Many people assume I am talking about the pedestrian running into the train when I talk about rail safety. These people don't take the train or the bus to go to work.
The reason why the train needs to have safe guards is because of cars. If the train isn't very obvious to cars, especially early in the morning and at night, cars will run into it and people will die. Luckily no one died this weekend.
Two people suffered minor injuries this evening when their car collided with a Gold Line Metro train in East Los Angeles, authorities said.
The car turned in front of the eastbound train at a crossing near 3rd Street and Rowan Avenue about 8:20 p.m., said Sheriff’s Lt. Greg Hinkle. The two occupants of the car complained of pain and were taken to a hospital, he said.
A California Highway Patrol officer said the pair were riding in a Chevy Malibu, which was towed after the crash.
The one passenger on the train was uninjured.
-- Jack Leonard
This is not about I told you so, this is about people and my questions as to why certain people in LA are treated differently than others.
Browne Molyneux
h/t LA Eastside
Sorry Browne, but this is one I disagree with you on. Light rail in street running is a proven, safe technology used all over the world to great effect (including right here in California, in San Francisco, San Jose and Sacramento), and the ridership projections on this line (the recent ones) don't seem to warrant full grade separation, as you seem to advocate.
Cars running in to trains isn't about unsafe trains or politics, it's about car drivers who don't notice the several-ton train. It's about inattention and poor driving. Yes, some people are probably going to get hurt by this line- that's not the fault of Metro, it's the fault of lousy drivers.
Posted by: Justin N | 11/28/2009 at 11:47 PM
Light rail is safe technology if that technology is used. It is not used on the Eastside Gold Line extension. I urge you when you come down to LA on your next visit to take the Gold Line Eastside extension and compare the lack of technology used in comparison to the technology used in Pasadena and South Pasadena.
This isn't about light rail being unsafe, it's about the fact that you don't use the latest rail technology in one neighborhood and give another neighborhood nothing, simply because it's not as economically as powerful.
Metro would not build the rail in this fashion in Santa Monica.
Would you run a light rail with no crossing guards through the Lower East Side in New York, you wouldn't, because it's too crowded and too many people. And if you were to engage in even entertaining the idea you would make sure that there was some kind of technology to make sure that people would be safe and that people in their cars would easily be able to navigate the streets.
And the Eastside has some of the highest public transport ridership in LA County if not the highest currently. It's interesting that people are using projections to decide who gets rail separation instead of what is currently going on, gee I wonder who that benefits more?
"The Eastside Corridor has among the highest residential densities and largest transit-dependent populations in Los Angeles." FTA
And projections as the reasons to build a piece of crap is total bull. I know that's what people are saying as an excuse as to why the MGLEE is ok, but if they were using projections then what's up with the Blue Line. I'm sure when that was built projections would have said that the Blue Line would have gotten more riders than the Red Line, so why is the Red Line underground while the Blue Line runs at grade and has the distinction of the most deadly rail in America?
The politicians, the people with money use whatever numbers they want so they can spend their money on the people who will give them the most money. If you were an urban planner and you read the above statement by the FTA in regards to residential density and transit dependent (which implies many pedestrians on the street) would you choose to have rail separation there or on the Westside where it's more spread out and less transit dependent? It seems that a place that is less transit dependent should have a light rail since that would be good advertising right? But in LA it doesn't seem to work that way.
Browne
Posted by: browne | 11/29/2009 at 12:14 AM
If the east side gold line extension was expected to eventually have over 100,000 riders than it would have been grade separated. Since it only is expected to have 13,000 it doesn't justify the expense. The area is more transit dependent but the pool of people who want to go to that area is small.
You make a lot of good points but I don't understand why you constantly apologize for people who break the law. Every single one of these accidents could have been avoided if people just stopped at red lights and followed signs saying no right turn on red. Light rail is successfully used on city streets throughout the world. In reality it's no different than a bus driving down 1st Ave in New York's Lower East Side. Is it my fault if I drive a car around and a person who runs a red light slams into me? If not, why is it different for Metro?
If Santa Monica is successful, Metro will run light rail down the middle of Colorado Ave in a similar fashion to E. 1st St.
Posted by: Chris | 11/30/2009 at 12:53 PM
"If the east side gold line extension was expected to eventually have over 100,000 riders than it would have been grade separated. Since it only is expected to have 13,000 it doesn't justify the expense. The area is more transit dependent but the pool of people who want to go to that area is small."
With the projection logic everywhere in LA should be at grade. A very small number of Westsiders take public transit on a regular basis. Even people who talk about alt transit in LA every single one of them has a car or access to a car via their partner. If you don't believe me ask them. And they know nothing about public transit or who takes it, the people who work at Metro and do bother to take public transit live in downtown and take the Red Line two stops up to Union Station that's as far as public transit, cyclists and other transit advocates, even the people who plan all these great ideas, not one of them (except one person that I know) takes public transit on a regular basis.
They use these projections, but the average public transit advocate can't even get the person they are sleeping with to take the bus, but yet they can spin these bs numbers.
If there was a chance of any area having 100k riders it would be the Eastside. The Blue Line has the highest ridership of all of the rails, why isn't that grade separated?
"You make a lot of good points but I don't understand why you constantly apologize for people who break the law. Every single one of these accidents could have been avoided if people just stopped at red lights and followed signs saying no right turn on red."
I understand to those who don't live in LA (or recently moved here) this is all seems very confusing, but in LA everyone breaks the law in their car. When you roll through a stop sign it's called a California stop. Everyone in LA speeds, everyone busts reds, everyone changes lanes without signaling this is how we drive.
Now why should one group of people be penalized for a driving culture that was pushed on us by corporate interests, but one group of people should have their driving accommodated?
Ok fine people are getting hurt because they are breaking the law, but if we're going to be all hardcore shouldn't this hardcore logic apply to everyone?
My question is why are there two kinds of enforcements in Los Angeles? Why do the same working class poc have to over and over again get the short end of the stick (education, police abuse, transit) for actions that everyone in LA does. People busting reds is not unusual in LA it's quite common, so if you're building something with safety in mind you can pretend that the world is ideal and everyone follows the law, but that would be stupid. That would be like doctors using as an excuse to not treat working class people, because they drink domestic beer and become overweight on fastfood, but then at the same time have no issue treating people who drink top shelf vodka every night and swanky bars and survive on nuts, so they are severely underweight.
My issue is the very obvious inequity in how things are divvied up and the double standard, yeah sure people on the Eastside and South LA run red lights, but so do people on the Westside, but on the Westside that human quality is not penalized while on the Eastside and South LA it is. It's almost as if the powers that be don't view the people on that side of town as humans capable of making a mistake.
And in LA who takes the bus more? People who live in South LA and the Eastside.
And they will never run a light rail down Colorado in Santa Monica in the same fashion as they have it on the Eastside, they may run it the way they have it running in South Pasadena or Pasadena, but never will you see some half assed engineering that has been vomited upon the Eastside.
Browne
Posted by: browne | 11/30/2009 at 04:35 PM
"If the east side gold line extension was expected to eventually have over 100,000 riders than it would have been grade separated. Since it only is expected to have 13,000 it doesn't justify the expense. The area is more transit dependent but the pool of people who want to go to that area is small."
Is this some sort of bad joke?
This is an LACMTA projection. Who knows what the real ridership will turn out to be. If they were projecting only 13,000 daily users, they have no justification for building the 800 million dollar Eastside Goldline extension PERIOD, let alone not grade separating it.
Maybe the whole Eastside will go see the Rose Parade in Pasadena on New Years...
The original Eastside Red Line extension as envisioned while Tom Bradley was still mayor would have been entirely "grade separated" and would have had a far higher ridership than this Eastside Gold Line could ever hope to have. I think 100,000 daily riders would have been a fair estimate. Probably more.
The Eastside Red Line extension would have been a direct underground extension of the Red Line subway and would have extended the Redline Subway from Union Station through Boyle Heights and then down Whittier Blvd from Indiana St. to Atlantic Blvd.
Going from Whittier Blvd. and Atlantic Blvd. in ELA and "seamlessly" connecting to Downtown Los Angeles and points west would have GUARANTEED a high ridership on the ELA extension.
That got killed by Richard Riordan and Zev Yaroslavsky in 1998 after millions of $$$ had already been spent in its planning and design.
The Latino politicians representing the Eastside couldn't do anything to reverse what Riordan and Yaroslavsky did. Shows who has the real political power in Los Angeles. The ELA Gold Line was a facesaving gift to the Eastside politicians after the Red Line Extension was killed. A worthless one too IMO.
The ELA Gold Line doesn't go to Downtown L.A. but stops short at Alameda St. and turns north. It doesn't go down Whittier Blvd. but a mile north on Third Street. They might as well have build it down the middle of the Pomona Freeway.
The Westside is safe now. The subway to the sea won't be extended into urban areas "people" don't want to go to.
Posted by: Boyle Heights Man | 12/01/2009 at 06:19 PM
Ditto to what Boyle Heights Man said.
Posted by: Damien Goodmon | 12/02/2009 at 12:25 PM