Randall,
I agree in the area that you live. The Long Beach Extension is the busiest
and the only one that is currently packed in the morning and afternoon.
This is great if you work due north from Long Beach, or somewhere on the 105
(the E-W connector).
Don't get me wrong, I am the greatest advocate of mass transit (having
derived income from (and traveled) MBTA (Boston), NYCTA (ny), MARTA (Atl),
WMATA (DC), and almost every other system), but when I moved here a year
ago, that was the attitude that seemed to prevail when I mentioned the idea
to locals. The system would be fantastic to implement, however we have some
problems. The original right of ways were sold many years ago (long sordid
story - by Standard Oil and Goodyear I believe) and you know how expensive
land is in SoCal. We have that little seismic problem that makes tunneling
very expensive and dangerous. Overhead rail may be the way to go, much like
a monorail system. Although I do tunnel ventilation.. so not very
profitable personally, but on the whole a monorail has: very little land
use, concrete workers (lots o those around here) seismically can be built
without too much difficulty, electric, relatively quiet.
Anyway,
<soap box mode> off
<usually comical mode> on
Ed
-----Original Message-----
From: Randall Young [mailto:ryoung@NAVCOMTECH.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 11:29 AM
To: [unknown]
Subject: RE: Coming down
I respectfully disagree on both counts. I live near LA (nearer Long Beach,
actually), and from what I see, people have embraced decent mass transit
quite well. In fact, there was an article in the LA paper a year or so ago,
about how Metrolink (our new 'light rail' system) needed more money because
the ridership was so much higher than projected ! (Subsidy funds are fixed,
not per-rider.)
And, if we had mass transit like what I rode in the Netherlands, I think
many, if not most, commuters would use it. Local electric trams, with lines
and stops spaced so you never have to walk more than a few blocks (probably
closer than the nearest parking space !) in urban and suburban areas, plus
high speed trains for longer distance travel. For almost any common origin
and destination, you can get there faster by mass transit than by driving a
car ! No parking hassles, no tickets to worry about, no fuel to buy ... and
my wife talked for years afterwards about how safe and clean they were.
Unfortunately, I don't see any practical way to duplicate the Dutch system
here. Maybe when fuel is $10/gallon ...
Randall
Ed Quinn wrote :
>
> The feeling in Los Angeles is
> " If they put in mass transit, then I can drive my car to work cause less
> people will be on the road"
> Ed
>
Phil Ethier wrote :
>
> Nope. Mass transit has a negligible effect in getting automobiles off the
> road.
> If you want to get cars off the road, you need to give folks an
> alternative
> that has many of the advantages of cars: Security, convenience, speed.
> Mass
> transit can't do that.
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