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Beverly Hills appeals ruling that lets Metro tunnel under high school (L.A. Times)
The city of Beverly Hills and the Beverly Hills Unified School District are appealing a Superior Court ruling earlier this year that upheld the environmental studies for the Purple Line Extension. The city and school district are unhappy that the subway’s route will tunnel under a part of the Beverly Hills High School campus and have also filed a federal lawsuit against the Federal Transit Administration that challenges the federal environmental documents for the project.
Judges in both lawsuits are only deciding whether Metro has to redo the environmental studies (or part of them) for the project. The judges are not deciding the route for the subway. Metro staff recommended and the Metro Board of Directors adopted a route under the high school campus to avoid earthquake fault zones along Santa Monica Boulevard and to reach a station in the heart of Century City that will be easier for more workers and residents to reach.
Readers react: make driver pay for HOV lane access (L.A. Times)
A trio of letters about the opening last week of the northbound HOV lane on the 405 between the 10 and 101 freeways. One calls for making the lane a toll lane, one says authorities need to do a better job of keeping vehicles with single motorists out of the lane and the other calls for monorails spanning the pass to provide transit.
In expansion of No. 7 line, one problem: an elevator (New York Times)
The project is expected to open later this year and will extend the 7 Line from Times Square to 11th and 34th on the far western side of Manhattan. The project would have opened last year if not for problems involving a diagonal elevator designed to be more convenient for wheelchair users than a traditional elevator. The article does a nice job of dissecting the decisions and the contracting that have led to delays in the project, which was originally expected to open while Michael Bloomberg was still mayor.
Categories: Transportation Headlines
HOV lanes can become inefficient if they are too congested. Likewise, HOV lanes that aren’t full are not being used as effectively as possible. To ensure optimum efficiency, METRO should be looking at conversion of HOV lanes to HOT lanes.
“HOT lanes” are high occupancy toll lanes. HOT lanes allow single occupant vehicles to drive in the HOV lane for a toll when there is room. Tolls are collected electronically with the use of a transponder. Toll price varies by congestion level; the less space, the higher the toll. In this way, the optimum number of vehicles is allowed in the lane.
It won’t be long before the 405 carpool lanes are turned into HOT Lanes.
On the BH story, it’s kind of funny that they are screaming about that when you take into consideration that back in the 1960s when the state was looking to extend the Glendale Freeway (2) out towards Westwood that Beverly Hills demanded that the freeway segment within the city limits be completely underground.
I think the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas has diagonal elevators.