The 733′s hindside in downtown Los Angeles. Photo by frecamino, via Flickr creative commons.
I thought riders of the 733 Rapid Bus that primarily uses Venice Boulevard during its long journey from downtown Santa Monica to Venice Beach to Los Angeles Union Station would be interested in the following staff report. The gist of it: staff is recommending spending $7 million to install traffic signal priority on Venice Boulevard to speed up the 733.
And let’s face it, the 733 could use some speeding up (timetable here). It often takes nearly an hour to travel between Venice and Lincoln boulevards on the Westside to Venice and Broadway in downtown L.A. The 733 is a key downtown-to-the-beach connection and also has a stop near the Expo Line’s Culver City station that is opening tomorrow.
The staff report is below (pdf here). The Metro Board of Directors’ Planning Committee will consider the issue at their meeting tomorrow and then it will need to be voted upon by the full Board.
Venice Blvd. is an excellent candidate for a transit-only lane that could run modern streetcars.
@Steve and @Steveland: I did read the report, and it was more to express that the current branding of the 733 as Rapid is misleading, even if there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why there is no signal priority.
The 733 is my main bus. My two complaints are overcrowding and schedule reliability. Hopefully this will improve both situations and reduce bus bunching. So glad to see east-west transportation get so many improvements!
I also think Venice Boulevard is an excellent candidate for modern, articulated streetcars. With signal priority.