Quote:
Originally Posted by OhioGuy
^ I'm not sure of your understanding of the area, but the walk along Avenue of the Stars between Constellation and Santa Monica Blvd is actually on a hill. A station at Santa Monica Blvd would be next to a golf course where development is never going to occur and single family homes a little further west. Basically it would just be a station on the edge of a business area. Meanwhile placing the station at Avenue of the Stars puts the station in the middle of the business area and also places it much more conveniently in walking distance to denser residential development to the south of Olympic Blvd. I would assume a station at Constellation would provide a better opportunity to pick up more choice riders from the condos/apartments to the south of Olympic Blvd than from the presumably higher income single family homes to the northwest of a Santa Monica Blvd station.
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First, I will agree that if there is a bona fide higher risk from earthquakes at one site, then you have to go with the other. But here we are just talking about ridership estimates and getting the project done.
Hill? That may be a hill in Ohio, but not in LA. I would call it flat, but I suppose some rise could be discerned with the right tools.
Residential south of Olympic is not dense and is a non-factor. The station location makes zero difference on weekends since the stations are equally convenient for people going shopping; it is 1 block additional for the highrises south of Constellation. On the other side, you are one block closer to the shopping and hotels along Little SM (Peninsula, Beverly Hilton, and others proposed). Plus, you are on SM, which means more convenient to the SM buses, which are the only connection to north BH, WeHo, Hollywood, etc.
And, again, about a year ago MTA was accused of moving the station to make it closer to a building owned by a major contributor to the mayor and other local politicians. It promptely issued a statement indicating there was no economic difference to landholders between the two sites. Care to reconcile this with the huge ridership differences?
Remember that this is going to be by far the most heavily used transit in LA. The CC station location is really quite trivial as compared to the benefits of having it completed from downtown to the sea. Do you risk years of litigation over this?