Here is a look at some of the transportation headlines gathered by us and the Metro Library. The full list of headlines is posted on the library’s blog.
Rangers strike out when it comes to public transit (SF Weekly)
The Texas Rangers play in Arlington, a city of 380,000 wedged between Dallas and Fort Worth — and a city without public transit. The Rangers ballpark, I believe, is one of the only Major League ballparks in the country without transit service — except for this trolley service for hotel guests — a distinction shared at times in recent years by the Dodgers until the advent of the Dodger Express bus between Union Station and Dodger Stadium. In San Francisco, a light rail line stops less than 100 yards from the ballpark entrance and there’s also bus and ferry service to games.
Pro football coming to downtown L.A.? (Daily News)
The folks at AEG — who own Staples Center and L.A. Live — say they can soon have deals in place to build a new football stadium/entertainment center adjacent to the L.A. Convention Center. No word yet on exactly who the teams will be, although media reports have frequently mentioned the Jacksonville Jaguars as a candidate for relocation. A competing effort has entitlements in place to build a stadium in the City of Industry. Either way, it seems wheels are in motion to ensure that the L.A. area has three giant football stadiums — the Coliseum, the Rose Bowl and whatever may get built in downtown or City of Industry. At least the downtown stadium would be near mass transit.
High-speed rail project is pork (Washington Post)
An opinion piece by Robert Samuelson alleges that the bullet train project in California — and high-speed rail projects in other states — wouldn’t serve enough people to make a dent in the state’s oil consumption, greenhouse gases or traffic. Sameulson, however, doesn’t get into the very interesting debate in some transpo circles about whether the billions the Obama Administration is spending on high-speed inter-city rail would have a greater impact if spent on urban mass transit.
Categories: Transportation Headlines, Transportation News
K Wu, in order for what you’ve said to be true, you must explain why Amtrak California’s three services are able to be the second, third and fifth busiest corridors in the country. This is for maximum 79 mph service, which is at or below average car travel speeds.
The nation’s second busiest corridor is LOSSAN, where the Surfliner runs. It’s much busier when you factor in the commuter ridership on Metrolink and San Diego’s Coaster.
So the Surfliner corridor, with “terrible” public transportation as you’ve described it, manages to attract higher ridership than the Bay Area-to-Sacramento Capitol Corridor (the third busiest Amtrak service in the U.S.).
Also, why does the high-speed rail use-case depend so heavily on public transportation? If HSR lives and dies by public transit, why isn’t the same problem seen for airports or intercity bus terminals? Public transit doesn’t correlate heavily with the usage of other modes, and Amtrak passengers have no trouble getting to stations now.
HSR is wasting of money especially in CA. In northern CA, it may make sense because San Francisco has the best public transportation in the West Coast. LA public transportation is terrible. Anaheim is also terrible. This is not like east coast where public transportation in metro area is much better.
My coworker was a student at well known university in a small town in France. He took train from Paris to that college town. From that train station, he could either subway/buses to schools or anywhere else
That does not happen in LA. Forget about other town such as Anaheim, Santa Barbara and cities with less population.
The public transportation should have establish first before the HSR that connect different cities, but California is doing that the other way around. Or should I say just one side of equation.
Imagine government building the interstate/city freeway, and there is lack roads in the cities/counties, what is the point of freeway
People envy the trains in Europe and Asia. What people did not think is the good public transportation infrastructure in Europe ans Asia.
Some people just don’t listen.
Luckily, this will not be railroad to nowhere, but, compare with Amtrak, I wonder how many more people will use HSR