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Old Posted Mar 12, 2012, 1:04 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pesto View Post
Not picking a fight but this leaves a few questions unexplained. Why would you link South Bay to the only part of central LA that is not a business hub? First you would link to DT or Century City or Beverly Hills, or Beverly Center or Westwood or SM. But instead of building on the 405 or up Vermont, they chose a low-usage, no highrise, no density corridor. Traffic moves easily on Crenshaw even at rush hours and there are buses that are not overly crowded. And as mentioned, it doesn't hit the airport or major employers in the South Bay, except in the sense that employers could get shuttle buses to go to the stops IF there were anyone on the trains that worked there.

I don't think anyone doubts that this was political, just like the Foothill Extension. And, like it or not, boondoggles are used by opponents to beat on proponents of legitimate, valuable projects.

The Gold Line is doing OK (not as well as I and many others had hope), but it is hardly comparable since it actually goes to central Pasadena, which is a significant employer, shopping and entertainment center.
The other side of that coin is why build rail for people that don't currently even use the transit that they have? Why not build it where transit usage is already high if you want the line to be successful? I think that lines to the west will be well used, if for no other reason that people from the south and east will be using them. I also think that people from the west will use them, but that's a little harder to prove because they don't use transit much right now.

And I think that you underestimate Crenshaw both as a destination and as a destination among people that use transit. I have every confidence that Crenshaw will have better ridership than Metro's current rider/mile average for light rail.
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