Los Angeles MTA

[Elsongs]

Originally Posted by slipperydog

Azusa to Long Beach. East LA to Santa Monica. One transfer from SM to Pasadena.

A friend of mine who works for Metro Rail Operations tells me there's the possibility of special rush-hour direct service between Santa Monica and Azusa when the Regional Connector is done.

[Elsongs]

The Expo Line opening on Saturday was a great day. I got off at the Expo Park/USC station after boarding at 7/MC. It was special for me since I have been waiting 20 years to ride a train to USC!

I was the first person to write about an Exposition line in the USC campus newspaper 20 years ago:

http://elsongeles.elsongs.com/?p=1303

[pesto]

Originally Posted by Elsongs

The Expo Line opening on Saturday was a great day. I got off at the Expo Park/USC station after boarding at 7/MC. It was special for me since I have been waiting 20 years to ride a train to USC!

I was the first person to write about an Exposition line in the USC campus newspaper 20 years ago:

http://elsongeles.elsongs.com/?p=1303

Ahead of your time. Way ahead as it turns out.

[dachacon]

With the Opening of the Expo line Phase I, and Phase II for both the Expo Line and Goldline's under construction, I was looking at the Metro Long Range Plan

http://www.metro.net/projects_studie...-2009-LRTP.pdf

With 2 projects down(soon to be 3 the Orange line) and 3 under Construction and another 2 starting Construction next year, I say its time to start updating the long term plan. If you look at page 31 Figure O, there is a unfunded project list, including the Vermont Subway, and the Yellow Line from Downtown to Glendale.
If Measure R, is permanently renewed, then these projects can finally be taken off the drawing board and on a serious timetable.

[klamedia]

Rode Expo Monday morning. The stretch between 7th and its ROW is unfortunately problematic. Psychologically it feels long and to see cars with one person turning in front of this billion $$ investment is shameful. If Metro really wants to capture "discretionary" riders this needs to be fixed. Repeat: This problem needs to be fixed. This is a deal breaker.

[pesto]

I agree. If the idea is to lure people who have options on how to get somewhere, this is not good. Delays on transit are psychologically deadly.

[Elsongs]

Originally Posted by klamedia

Rode Expo Monday morning. The stretch between 7th and its ROW is unfortunately problematic. Psychologically it feels long and to see cars with one person turning in front of this billion $$ investment is shameful. If Metro really wants to capture "discretionary" riders this needs to be fixed. Repeat: This problem needs to be fixed. This is a deal breaker.

FWIW, they are running 3-car trains on this line, so the passengers are spread out among these cars. The Blue Line ran with 2-car trains until around 2001 or so.

Besides, give it some time, the kinks WILL be worked out. They were able to shave 5 or 6 minutes from the Union Station-Pasadena Gold Line since it first opened in 2003.

[milquetoast]

LACKLUSTER EXPO LINE REFLECTS METRO'S WEAK GRASP OF DESIGN

FROM DATED, AND ALMOST USELESS CANOPIES TO THE JARRING STRETCH OF BRICK NEAR USC,

THE EXPO LINE IS AN ARCHITECTURAL MIX OF GOALS THAT NEVER FULLY MESHES INTO ONE UNIFYING CONCEPT

This is getting to be a pattern. Every time a major rail line opens in Los Angeles, my reaction tends to unfold in two distinct parts: excitement tempered pretty quickly by a sense of disappointment, of opportunities missed.

The $930-million Expo Line is the latest example.

The excitement flows from the way new transit lines are remaking — genuinely, thoroughly remaking — the civic, cultural and architectural map of Los Angeles. Running south and then bending west from downtown, skirting the campuses of L.A. Trade Tech and USC before reaching the corner of Jefferson and La Cienega boulevards, the Expo Line's first phase, with its eight stops, has brought the city's light-rail network to the doorstep of the dense Westside.

When two more stations open over the summer, the line will cover a total of 8.6 miles. It will add Culver City, incubator in recent years of art galleries and ambitious restaurants, to a light-rail and subway system that already ranges north to the San Fernando Valley, south to Long Beach and east to Sierra Madre. A final phase will extend the Expo Line west to Santa Monica by 2015 or early 2016, delivering riders within a few blocks of the beach.

The architecture of the new stations, unfortunately, is not just weak but somehow aggressively banal.

If that strikes you as a contradiction in terms, you're right. The stations seemingly want to disappear into the cityscape and at the same time assert a Big Metaphorical Idea about what public transit means for Los Angeles. And in trying to do both, of course, they do neither.

Designed primarily by Roland Genick, chief architect for rail and transit systems at Parsons, the huge Pasadena-based construction conglomerate, the new stations are topped by undulating light-blue canopies of perforated metal panels that are not only dated — bringing a public-art project from the early 1990s to mind — but provide almost no shade or rain protection. Or solar power, for that matter, though from certain angles the stations look a bit like they're covered with photovoltaic panels.

The canopies are meant to suggest a woven pattern, symbolic of the way new Metro routes, and the Expo Line in particular, are knitting parts of the city together. (Their design is a modified version of an idea first developed by L.A. artist Cliff Garten in 2004.) Gruen Associates and Miyamoto International also contributed to station design, along with Jorge J. Pardo, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's director of creative services.

In concept, the weaving idea is perfectly inoffensive. In execution, it has grown into a sort of ornamental kudzu. It overwhelms the rest of the station architecture, which is generally understated, even minimalist, and the impressive landscape design (also, according to Genick, handled by Parsons) that helps connect the line to the surrounding city.

In fact, with the exception of the stretch where the line runs near USC — and more on that later — the Expo Line almost melts into the neighborhoods it cuts through, maintaining a low-slung profile. Three stations near the western end of the line's first phase are elevated, but the others, at street level, are split in half as they straddle major intersections. It's as if each stop is two miniature stations.

That modest scale is a concession to the density of many neighborhoods the new line runs through. But it's also an effective design gesture, a reminder that many of the most impressive stations in the Metro rail network — think of the Mission stop on the Gold Line — are also the simplest.

The crux of the problem is that Metro never managed to clarify its architectural goals for the Expo Line. A sleek, restrained design strategy, focusing on details and stressing above all a seamless transition from station to neighborhood, might have worked here. So might a more ambitious, design-first kind of architecture.

To be fair, the new stations represent a modest improvement over those on the 2009 Gold Line extension. They're appreciably better than the underground stations on the Red Line, which started service in 1993. Metro has finally abandoned the idea that every rail station ought to be uniquely designed to reflect the demographics of the immediate neighborhood. That approach, employed on the Gold and Red lines, was a misstep architecturally and a disaster in terms of maintenance, since each station has to be cleaned differently, its materials aging and breaking down at a different pace.

But saying that the new stations aren't quite as bad as the older ones isn't saying much at all. When it comes to architecture, Metro has set a very low bar.

As I wrote last week about its new master-planning effort for the area around Union Station, Metro seems to be facing an internal divide about how enthusiastically it wants to pursue strong architecture. Its decision to present so-called Vision Boards showing Union Station as it might exist in 2050 was a way, essentially, to postpone that argument, to exile adventurous architecture to a far-off, futuristic world.

Thanks to the Measure R tax hike, however, Metro stands to be the most important patron of public architecture and urban design in Southern California for the next 10 or even 20 years. That's why the middling design of the stations is more than a minor issue: because Metro has become and will continue to be a major force in shaping the public identity of 21st century Los Angeles.

As it plans future stations, Metro should begin pairing transit specialists like Parsons with architects who can bring a new level of sophistication to the task. That would be a first step in banishing for good the idea that impressive station architecture is a luxury that Metro — and by extension L.A. — can't afford. If Metro had used a single highly ambitious design template for the Red and Gold lines, after all, it would have saved money and improved the level of architecture.

The bigger obstacles, frankly, seem to be bureaucracy and control. Metro makes it tough for smaller firms to get a crack at its contracts, and worries not so much that talented architects are expensive, though that is an issue, but that they will prove insufficiently pliable or willing to compromise their designs.

Speaking of which, it's time for Metro to show some backbone of its own when it comes to urban design. For nearly all its length, the Expo Line — thanks again to the 2004 Garten plan — is conceived as a "transit parkway." Thickly planted but drought-tolerant landscaping provides the ground cover. Flowering vines grow up and over restrained green fencing. A bike lane runs parallel to the tracks along much of the line.

The idea has its roots in concepts laid out in "Parks, Playgrounds and Beaches for the Los Angeles Region," a 1930 plan by the landscape firms Olmsted Bros. and Harland Bartholomew that was famously never executed.

But USC officials, Genick told me, pushed Metro to change the design along the edge of campus. In those sections the drought-tolerant plants are replaced by stretches of lawn, the fencing is black and more prominent and is accompanied by long stretches of red brick.

The brick is largely an attempt to satisfy USC's interest in having the new line, as it runs near the campus, match the architecture of the university. But the change undermines the coherence and design personality of the line as a whole, exchanging the subtleties of the parkway design for something a lot more lumbering and conspicuous. And it comes at a point in the line that is otherwise one of the most thrilling, with its close-up views of Exposition Park and the Natural History Museum's newly expanded garden.

When you consider the light-blue canopies and the brick as elements of a common design strategy, or at least of a single bureaucratic personality, a dispiriting portrait of Metro emerges.

It shows a transit agency still very much adrift when it comes to architecture and design — both in terms of the stations it commissions and the concessions it's willing to make. christopher.hawthorne@latimes.com

CHRISTOPHER HAWTHORNE, ARCHITECTURE CRITIC

LOS ANGELES TIMES

[pesto]

Hawthorne is pretty much dead on target. These are pretty much the same station design criticisms I had so I won't repeat them. The real problem here is that MTA is just incompetent to the task. Architecturally, design-wise, hiring of contractors, handling PR, relations to communities, etc. They don't even blink at failing to open on time; that's expected. The basic blocking and tackling seems to be well beyond them.

I do disagree with the criticisms of the Red Line; the stations may require more maintenance but so does St. Peter's and the Chrysler Building. Money well spent.

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Originally Posted by pesto

Hawthorne is pretty much dead on target. These are pretty much the same station design criticisms I had so I won't repeat them. The real problem here is that MTA is just incompetent to the task. Architecturally, design-wise, hiring of contractors, handling PR, relations to communities, etc. They don't even blink at failing to open on time; that's expected. The basic blocking and tackling seems to be well beyond them.

I do disagree with the criticisms of the Red Line; the stations may require more maintenance but so does St. Peter's and the Chrysler Building. Money well spent.

i haven't been on the expo line yet, but from a distance, i have to agree as well.

I also had the same reservations regarding his red line criticism. Most of them are fantastic

[pesto]

The good news is that the design and look are very much secondary (at least for me). If the Expo runs on time I can forgive a lot. Hopefully the kinks will be worked out by the time I ride it.

[croyboy]

rode it this past weekend and i just hate that it stops at stations or intersections for minutes at a time.. it took us 26 minutes to reach jefferson/la cienega from 7th/metro center, but it took nearly an hour to get back downtown. waited at 2 intersections for the entire length of the red lights and waited at 2 stations for nearly 10 minutes each. they need to trench the line or give it full right-of-way.. no reason 500+ riders need to wait for 50 drivers

[milquetoast]

Originally Posted by pesto

I do disagree with the criticisms of the Red Line; the stations may require more maintenance but so does St. Peter's and the Chrysler Building. Money well spent.

I concureth.
That's the only problem I had when reading that article.
The rest I don't know about, but those stations seem to
me to be a subject of pride. Each one different.
And rightfully so.

[milquetoast]

Originally Posted by croyboy

waited at 2 intersections for the entire length of the red lights ...

That's what I don't like about "at grade".

[klamedia]

Originally Posted by Elsongs

FWIW, they are running 3-car trains on this line, so the passengers are spread out among these cars. The Blue Line ran with 2-car trains until around 2001 or so.

Besides, give it some time, the kinks WILL be worked out. They were able to shave 5 or 6 minutes from the Union Station-Pasadena Gold Line since it first opened in 2003.

I think we're nearing the potential tipping point in LA with the robust growth of Downtown and the revitalization of inner core neighborhoods like Koreatown, Silver Lake and East Hollywood where residents may forego the auto because of the transit rich nature of the area.

With more bikes on the road taking advantage of streets that have lanes and even those that do not e.g. Fountain more and more people will forego the auto in my assumption, for short trips. Right in the Sunset Junction area of Silver Lake a Yummy grocery is opening with no addt'l parking, a small footprint store that encourages walking and their now famous delivery service to local dwellers. It is imperative that the MTA provides transit service that we've spent billions on that is a TRUE upgrade from what we've had in the past, in its entirety.

We can't have a train where the first 2 miles are slow and the last 6 miles are fast. That = the train is slow. I'd rather suspend all build out projects and spend the money on upgrading the weak points in the system that hurt the system overall like this portion of Expo and problematic areas on the Blue Line.

Perhaps when the Blue Line was the first LRT in the county these slow sections could be forgiven. Even by the time the Gold Line came on board we may have begrudgingly tolerated the slowed portion at Marmion Way a) it is very short b) the line overall is pretty much grade separated or on its exclusive ROW therefore unhindered. But after 22 years of operating and building trains the MTA should know better not to run a train at grade without definite signal preemption. Getting the public excited about Expo and then dashing that excitement with stop lights and allowing cars with single passengers turn left before the train proceeds will assure that we will be stuck with a very expensive yet neutered system. This is unacceptable!

[pesto]

Originally Posted by klamedia

I think we're nearing the potential tipping point in LA with the robust growth of Downtown and the revitalization of inner core neighborhoods like Koreatown, Silver Lake and East Hollywood where residents may forego the auto because of the transit rich nature of the area.

With more bikes on the road taking advantage of streets that have lanes and even those that do not e.g. Fountain more and more people will forego the auto in my assumption, for short trips. Right in the Sunset Junction area of Silver Lake a Yummy grocery is opening with no addt'l parking, a small footprint store that encourages walking and their now famous delivery service to local dwellers. It is imperative that the MTA provides transit service that we've spent billions on that is a TRUE upgrade from what we've had in the past, in its entirety.

We can't have a train where the first 2 miles are slow and the last 6 miles are fast. That = the train is slow. I'd rather suspend all build out projects and spend the money on upgrading the weak points in the system that hurt the system overall like this portion of Expo and problematic areas on the Blue Line.

Perhaps when the Blue Line was the first LRT in the county these slow sections could be forgiven. Even by the time the Gold Line came on board we may have begrudgingly tolerated the slowed portion at Marmion Way a) it is very short b) the line overall is pretty much grade separated or on its exclusive ROW therefore unhindered. But after 22 years of operating and building trains the MTA should know better not to run a train at grade without definite signal preemption. Getting the public excited about Expo and then dashing that excitement with stop lights and allowing cars with single passengers turn left before the train proceeds will assure that we will be stuck with a very expensive yet neutered system. This is unacceptable!

I completely agree with the attitude and with most of the details.

Although I prefer faster, I can forgive Expo for being slow; it's in an area that is either high density or has high potential for it. I never expected many people to use the full length, because that really is slow.

But there is no excuse for the money wasted on Foothill and Crenshaw, which will be forever slow and never dense. They will act as a huge weapon for those opposing more transit. I only hope that the Purple is far enough along so that it isn't killed by those projects.

[klamedia]

Foothill has the political will behind it and it never will be pointed to as a failure because its backers (politicians and residents alike) have fought for that train. Many of those Foothill cities are planning dense developments around the coming line and I believe a few of those local jurisdictions have even gone so far as to alter their General Plan along the line.

That said, Crenshaw (depending the end result) could be pointed to as a boondoggle. At this point since it has already reached into the billions we should just go ahead and grade separate all the sections that the neighborhood is asking. I can only hope that because of the success of the Red Line subway that the general consensus will be "we need to grade separate our lines" not " we need to stop building lines altogether".

I believe that of now since we do have a working rail transit system the average person will be able to point to the successes in the line and differentiate that from the failures. Also with the new populations coming into Downtown LA and inner core areas the consensus most likely will not be to 'stop all rail building'. I mean, AEG is basing its EIR on the availability of transit so we've definitely turned a corner.

The street running is problematic and obvious because of the amount of discretionary riders who take or are open to taking the train. Also because of Downtown's suburban parking minimums and oversupply of parking the train is put at a disadvantage to the car. Until we begin to rid ourselves of required parking minimums and we have a train(s) that is perceived as slow, public mass transit will lose.

To highlight how much of a problem this REALLY is, here is Expo Auth. head Thorpe explaining to County Sup Zev about why the trains are slow on the street?

http://physics.usc.edu/Undergraduate...2012_05_03.mp3

[saiholmes]

Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

New line, new choices
First-day riders envision using Expo rail for various purposes
April 29, 2012|Ari Bloomekatz
Los Angeles Times

For some, the opening of the Expo light rail line means an easier commute to work or school. For others, it's a chance to ride mass transit to Staples Center or to visit the museums in Exposition Park.

But for Ayanna White, a 31-year-old mother of four, including 3-year-old twin boys, the new rail line could give her something precious -- an extra hour of sleep each morning.

Read More: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr...-line-20120429

[Wright Concept]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

i haven't been on the expo line yet, but from a distance, i have to agree as well.

I also had the same reservations regarding his red line criticism. Most of them are fantastic

Hawthorne for my tastes isn't a good architecture critic because he never conveys in his writing that he's actually inside or on the surface of the structures he's commenting on. Sort of like an armchair quarterback. Also in this piece he's talking out of both sides of his mouth because if Expo Line had the Gold Line canopies he'd critique that they're just faceless and have no connection with the neighborhood fabric.

Originally Posted by pesto

The good news is that the design and look are very much secondary (at least for me). If the Expo runs on time I can forgive a lot. Hopefully the kinks will be worked out by the time I ride it.

As for Expo Line there are still a few spots such as the Adams and 28th Street signals, however to not have to fight driving this stretch day in and day out makes it worth it and if this 2 mile section has stops about every 1/2 mile speed will take a back seat anyways. Reliability is more important then trip speed when it comes most transit trips.

Originally Posted by klamedia

... At this point since it has already reached into the billions we should just go ahead and grade separate all the sections that the neighborhood is asking. I can only hope that because of the success of the Red Line subway that the general consensus will be "we need to grade separate our lines" not " we need to stop building lines altogether".

Or the consensus should be that "We need to build more transit lines"

[State of the Union]

Maybe I just don't have the eye for architecture, but I've never had an issue with any of LA's Metro Rail Stations.

I don't know how this Hawthorne guy can argue against stations like Hollywood/Vine or Mariachi Plaza. I think the Expo Designs are original and look great, certainly better than other plain looking LRT/HRT systems I've seen around the country.

Seattle's Central Light Rail stations are pretty plain looking.

Also, arguing maintainence costs of these stations when LA Metro is one of few largest agencies that still have a balance budget, yet still having the lowest fares in the country, is moot. More than I can say for NYC's MTA or Boston's MBTA, which are flat broke.