The Advisory Group of the Purple Line Extension had a community meeting last night for the latest update on the project that is extending the subway for 3.9 miles from Wilshire & Western to Wilshire & La Cienega.
The presentation is posted above. Updates were provided on current work on the project (including utility relocations and the exploratory shaft), systemwide station design principles and Metro’s art program, including upcoming workshops for artists who may want to be considered for Metro art opportunities on the subway project or other projects.
Categories: Policy & Funding, Projects
Editor,
What do you expect from Metro? All of this is not new.
The people who work for Metro, the people in these expensive pin-striped suits and shoes (all of which they bought from salaries paid by taxpayers mind you!) are mindless government drones. They’re not being paid to think independently and listen to the public’s voices and concerns, they’re being paid to follow their superior’s rules and orders to maintain their status quo.
The fact that they kept running on the honor system for decades all the while losing lots of money shows exactly how these people think. The public were complaining for years about fare evasion and Metro did nothing about it.
People are complaining for years about TAP, the awful taptogo website, massive cuts to bus services, maintenance problems on the Metro Rail system, lack of restrooms and amenities at stations, all the while spending our tax dollars on wasteful things like useless artwork at stations, paying themselves cushy public employee union benefits, and the over generous six figure executive pays for the crappy job that these people do.
We’re in 2014 and yet these people have no idea how to do a daily cap. Their solution instead, is to waste money on teaching bus drivers new tricks instead of a one time software upgrade.
And now recently, this fare hike to $2.25 without even considering that the poor is likely to get hurt the most because the poor don’t commute 20 miles from the McMansions in the suburbs all the way into the city just to earn minimum wage to flip burgers at McDonald’s.
Metro’s answers to these questions and complaints will always be “the item is not on the agenda,” “we’ll get back to you,” and “we’ll take it into consideration.” All of it really means is “we’re not going to do jack, you’re lowly taxpayers, you give us money, and we’re gonna do things our way instead of listening to you lowly common people.”
Editor: I live in the Miracle Mile area and have found Metro to be nothing but completely open about all the impacts of the project and what will be done to minimize them. If anything, there’s too much outreach going on, with several meetings every few months for the past 7 years now – I think I read they’ve held almost 100 meetings so far. It’s a shame that we still have people, including homeowners group, that are STILL complaining about this essential project that is long overdue. It’s amazing anything ever gets built on the Westside.
The problem is that Metro is a tax funded government agency. So long as it remains that way, it has to do all these studies and meetings as required by our entangled and confusing laws and bureaucratic red tape. And these meetings and studies end up costing tax payers more money and time before a single shovel is put to ground.
Now if Metro was a for-profit private corporation like Asian transit corporations, they’d just say “we’re building a line through here, he’s a million bucks for your 1940s era lead-paint ridden homes, now move out” and we’ll be building stuff and running the Red and Purple Lines by now.
Henry Huntington didn’t have these problems of endless meetings and studies because he was a private entrepreneur and wasn’t restricted with all these government BS. If he wanted a line, work got started the next day.
It would be nice to have a window to view the on going work on the Fairfax station.
Editor, so what exactly are your complaints? That after 50+ years, we’re finally building the much-needed Wilshire subway or that after 50+ years there is still unnecessary opposition to it by homeowner groups and community councils along the extension?
I have to disagree with the you on that. Metro is doing its due diligence and has constantly notified stakeholders of any form of work and doing its best to mitigate the affects on the surrounding residents, businesses, etc. Stop the NIMBYs!
Its no wonder it takes so long to build anything in this town. All we do is study and have meetings. Every reasonable caution is being taken, we have run endless studies and we have done plenty of pre-building surveys. It is now time to build. Except for the Downtown Hollywood segment that had problems, all the other tunneling on the original Red and Purple, plus the Gold in ELA went without major problems. And we will be tunneling again with the Crenshaw line in the very near future. Technology has constantly improved for tunneling and we are tunneling under a public street Let’s get this project moving !
Because we don’t want our precious homeowner association groups to continue blocking essential transit plans that will help thousands in Los Angeles to be mobile; instead of being halted by the dozens at homeowner meetings. Go Metro!
Here is the corrected version of the above post without the “helpful” intervention of spell-check:
I attended this meeting last night as a representative of the Miracle Mile Residential Associaiton. These gatherings are “tent revival meetings” where Metro preaches to the choir. Anytime a question or issue is raised that causes Metro discomfort they kick the can by replying that it is “not on the agenda” or that “we’ll get back to you on that.” Metro is steadily earning the complete distrust of the residential and homeowner associaitons and community councils along the Purple Line extension because of their inability or unwillingness to truly engage with the residents in an open and forthright manner.