Red and Purple Line riders will see locked turnstiles at four different subway stations for one afternoon each beginning in late September, as the TAP folks continue to move the program forward.
It’s another step toward securing the system, as well as an attempt to get a handle on how many paper passes are still being used. That info will be helpful to the TAP conversion process since in order to lock the gates at some point, all the paper needs to go away. At the same time, the turnstile closure will be an educational opportunity in that passengers at the four selected stations will get a chance to try out TAP and, hopefully, see how easy it is.
During the exercise nothing will change for current TAP users. Nor will paper pass users, Metrolink riders or EZ Transit Pass passengers be required to change their travel habits. All stations will be well staffed with personnel who will tap through passengers whose fares do not open the gates.
ADA passengers, bicyclists, families with strollers and travelers with bulky baggage still will use the wider ADA gates. Those gates also will be shut but will open after the gate reader is tapped.
Gate locking will take place at four stations only: On the Red Line at Hollywood/Western and Vermont/Beverly stations and on the Purple Line at Wilshire/Normandie and Wilshire/Western stations. Those locations were selected because they’re light on transfer activity so there is expected to be less impact on customers.
Before final closure could begin — remember this is just a test — Metrolink and EZ Transit Pass passengers will need to be provided with TAP-enabled cards and ticket vending machines converted to TAP-only operations. Staff also is looking at options for paper transfers.
For more information on the four-week turnstile closure, check out the board report.
I don’t understand all this hate for making Metro become more “business oriented.”
We don’t live in a socialist country. We are a robust country founded upon the principals of capitalism.
Ideas of urban designs and dependency on tax funds as a key to keeping public transit running are all leftist socialist ideas that are prone to failure. Look no farther than the Pyongyang Metro or any of the former Eastern European public transit systems when they were behind the Iron Curtain to see what their public transit state were in after using billions in donated money for Communist propaganda art in their subways.
Art adds no revenue. Art costs money to maintain. Zero minus maintenance fees equals debt. Don’t you get it?
There’s no need to copy socialist model to public transit. Robust capitalistic countries like the UK, the EU, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea all have figured out a capitalistic approach to keeping public transit working.
Distance or zonal based fares. People pay their fair price for distance traveled. Low flat rate fares cannot be sustained forever. Sooner or later we’re going to end up with $2.00, $3.00 or $5.00 flat rate fares as the system expands. Either that or people will end up paying 15%, or even 20% in sales taxes. Enough is enough.
Opening Metro stations for businesses. Businesses adds revenue. Revenue from renting out spaces to businesses at train stations means more extra money that Metro can use to maintain stations, hire more staff, buy more trains, etc. Metro has 70 stations across the board. Renting out a space for a mini-Starbucks at each station for $500 per month would add $35,000 per month in extra revenue to Metro. Over a year, that amounts to $420,000. That’s $420,000 that Metro could do without asking for $420,000 in taxpayer money.
Just the two of these alone solves a lot of issues without resorting to taxes as the solve-all solution to all of our public transit problems.
Angry,
I think the key difference between the U.S. and those other “robust capitalistic countries like the UK, the EU, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea” is that those other countries all tax gasoline rather heavily. In doing so they have begun to require drivers to pay the full cost burning fossil fuels. That is internal costs (i.e. extraction, refinement, delivery of fuel) plus the costs that are borne by society (air pollution, oil spills, etc.).
In America we tend to socialize the costs of pollution by requiring everyone to bear the costs, not just those who generate the pollution. That tends to give the car a greater competitive advantage in the U.S., while transit is a more attractive in those countries you mentioned.
Thanks for commenting,
Carter Rubin
Contributor, The Source
Angry,
Good urban design creates a “business friendly” environment for transit operators. To suggest otherwise is a failure to recognize how dependent urban design and transit are to one another.
@Spokker
“The other half of the equation is that the population density is such that where ever you put the train stations, lots of people are going to show up. They have also made owning a car expensive.”
If population density were the key to answer public transit problems, then why does the NYMTA suck compared to London and Tokyo, and it’s ridden with billions of bad debt, and year after year of higher fares and cutbacks to services?
Density and cost of ownership of cars isn’t the key to fix public transit woes. If it were, public transit in the NE wouldn’t face such issues as I mentioned.
It’s pretty much what IT Guy said: Metro needs to stop being so dependent on taxes and become more like a business.
For that matter, I also agree with Frank M. Metro would be better off bringing in a transit official from Tokyo or London to fix LA’s public transit problems with their years of expertise of running public transit with a business oriented model.
More commercialization? Allow a merchant set up within the station? You must not be a rider. The trash that would come with a coffee kiosk makes me shudder. There is NO food or beverage allowed on trains or buses. You going to finish your $4 cup of coffee in the the 5-7 minutes between trains? What about accidental spills? Who and when does that get cleaned up? How could crowd control be managed? Long lines already in Union Station transferred onto a platform where there’s already limited room? Merchants such as in Union Station are fine. There’s places to sit, lines and trash are managed through the overall facility and food and beverage are not a few feet from the tracks.
@ FormerNYer
Your obviously not aware of the failure in the privatization of the London Underground.
http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/05/11/london-undergrounds-privatization-experiment-dead-as-remaining-ppp-is-bought-out/
I think the consensus of those who want public transit to become more “business oriented,” is that they want to see LA Metro go from 75:25 tax-to-self revenue to at least 50:50 by means of trying out business minded approach like distance fares and renting out spaces at train stations to businesses to earn more self-sustained income.
Angry Middle Class made an excellent point about renting out spaces at 70 of our train stations to commercialization. Even $500 per month in rental income amounts to $420,000 per year to Metro, meaning $420,000 less in taxes.
Said $420,000 in self-funded revenue can be more than be enough to hire janitorial or security staff or make some much needed improvements at some of our stations that are in poor shape, all without resorting to higher taxes.
Why waste 70 train stations that does nothing but sit there and act only as a train station? It just collects garbage and becomes dull and dilapidated through poor maintenance through budget cuts.
Our trains stations earns nothing when they have the potential to become more than just a train station.
I for one, would love the idea of buying the latest Newsweek or Sports Illustrated at the train station so I have something to read while riding the train.
I love the Rush Snack Bar at the 7th/Metro Station. That concept should be spread out to all the other 69 stations out there.
For the record, Moscow has had faregates for a very long time. And they are these nasty things that stay open all the time, but then whack you in the shins if you try to go through without having paid. (If you pay, you go through unmolested).
And Moscow Metro has had an RFID card since at least 1999.
Here’s a picture of one with a mosaic of everyone’s favorite German economist in the background.
@Erik G
Not to put a spoiler, but Communist Russia collapsed in 1989. Under Communist Russia, they pretty much operated on an honor system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnstile#Turnstiles_in_Russia
By 1999, Russia was well underway into becoming a a capitalist country. Only under capitalism did they went as far as installing turnstiles to buses and trams.
How come the MTA didn’t install turnstiles in the subway system TO BEGIN WITH? If BART (in the Bay Area) has had a set-up with turnstiles since the beginning, why did the MTA never begin with it, as “light-rail” lines came into existence? Too logical? Potential for TOO MUCH REVENUE?
No developer willing to give “kickbacks” to the MTA to install the devices? What?