Lincoln bus lanes

Santa Monica Daily Press commentator Bill Bauer (page 5 in PDF) argues that:

Local politicians, planners and misguided "enviros" must stop backing schemes that reduce street capacity. It'll be a long time before mass transit (light rail, monorail, busses and subways) serves a sizable percentage of the public. In the meantime, streets should be configured ot move traffic efficiently, safely and expediently - not impede it.

... In Santa Monica, ... instead of using parking lanes on Lincoln Boulevard to ease congestion, City Council declared them exclusive "bus and bike only" lanes for the eight hourly busses and handful of bicyclists using the street. ...

Isn't a simpler solution to Santa Monica's traffic and parking congestion to have more people come into the city without bringing their cars with them? Bus-only lanes can provide a speed incentive to ride instead of drive plus greater people-carrying capacity.

That was the recommendation of the 2002-3 Lincoln Corridor Task Force. The illustration above shows its near-term recommendations: to use the opportunity of existing parking lanes in Venice and Ocean Park for peak-period bus- and bike-only lanes, plus to underground the power lines and add landscaped medians.

Santa Monica Big Blue Bus already operates four #3 buses and another four Rapid 3 buses per direction on Lincoln during peak periods. The ones I've seen are crowded beyond their 40 seats, carrying around 400 people/hour (50/bus x 8 buses/hour), despite being stuck in slow traffic. That's some 20% of the people traveling on Lincoln.

A boulevard lane maxes out at around 750 vehicles/hour, or 900 people/lane/hour at 1.2 people per vehicle. But a new mixed-flow curb lane would carry fewer, with cars stuck behind frequently stopping buses, whereas a dedicated bus lane can easily expand capacity with more buses and/or longer ones.

Wilshire Monorail?

A monorail along Wilshire Boulevard has been suggested as a faster and cheaper alternative to extending the Purple Line "Subway to the Sea". Here are some considerations to evaluate whether a monorail could fit.

This image of the Las Vegas Monorail superimposed onto Wilshire in West Los Angeles shows the visual bulk of its concrete beams and columns, and how it blocks the left turn lane.

Las Vegas has the only transit monorail in the United States, begun construction in 2001 and opened in 2004. Its 2000 construction cost was $100 million/mile ($385 million for 3.8 miles; source). This was similar to elevated light rail, and about one-third the cost of subway construction. It would be more now, with construction cost inflation.

Las Vegas uses a proprietary Bombardier (Canada) design based on Walt Disney World. Hitachi (Japan), the world's other main monorail vendor, uses a different, incompatible, design. It's risky to be dependent on a single vendor.

Spans for the Las Vegas beams average 100 feet, with the longest about 120 feet. They are 26 inches wide and vary from 5 to 7 feet deep. The typical column is 56 inches by 32 inches (source). They likely would be larger in Los Angeles to meet our seismic requirements.

Aerial stations are quite large, cantilevered over the street with pedestrian bridges to the sidewalk, needing space for stairs, handicapped-accessible elevators, and possibly escalators (which tend to break in the weather). Is this acceptable on Wilshire?

Passengers would experience a 10-15 minute delay at Western Avenue, to transfer between aerial and subway stations and wait for another train.

What are alternatives to losing the left turn lane to columns? Las Vegas' 120-foot maximum span is far short of this typical boulevard intersection at Wilshire and Bundy, where it would take a 550 foot span across the left-turn lanes and cross street.

Even this massive bridge of the Green Line over Aviation and Rosecrans in the South Bay is only just over 300 feet.

The other possibility is "straddle bents" spanning the entire boulevard, like these three supporting a curve in Las Vegas. These would also be used if the beam curved to the edge of the boulevard if stations were built in buildings' upper floors.

For more perspectives see The Monorail Society and Light Rail Now.

(I plan a future post about monorails along freeways.)

Metro fares

I was quoted in today's LA Times article on Metro's (MTA's) proposed fare increase:

"Rail gives greater speed, it's more comfortable and it has higher capacity than buses," said Darrell Clarke, co-chairman of Friends 4 Expo Transit, which has been pushing for the line from downtown to Culver City. "Buses are stuck in traffic."

I'm disappointed the article was cast as bus vs. rail, though, framing the issue as:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority today will consider approving a series of large fare increases that would hit bus riders particularly hard at a time when officials are spending $1.5 billion for a network of new rail lines.

Construction costs for rail come from different sources than operations, and operating costs for rail are less than for buses. In Metro's FY07 Budget (Appendix 15, pp. VII-46-47), buses cost $0.61 per passenger-mile, compared to light rail's $0.49 and the subway's $0.47.

This is consistent with national statistics, and makes sense: the largest cost of running transit is vehicle operators, and one 3-car Blue Line train carries more passengers than six regular buses (or four of the new articulated buses). (Click for more.)

It's not either-or; we need both rail for main high-speed corridors and buses to fill in the gaps and provide local service. Rail is also more attractive to get people out of their cars and to attract the transit-oriented development Los Angeles needs to handle population growth without completely choking on traffic.

On the fare increase, many transit advocates recognize Metro's costs have been increasing for labor, fuel, and expanded service, while fares have been held flat for a decade. Like the LA Times editorial today, we seek a middle ground between no increase and Metro's original proposal:

Big transit systems in the U.S. get 38% of their operating revenues from fares, on average, while the MTA went from 32% before the decree to 24% today. If transit riders don't start paying their fair share, the agency will have no choice but to cut bus and rail service, which won't benefit anybody.

An ideal solution would find new sources of transit operations funding from sources like gas taxes, parking fees, carbon taxes, or congestion pricing, to mitigate for the externalized costs of automobiles.

Updates: I just spoke about this with Patt Morrison on KPCC.

Here's the LA Times on the final compromise by county Supervisors Gloria Molina and Zev Yaroslavsky that was adopted:

... the original increase, which would have raised the cash fare for both rail and bus to $2 per ride from $1.25. The monthly pass would have increased to $120 from $52 over the next 19 months.

Instead, ... fares will increase to $1.50 by July 1, 2010, then $1.80 by 2012. The $3 daily pass will jump to $5 by 2008, $6 in 2010 and $7.25 two years later. The $52 monthly pass will go up to $62 in 2008, $75 in 2010 and $90 in 2012.

A special [off-peak] 25-cent fare will be established for the disabled and seniors 65 and older. The fare would be in effect 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and after 7 p.m. on weekdays, and all day Saturday, Sunday and federal holidays.

Be sure to read Steve Lopez' column, especially Martin Wachs' comments:

"There's no question that in a metro area like L.A., a transit system cannot be sustained" by current formulas, said Martin Wachs of the Rand Corp. "You need some form of tolls or parking or gas increases, with a transfer of funds from auto users to transit users."

He and Brian Taylor of UCLA's Institute of Transportation Studies support a variable fare system, saying it's illogical to charge a flat $1.25 for a bus ticket regardless of whether the rider goes 30 miles or three blocks.

Southern California Transit Advocates (So.CA.TA) has an extensive discussion of their fare recommendations and the final Metro plan.

Olympic-Pico update

Allyn Rifkin presented his Olympic and Pico Boulevards one-way study at the CD-11 Transportation Committee Monday evening. (See my earlier post for an introduction.)

He set the stage well, saying, "Think of this as someone's first idea ... now let's go out to the community about it." His main points were:

• Olympic and Pico are major Metro and Big Blue Bus corridors. Because they're mostly more than 1/4 mile apart, he rejected pure one-way roadways in favor of contra-flow bus lanes.
  
  
• Left turn arrows eat up a lot of intersection capacity. The one-way direction would be clockwise — east on Olympic, west on Pico — so changes in direction would use right turns.
  
  
• His "5/2" (5 lanes one-way, 2 contra-flow) diagrams are here — off-peak with parking and left turns above, peak without parking or left turns below.
  
  Without peak-period left turns capacity would increase by 20%; with peak left turns capacity would only increase by 6%. A questioner was concerned about banning left turns, which would require many to drive around a the block through neighborhoods.
  
  
• The roadways would not become "freeways" because speeds would be regulated by synchronized signal timing.

Zev Yaroslavksy's transportation deputy Vivian Rescalvo emphasized this is about improving transit in the corridor, not only for automobiles, and that it's "absolutely not" an alternative to the Expo Line, but that is eight years away.

Rifkin agreed with my question that Santa Monica's section of Olympic is difficult, long blocks west of Centinela with many west-bound cars headed to the freeway at Cloverfield, and with the median's coral trees and Expo Line west of Cloverfield. Pico is also narrower in Santa Monica. But switching from one-way to two-way would require a large connector street. Could Barrington do that? Bundy is already jammed.

The next step is more study and public process. Will we end up deciding to just synchronize signal timings in the dominant direction?