Does anyone have any good information on when this line is supposed to really open? It seems to keep getting pushed back and back. At this rate, it will take longer to get this few miles of track into service than it took CP and UP to build their entire transcontinental line in the 1860's.
Check today's L.A. Times article.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-expo-problems-20111225,0,758848.story
Thank you. What a fiasco. If this were a private enterprise project, heads would have been rolling a long time ago.
081552 Check today's L.A. Times article. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-expo-problems-20111225,0,758848.story
Activated
In terms of California Public Works projects this has gone amazingly fast! Same for the Gold Line extension. I took them a decade to build the short Red Line Subway, this has been accomplished is a relativly short number of years, and while some may gaff at the price, consider that the Red Line subway extension to Santa Monica may cost a billion dollars a MILE.
Every time we build an extension to the light rail system, the above ground systems always go faster, cost less and are in operation far sooner that they can even plan and design the stupid subway system. We should NOT be building subways here, they don't make economic sense when we are so spread out and can go up and elevate the lines in most all places, we have great weather year round so its not like they are going to get snowbound or anything.
Have fun with your trains
vsmith In terms of California Public Works projects this has gone amazingly fast! Same for the Gold Line extension. I took them a decade to build the short Red Line Subway, this has been accomplished is a relativly short number of years, and while some may gaff at the price, consider that the Red Line subway extension to Santa Monica may cost a billion dollars a MILE. Every time we build an extension to the light rail system, the above ground systems always go faster, cost less and are in operation far sooner that they can even plan and design the stupid subway system. We should NOT be building subways here, they don't make economic sense when we are so spread out and can go up and elevate the lines in most all places, we have great weather year round so its not like they are going to get snowbound or anything.
I don't live in California (I'm a midwesterner), but I get out there with some frequency. I do, however, have a couple of observations from afar on the LA rail/subway transit system.
First, it takes the LA transit folks way too long to build anything. It's taken them far longer to build the relatively short Expo line than it took our forefathers to build the first transcontinental railroad hundreds of miles across the west in the 1860's - which is simply outrageous. It has similarly taken them much longer to build the Expo line - most of which is surface trackage - than it took Charles Yerkes to build the original north side 'L in Chicago at the turn of the last century - which involved much more trackage than the Expo line and was all on a fabricated steel aerial structure. With modern construction methods and technology, we should be able to build projects like the Expo line much faster than railroads and rail transit lines were built a century or more ago. Instead, we've gone backwards.
From a distance, it appears to me that a big reason for this that there are a whole boatload of state and local agencies in California that have jurisdiction over pieces of projects like this. To say that they don't pull together to get a project done is an understatement. Not only can't they get their acts together, but they seem to be in constant warfare with each other, and throwing monkey wrenches into a project is an accepted way to flex their muscles and protect their turfs. They all need some adult supervision, but apparently that's not in the cards. As usual, the taxpayers pay for this silliness. What a mess.
Second, I don't recall advocating subways over light rail in LA. To me, LA is a good example of how light rail can be every bit as good as a subway at a fraction of the cost. The Gold Line to Pasedena and the Green line are all fast operations - a subway wouldn't do any better from a service standpoint. The Blue line is too, once it's out of the streets at the end points. But LA also has an example of poorly planned light rail - the Gold Line extension to East Los Angeles. Except for a mile of subway and some low speed aerial trackage near Union Station, it's little more than a streetcar line in the median of arterial streets. An express bus line operating on reserved lanes in the medians would have done just as well and cost a lot less. It will be interesting to see where the Expo line falls on this spectrum.
The real issue I see with subway vs light rail in LA is the fact that they have both modes and they are incompatible with each other. The Red/Purple subway is a big city subway, with large 3rd rail equipment like Washington DC. But it has never reached its intended destinations and probably never will because of very high costs you mention. So it's an orphan in what is otherwise an expanding light rail network, and probably always will be. LA would have been better advised to use the same light rail technology on this line that they use on their other lines, even if it was all in a subway. It would have allowed more flexible routing options then they now have, and would have permitted the subway line to eventually be extended with cheaper, non-subway rail lines and technology. Interstingly, I understand that the Blue and Green light rail lines were once also incompatible with each other, because of differences in "back to back" wheel spacing and signalization. That, of course, makes no sense at all and demonstrates extraorinarily poor planning, but I think this may have been addressed.after the two lines had been in service a few years.
Those turn of the century rail projects didn't have to deal with Federal regulations, minimum wage' OSHA, NIMBYs and BANANAs. If you want to know why it costs so much and takes so long to build new projects the answer is right here:
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
Incompatibility of different types of equipment may not always be an issue. Consider the situation in Boston where MBTA has three different rapid transit lines and two light rail lines and each line has its own equipment.
The Boston incompatibility was a historical accident (ditto New York , with the incompatibility between the IRT lines and the rest of the rapid transit system). In LA, it was by dumb design.
Phoebe Vet Those turn of the century rail projects didn't have to deal with Federal regulations, minimum wage' OSHA, NIMBYs and BANANAs. If you want to know why it costs so much and takes so long to build new projects the answer is right here:
[quote user="Phoebe Vet"]
Duplicate post deleted.
Let me expand a little on my earlier observation on Phoebe Vet's very thorough and informative note.
The "Federal" delays mentioned in his note, while very significant, are generally all "pre-construction" delays. In other words, they are hoops that must be jumped through before funding is available and construction can even begin. What I see happening in LA is a whole bunch of "post construction" delays, which are imposed by disputes between various state and local governmental agencies. The recent dispute (and delay) about whether part of the line is in a "trench" or a "subway" is a good example.. This issue, if it'seven legitimate, should have come up a long time ago in the design phase (presumably, the plans for the "trench" or "subway" were available long before it was actually constructed) rather than on the eve of the line's opening. The fact that it has come up as a "showstopper" this late in the game indicates that some state agency is throwing its weight around trying to show how important it is.
If not Federal regulations, then it'll just be somebody else's...
When comparing the time it took to build the US transcontinental railroad, we forget that the construction time was preceded by many years of planning and legislative activity. The idea was floated in the 1840's, some surveys were done in the 1850's...but we only remember the grading & track laying done in the 1860's. From one extreme to the other, one could say it took 25 years.
The transcontininetal railroad wasn't a serious project until the 1860's when a route was actually chosen. But, in any event. my comparison had to do with the time from when construction commenced until the line was opened. By this measure, than Expo Line construction has taken longer than the transcon line in the 1860's (even though it is only a small fraction of the length), and much longer than the Northwestern Elevated in Chicago at the turn of the last century (roughly similar in length to the Expo line, but with far more complicated construction).
Sometime In May is the estimated date. Fortunately, it will be the entire line opened all the way to Culver City rather than 7th Street to La Cienega.
vsmith We should NOT be building subways here, they don't make economic sense when we are so spread out and can go up and elevate the lines in most all places, we have great weather year round so its not like they are going to get snowbound or anything.
We should NOT be building subways here, they don't make economic sense when we are so spread out and can go up and elevate the lines in most all places, we have great weather year round so its not like they are going to get snowbound or anything.
There are certain places in Los Angeles that are densely populated, and building at-grade or elevated won't make much sense. Would you rather your house be taken over by eminent domain, or would you rather them build a subway line 70 feet below the ground, out of sight, out of mind? Projects like the Regional Connector, which ties together the four light rail routes (Gold Line Pasadena, Gold Line Eastside, Blue Line and Expo Line) HAS to be built under Downtown Los Angeles. In fact the businesses demanded it be built underground so as not to interfere with street traffic.
You're right about the weather...people wouldn't want an elevated structure to block their sunlight. Also, subways are actually safer than elevated structures during earthquakes.
Falcon48 The Boston incompatibility was a historical accident (ditto New York , with the incompatibility between the IRT lines and the rest of the rapid transit system). In LA, it was by dumb design.
no, you are incorrect. The Red Line was originally planned by the Southern California Rapid Transit District (RTD) in the 1970s to create a BART-like system in Los Angeles county. At the time, "light rail" as we know it did not exist yet. Problem was, before 1980 there was a lack of political will and funding to build it, which is one of the reasons it took a long time to get built.
There was a separate transit agency in LA county called the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (LACTC) that was largely an administrative and planning agency (the RTD dealt in actual operations). After the San Diego Trolley opened in the early '80s, LA County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn took a group of dignitaries to the top of L.A. City Hall, pointed to the southeast and told them that a trolley-like system can be built in just a couple years all the way to Long Beach.
So the LACTC started to build the Blue Line. They also planned the Green Line in the middle of the 105 Freeway.
In 1990, just before the new light rail line to Long Beach was completed, the RTD and LACTC decided to put their train lines together and form one Metro Rail system with color-designated routes. The RTD's corporate color was Red, so their subway became the Red Line. The LACTC's corporate color was blue, so their Long Beach LRT became The Blue Line. Freeway signage is green, so they named their east-west freeway LRT line the Green Line.
In 1993, right after the Red Line finally opened, the RTD and LACTC formally merged together into the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, now called Metro.
It wasn't "dumb design" but the legacy nature of different rail lines created by what was then different agencies, very similar to NYC's three legacy subway systems.
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