Transportation headlines, Monday, January 12

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ART OF TRANSIT: Antelope Valley to Pasadena in less than five minutes! This year's Rose Bowl flyover. Photo by Steve Hymon.

ART OF TRANSIT: Antelope Valley to Pasadena in less than five minutes! This year’s Rose Bowl flyover. Photo by Steve Hymon.

Metrolink board members want to consider hiring Art Leahy (L.A. Times) 

While the Metrolink Board has said it will conduct a nationwide search, several Board Members have indicated that they want to consider Metro CEO Art Leahy, who is leaving his job at Metro on April 5. It’s certainly an interesting idea given that the Metrolink offices are in Metro’s headquarters in downtown L.A., Metro is the largest funder of Metrolink and many Metrolink riders also use the Metro system to begin/complete their trips.

An L.A. football stadium? Not so fast (Downtown News) 

Editor Jon Regardie is skeptical the Rams will actually move to Inglewood and he also points out that AEG continues to push its Farmers Field proposal next to L.A. Live. Not a transit story per se, except for this: The downtown L.A. proposed stadium is a closer to Metro Rail than the Hollywood Park site that belongs to the Rams owner. Of course, the Coliseum and the Rose Bowl remain perfectly good football venues, but neither is seen as a potential NFL venue.

Quasi-related:

Three out of four isn’t bad and the Cowboys almost pulled it off. Good explanation of the ‘no catch’ ruling here for our riders looking for a Monday read on pro football.

Tonight’s prediction: Ohio State graduates more of its football players than Oregon, but the Ducks will win big. Unfortunately.

Gov. Inslee on Seattle tunnel: ‘no one is more frustrated than I am’ (Grist) 

Very interesting interview with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee about the tunnel boring machine that got stuck building a new highway tunnel under downtown Seattle (the tunnel is replacing an old viaduct). The machine doesn’t appear to be going anywhere and now there’s bickering over who will pay the cost of fixing the machine — the state of Washington or the contractor, Seattle Tunnel Partners, which includes L.A.- based Tutor Perini and Dragados USA.

What doe living close to transit really mean? (CityLab) 

There are a couple of research papers that indicate that rents and real estate prices enjoy a premium at locations within a full mile of quality/frequent transit stops. As writer Eric Jaffe points out, planners usually try to encourage transit-oriented development within a quarter-mile or half-mile — and thus may be selling the power of transit short. Interesting. I think that living a full mile from transit is challenging for many commuters if they feel pinched for time and/or there isn’t very frequent transit between their neighborhood and the transit stop.

 

5 replies

  1. Concerning the tunnel machine being stuck under Seattle. Tudor was part of the partnership that built MOS 1 (Red Line) which was discovered that the walls of the tunnels were not as thick as designed. Tudor-Seliba was banned from bidding on a further contracts by the MTA.

    • And Tudor-Seliba is an American company based right here in Sylmar, CA. So much for “buy American” huh?

  2. Title should read “Metrolink* (Not Metro) board members want to consider hiring Art Leahy”