Yes, in Los Angeles, of all places, there is such a thing as too many people riding a bus. Wilshire Boulevard is busy. Crowd: How busy is it?
MetroRiderLA: It's so busy that a Rapid bus line had to get a Rapid bus line.
[snip]
Here's the deal. The bus, NABI 60-BRT #9347, arrives at Fourth Street and Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica at 4:45 p.m. Over half of this trip's 53 passengers board here. It arrives in Westwood about 15 minutes later... Less than 10 minutes later, the bus speeds through Millionaire's Row and gets to Santa Monica Boulevard.
[snip]
East of Fairfax Avenue, speed picks up again, although the bus is not a road rocket...
It arrived at Vermont in 75 minutes. Santa Monica to Koreatown in 75 minutes with the fastest bus on Wilshire. Of this, 40 minutes was passing through Beverly Hills. About three miles of the route accounts for more than half of its running time.
Hell, not only must the subway be built to the sea, Beverly Hills has to pay for it all.
Line 920, perfect from Koreatown to Fairfax or Westwood to Santa Monica. Anything in between requires a helicopter.
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