Tag Archives: subway

Results of gate latching at Metro Red and Purple Line stations: many more people TAP

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Here is some interesting data gathered from recent testing of gate latching at the Normandie, North Hollywood and Western stations on the Red/Purple Line subway.

The takeaways: 1) one-way fares, stored value and pass sales significantly increased when the gates were latched; 2) Free entries — i.e. mainly those not paying fares — dropped significantly when gates were latched.

Metro staff continue to work toward starting to latch the gates in the Red and Purple Line subway this summer. As part of that effort, paper TAP tickets are being tested for Metrolink passengers who transfer to and from the Metro system.

Normandie1

Normandie2

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Metro Board considers contract to have cell phone equipment installed in Red and Purple Line station areas

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The Metro Board will be considering a contract this month that would bring cell phone and wi-fi service to the subway system in Los Angeles. The Metro staff report on the contract is above.

Once installed, cell service would be available throughout the public areas of the Red and Purple Lines — i.e. the station areas — and the underground portions of the Blue, Expo and Gold lines. The service would serve a dual purpose: it would enhance public safety by making it much easier to reach police while underground and it could also attract new riders who want to be online during their commute or public transit trips.

The contract is with a firm named InSite Wireless. Under the contract, InSite would install the necessary infrastructure and then charge individual cell phone carriers a fee to have their equipment and signal placed underground. Metro, in turn, would make a minimum of $360,000 a year in revenue from those deals — a typical type of arrangement in the transit world.

As for the cell phone carriers, they have a pretty good incentive to put their signal underground — if they don’t do it, one of their competitors may. And in the cell phone business, having the largest service area is a pretty big draw for prospective customers.

The contract will first be considered by the Metro Board’s Executive Management Committee on Thursday. It would then likely go to the full Board for their consideration at their meeting on Feb. 28.

If approved, it would take about two years to get the equipment installed in the tunnels, the challenge being that the subway runs most of the day and night. Cell phone service would be completed first with wi-fi coming later; keep in mind that the internet can be accessed via cell signals.

Red Line 20th anniversary video, part two: Is this what city planners had in mind?

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I love the question posed in the opening of this 1989 video, suggesting that city planners could not have possibly been thinking of what Los Angeles had become: TrafficVille.

My two cents: I think this video gives city planners too much credit. I’m not sure they were thinking of anything except, perhaps, how to cram a few more strip malls into L.A. Zing!

When watching the video, also take a few moments to enjoy the music. Memo to our younger readers: there actually was some very good music created in the 1980s. This just isn’t it. This is.

If you missed it earlier, here’s Dave Sotero’s excellent analysis of the Red Line’s 20th anniversary and what the subway has done for Los Angeles — and what it will likely do in the years and decades ahead. Also, here’s another pair of videos documenting opening day on Jan. 29, 1993.

20 years ago today: videos of the Red Line’s opening on Jan. 29, 1993

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Here are a pair of videos on the opening of the first segment of the Red Line on Jan. 29, 1993 — so 20th century! Thanks to the Metro Transit Library & Archive on digging these up and for all the helpful information on the 20th anniversary of the Metro Red Line.

Please see Dave Sotero’s post earlier today on the big anniversary. There are a lot of interesting factoids about the original project along with a great photo gallery and more video.

First phase of Metro Red Line celebrates 20-year anniversary

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“This day is here…”

On January 29, 1993, former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley stood among a swarm of public officials and transit agency staffers on the cramped Pershing Square subway platform. Standing shoulders above everyone else, including then-California Gov. Pete Wilson, Bradley proudly inaugurated the opening of the first modern subway in Los Angeles.

“Twenty years is a long time. That’s how long we have been pushing on this dream, this vision of what we should do in Los Angeles County,” Bradley said, referring to the subway’s quixotic path to reality in ‘93. “I made a promise when I ran for mayor in 1973 that in 18 months, we’d deliver by breaking ground for rapid transit. Well, I missed by only a few months…”

Today, Metro marks the 20th anniversary of the Metro Red Line’s first phase from Union Station to MacArthur Park, a nearly 4.5-mile construction milestone that began a brand new chapter in regional rail construction and placing L.A. among other major cities across the globe with high-speed, high-capacity subways.

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Bike-Escalators: Should they come to LA?

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Photo by Mikael Colville-Andersen

“GET OUT OF THE WAY!” A woman yelled at a cyclist while both were going up the escalator. The impatient woman was enforcing the unwritten rule that one side of an escalator should be cleared for those who wished to walk up it. The cyclist with his bike on his left side, now under the pressure from the woman, looked around on the crowded escalator for a way to clear a path for her to move ahead. No luck. The escalator was packed, and the woman would have to wait.

“YOU’RE NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO BRING BIKES ON THE ESCALATOR!,” the woman yelled once more before exiting.

As uncivil the woman’s reaction was to the cyclist blocking the escalator, she was in some ways correct. Objects such as strollers and bicycles aren’t allowed on Metro escalators, and cyclists are asked to take the stairs and elevators instead. I have yet to see it done, but I’ve been told that failure to obey such rules can result in a citation.

And, more than a disruption to the flow of movement, bicycles aren’t allowed on escalators for safety reasons as well. There have been cases where bicycles were accidentally dropped on escalators, injuring the people below. And, I’ve witnessed a few times when cyclists walking their bikes up would accidentally hit the face of the person behind them with their bike’s rear wheel by accidentally swinging it sideways.

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Designing a subway to withstand an earthquake

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Metro’s subway rode out the 1994 Northridge earthquake, but a section of the Santa Monica Freeway collapsed and other area roads suffered serious damage.

After a pair of 4.5 magnitude earthquakes were felt throughout the Los Angeles area earlier this week, a Source reader asked this question:

What magnitude are the tunnels or stations designed to withstand?

Here is the answer from Metro’s engineering and operations staff, as well as consultants who work with Metro to design projects:

There is no specific magnitude that subways are designed to universally withstand. The strength and flexibility the subway is designed for depends on the characteristics of earthquake faults in the area and their proximity to the structure being designed. In other words, the main question engineers ask is this: how strong is the ground shaking likely to be at the tunnels and stations?

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The art of transit

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photo by downtowngal, via submission

This is a very cool photo. Explains downtowngal in an email:

This was taken on the Purple Line. It was really blurry but saved by
processing in Photoshop Elements with the Poster Edges filter, and
applying a color gradient. I think it expresses how a subway ride feels
late at night…

Just about any photo processing software now — including most for smartphones — allows you to do all sorts of neat effects that can turn a so-so photo in something pretty neat, such as the above. PS Elements has some nice filters (Elements, which I also use often, is the inexpensive version of Photoshop), as does iPhoto on Apple computers.

To submit a photo for the Art of Transit, post it to Metro’s Flickr group, email it to sourcemetro@gmail.com or Tweet it to @metrolosangeles with an #artoftransit hashtag. Many of the photos we’ve featured can be seen in these galleries on Flickr.

How do they do that? Power the trains

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Expo Line test train pulling into 23rd Street Station. Photo by Gayle Anderson/Metro

How do they do that? is a series for The Source that explores the technology that helps keep Metro running and passengers and other commuters moving. Some of it applies directly to the trains, buses and freeways and some of it runs in the background — invisible to nearly everyone but essential to mobility in our region.

How do they do that? Power the trains

In politics the third rail is an issue so powerful, politicians do their best to avoid it. In the subway the third rail is a line of track so powerful, patrons make sure they avoid it.

And rightly so, since Metro’s trains run on 800 volts – enough to propel a packed rush-hour train at speeds of up to 70 mph through the Red Line tunnel between Hollywood/Highland and Universal City station.

On subway trains, the third rail is the source of the electrical delivery system. The same power is delivered to light-rail lines such as the Blue, Gold, Green and Expo lines via an overhead catenary system. No petroleum gas for the trains. No CNG (compressed natural gas). Just good old-fashioned electricity.

Where does the electricity come from? Like petroleum gasoline and compressed natural gas, Metro buys it. Electricity can be a product of nuclear, coal, gas, oil, water, wind or solar farm sources. In Metro’s case, the intermediary source is utility companies, including LADWP and Pasadena Water and Power — the same companies that supply power to many of our homes.

Although Metro buys many millions of dollars a year in electricity to power the rail lines, electricity is a whole lot less expensive than petroleum gasoline or even CNG. And CNG, as we’ve said in the past, is much less expensive than petroleum gas.

Like the CNG used to power its bus fleet, the electricity Metro buys is produced in North America, which means it escapes the pricing spikes of petroleum produced by unstable countries. And this, of course, is a good thing, especially right now, with gasoline prices rushing upward.

A Federal Transit Administration chart from 2010. Click to view larger image.

The other benefit to electricity is that Metro’s train lines will become greener as utilities develop more renewable power sources. Subways and light rail already produce fewer greenhouse gases per passenger mile than most cars — and should improve as more wind, solar and geothermal power plants come online.

Also, electricity as a power source is generally quite reliable, both in terms of supply and in terms of subway and light-rail performance. But it does have its weaknesses.

While the third rail on subway track is installed in a protected environment inside the subway tunnel, light rail can be subject to weather. Light-rail cars are linked to the power source via catenary wires installed overhead 12 to 16 feet above ground. (Catenary, for those of you who took and remember physics, is the curve assumed by a cord or chain – or even a spider web — that hangs freely between two fixed points.)

But back to the weather issue. Remember the massive storm of January, 2010 that tipped a tree onto the Gold Line catenary lines in South Pasadena? The line was closed for hours while a bus bridge ferried passengers around the spot where electricity was shut down. South Pasadena is a perfect example of what happens when the power is cut off … although in that case a tree was also blocking the tracks.

Despite occasional stoppages ordered by Mother Nature the catenary system seems to work pretty well. Maybe that’s in part because the system has had more than 100 years of refinement. The first tram with overhead lines was presented by Warner von Siemens (yes, the same company that constructed some Metro Rail cars) at the International Electric Exposition in Paris in 1881. The installation was removed after the event but the light-rail thought persisted. And we’re glad it has.

Coming soon to an escalator near you

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They say it never rains in Southern California and this year that has sometimes been the case. But we can hope for more rain and snow next winter and by then, several Metro subway escalators will be better protected from the elements.

To keep the escalators running more reliably — as well as to protect those of us riding them — Metro is beginning the process of adding canopies over stations along the Red and Purple lines.

The first one should be complete this summer at the Westlake/MacArthur Park Station, where construction is beginning on the support rails that will hold up the pretty canopy umbrella. (See rendering.) If you use that station, you may have noticed construction folks working around holes in the pavement where the three supports will be anchored. The umbrella itself will be added when the supports are secured.

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