Again About Transit

My old apartment was half a mile from the Hollywood/Western station. My new house is over one and a half miles from the Vermont/Beverly station. Too far to walk for a typical commute, but I will not be unfazed.  For my commute to Culver City, I have my husband drive me to the station, or I take a Metro Rapid bus down Western avenue to connect with the Expo Line.

The Vermont/Beverly station is landscaped with drought-resistant desert plants along a walkway that runs behind the escalators that descend to the subway. It's got steps and levels and foot traffic flows easily through.

1993 Artist's rendering depicting the entrance of the Red Line station at Vermont and Beverly

Vermont/Beverly entrance 2013. The landscaping is very close to the artist rendering above.

Now, let's look at Hollywood/Western:

1993 artist's rendering depicting the entrance of the Red Line station at Hollywood and Western.

Hollywood/Western 2013

Comparing the artist's renderings for Hollywood/Western to how it turned out, it is hard to imagine how things went so wrong. Tiles and stone beneath a terribly dated low-income housing project. Despite the attempt at color and design, the corner is bleak as compared to the life (as in, plants, actual, breathing life) at Vermont/Beverly. Of course, the artist's rendering shows no housing unit, which is a necessity for the area, but how on earth did the actual development turn out to be so, so ugly?

Back to the bus, Metro Rapid 757 stops at the south-west corner of Melrose and Western, in front of a gas station. It is not a pretty corner. It is trash littered and hot. The bus is always crowded, standing room only, but it's a core-strengthening, balance-challenging kind of standing. I can count it as part of my exercise routine.

Nearly five years ago, when I used to take the train downtown to my job at The Unusual Suspects Theatre Company on Olive Street, I was often the only business-class person on the train, and it was never crowded. The majority of riders were families (lots of non-car-owning moms with their babies) or workers of the non-office sort, judging by apparel. No suits and ties, I mean. Sprinkled lightly within the crowd would be one or two FIDM students in their artsy, stylist get-ups.

Today, the ridership has greatly increased, and there are often no available seats on the red line (the expo line is still gaining riders, and finding a seat is never a problem).  The most marked difference between now and five years ago are the number of suits on the train. Professionals are commuting downtown by Metro.

Five years ago, there were fewer companies operating out of downtown.  Many companies didn't think it was a desirable place to be. With the revitalization of Downtown, came a shifted perception, and it became a cool place to be. "You work Downtown? Bleh," became "Wow, you work Downtown? How hip."

Gas prices have driven people out of their cars and onto their feet, and has also driven them into neighborhoods near metro stations.  This shift was fairly predictable.  After a few decades of people wanting space and isolation as well as city salaries, rising gas prices and recessions turned their desires from the suburbs to city centers  - where to get groceries or go to the movies or get drinks with a friend, all you have to do is walk out your front door.

The Metro Rapid ridership is still comprised of the demographic on the train five years ago. I don't know why the business class isn't on the bus. I wonder if it's because the street atmosphere of my particular nook of East Hollywood (Western Avenue) just isn't pretty.  Urban design and aesthetics go a long way to get people of all sorts onto transit - those who need it because they don't have a car, as well as those who have the privilege to choose to not get in their cars. Maybe it's the jostling. A crowded bus does cause a person to jostle, especially when it's charging down Western Avenue.

I know I write about public transit a lot.  That's because I'm on it a lot. And I'm on it a lot because it's a far better way to get around a city, to plan a city, to design a city, than by car.

The Exercise of Meandering

I wrote about walking recently, and it's been on my mind a lot. On my mind, because it isn't in my life as much as is necessary to not think about it.

Some years ago, I would alter my after-work journey home with the errands I wanted to run.  I'd zing down the 6 to hit up The Strand Book Store, and then wile away the last hour of dusk in Union Square Park or window shop along 5th Avenue before hopping on the L train home. I'd walk over to Central Park to pick up a new read at the used book stand on Central Park South, and then take the F to 42nd Street and wander over to Grand Central Market to pick up a little gourmet something for dinner.  Or I'd take the F to West 4th and grab a cocktail at Do Hwa and then indulge in a cupcake at Magnolia ($1.25 at the time seemed extravagant), before moseying around the West Village until I was ready to go home.

I guess it's both walking and public transit I'm talking about: the foot-to-ground, visceral connection to a city, literally mapping your community with the soles of your feet, public transit serving as a means to speed up the journey while keeping you contained in an area only as big as yourself (you get in a car and you're twenty times your regular size, requiring a lot more space and energy).

I got tired of being underground so much, though, especially when I lived in Brooklyn. In Manhattan, I could walk or bike everywhere, the train simply being the quicker option.  In Brooklyn, the train was my only option (I'm not a gung-ho bicyclist, and was never prone to riding over bridges, nor was I near enough any of the bridges for this to be an efficient mode of transit).

In LA, I am above ground, and I see a lot of sunlight and trees, which is an improvement over the dripping concrete ceilings and rusted pipes of NYC subway stations.  However, I'm always just where I am, or going there, usually in my car.  I'm never meandering. Oh, to meander. I miss it so.  I regularly attempt it, often spending my lunch breaks wandering around the Hollywood and Vine area. It's a fascinating stroll of opposites - urban and suburban, industrial and corporate - but it has no parks. Nowhere to sit, reflect, absorb. When I get back to my office, my legs are very tired, my shoulders browned by the sun, my forehead flecked with sweat.

Walking in LA. It's an exercise, in more ways than one.

A Vision of Future Weekends

The weekend greets me with yellow sunlight splashing through my eastern facing windows.  It's, as always, a beautiful day out there, and I envision, along with my lazy morning, a slow few days of late brunches, leisurely wandering, people watching, window shopping, coffee dates.

This perfect weekend, however, doesn't quite exist in Los Angeles.  I know, because I've lived it elsewhere, but never here.  Here, it is just a vision, a dream, and to become reality it requires one thing: mass transit.  A thorough system that can facilitate a weekend of strolling about, exploring new and familiar areas, being a loiterer, a consumer, ending each day with the slight but envigorating fatigue that comes with experiencing a city on foot.

As it is, I must amend my vision to include hours of sitting within the confines of my car.

Imagine the possibilities if the following were real:

Some brilliant mind (specifically Numan Parada, an L.A.-area mapmaker) drafted this wishful map of what LA Metro could be. That is, a system for actually getting people around and about. Not just sort of, but really.  A system that everyone would depend on (let alone, know about - I live near the Hollywood/Western red line station and when mentioning this fact, I have, on more than one occasion received the response from fellow Angelenos, "There's a subway in LA?").

Let's compare, shall we? Here is the actual state of LA Metro:

Five lines (the orange one is a bus line and rather ineffective one at that - I know, because I've ridden it) serving none of the most visited areas of LA.  See that white space between the green and orange lines?  There lie the neighborhoods you want to visit - that is, Hollywood, West Hollywood, West LA, Culver City, Venice, Marina Del Mar, Brentwood, Westwood, Santa Monica, Malibu, Pacific Palisades.  How do you get to those neighborhoods? You drive. That is, if sitting in traffic can be called driving.

There are people and organizations in LA working toward building a campaign for more extensive metro.  And, of course, there are people and organizations in LA opposing these campaigns.  Their arguments against investing in rail consist of the amount of money it would take (potentially billions of dollars), the 'antiquated' technology of rail, the hazards of digging tunnels in an earthquake zone (does nobody remember the collapsed freeways of 1989) or in the dry desert.

Well, somehow, Moscow did it:

In the planning of the Moscow metro, the results of a 1931 geological survey showed that:

"the nature of the soil would make tunnelling particularly difficult because it consisted of sands saturated with water and dry sands, strata of different clays which permeated with cracked water-bearing and massive limestone, old washouts and quicksand. Many underground rivers were discovered. During the construction of the tunnel section between Sokolniki and Okhotny Ryad alone the miners had to cross four water flows." - see The History of the Moscow Metro.

Yet, despite the dangers and hazards, and seemingly prohibitive cost (metro projects were repeatedly dismissed for three decades due to high cost), the thing got made.  And it's one of the world's most thorough and effective rapid transit systems (I know, because I've ridden it).

Los Angeles Metro Regional Connector

I am a fan of public transportation, but particularly of public transportation that works.  For it to work, it needs to be efficient, timely, and expansive - that is, it needs to cover the majority of a city, so that folks of all demographics, from all areas and neighborhoods, can have easy access.

I, then, was excited to hear a KPCC interview with Damien Newton of LA Streets Blog about the Regional Connector.  That's a proposed mass-transit rail project to create a new metro corridor through Downtown.  The corridor will connect all of the LA-area metro lines.  Imagine being able to get from the South Bay to Little Tokyo or Hollywood with only one transfer.  Beautiful.  

From the interview, it sounded like the Community Connector Coalition has been at work on this proposal for a number of years, conducting environmental impact reviews, community surveys, etc. etc.  However, just last month, Eli Broad, an LA-philanthropist with lots of money and tons of influence, wrote them a letter proposing that they make adjustments to the routes and/or stations at Bunker Hill, Little Tokyo, and Broadway Civic Center.

The letter states that the Coalition's main concern is Bunker Hill.  They propose moving the planned station from the current location below Bunker Hill to the top of Bunker Hill.  The primary argument is that pedestrians will have to walk up the hill to get to the cultural institutions that sit atop it.  However, it's pretty clear that the real, underlying argument is that a station at the top of Bunker Hill will empty out  right near the steps of Eli Broad's soon-to-be-built contemporary art museum.  How convenient.

Broad's influence is such that his letter has put the project into the public eye, in a way it wasn't before,  and people are inclined to agree with Broad simply because of who he is and how much money he has.  However, moving the station is no easy feat.  The coalition will have to re-do all the ground-work and research that they put into determining the original proposed location, and this could set the project back by another five years or more.

I admit, I have a lot more research to do on this project in order to feel fully informed.  But here is my immediate reaction: the top of Bunker Hill is all that many people know of downtown.  Angelenos who don't live or work downtown know little of the wonders that exist below the hill.  Grand Central Market, the historic theatres of Broadway, the numerous bars and restaurants and musical venues, as well as the discount shopping options that many low-income families frequent.  And let's not forget those that do live Downtown - it's a very diverse area, demographically speaking.  Eli Broad is concerned about patrons to his museum having to walk up the hill to access his museum - but what about the 40,000+ residents of Downtown LA who will have to walk up the hill to access the transit station at his proposed location?

Listen to the interview with Damien Newton here.

Read Eli Broad's letter here.

I want our local transit to grow, and to work, and I'm glad that our city has people like Mr. Newton leading the way.