Art of Transit
So, a friend of mine won a 20-minute helicopter ride in a raffle and invited yours truly to tag along on Monday. And it figures: while up in the air shortly before noon, traffic appeared to be moving impeccably on the freeways within view.
Hope you enjoy the pics. It was a little hazy, but it sure beat riding out the day in my cube.
NoHo Red Line station and parking and Lankershim Boulevard.
Universal/Studio City Red Line Station and parking.
Universal Studios.
Hollywood Reservoir and Hollywood Sign.
Hollywood/Highland Station entrance if you look hard plus Hollywood Boulevard and the walk of fame.
Hollywood and the 101 freeway. The Hollywood/Vine Station is under the W Hotel.
Barnsdall Art Park, Hollywood Boulevard and DTLA skyline. Hazy.
Tony Stark’s crib. Which is nowhere near the ocean.
A Metro bus on Hollywood Boulevard at Las Palmas.
Century City at left and Westwood at right. Seems sensible to connect the two big clumps of buildings with a subway.
Homes along Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills.
The 101 freeway, Universal City and Lankershim Boulevard.
Ventura Boulevard and Studio City.
The 170 freeway. The Orange Line runs underneath just below mid-frame.
The 101 freeway looking west across the San Fernando Valley.
Back to NoHo and the Orange Line and Red Line station. If you need a parking pic for those parking fee stories, I like this one.
And back to Burbank Airport. The railroad tracks at right are used by Metrolink’s Ventura County line and Amtrak trains headed up the Central Coast.
Burbank Airport and, at right, the Metrolink/Amtrak/freight tracks headed to Ventura County and the coast.
The full album of pics resides here. Feel free to download, etc.
Lankershim Boulevard Great Streets meetings (LADOT)
There are meetings about the project on Wednesday (April 12) in NoHo. One of the improvements: 2.2 miles of protected bike lanes on Lankershim in each direction between Magnolia and Vanowen. This stretch includes the Red Line and Orange Line station in NoHo.
The proposal would also cull one general traffic lane on Lankershim in each direction. We’ll see how that goes over.
How L.A. can meet its traffic-safety issue head-on: Mike Bonin and Marqueece Harris-Dawson (Daily News)
The two city of Los Angeles councilmembers propose using Measure M funds to pay for the effort (called Vision Zero) to eliminate traffic-related deaths in the city.
What you need to know: the city is nowhere near the zero part and has funded relatively little in the effort thus far. As the authors note, their colleagues on the Council may have other priorities, including street repaving.
My three cents: L.A. and other cities aren’t going to get to zero with out greater enforcement. True story from my short drive to the train station on Tuesday morning…the car in front of me stops at the green light so the driver can do something on their phone. The light turns red. When it turns green again, the car just sits there until I unpolitely honk.
You can’t design that kind of distraction away. You have to write tickets.
Watch DTLA’s Park Fifth rise (Urbanize LA)
Finally the awful parking lots on the north side of very transit friendly Pershing Square (Red/Purple Line, Silver Line, many other buses) are being developed.
It can’t be this hard to load an airplane (Wall Street Journal)
For those who have a subscription, a fun story from last week that may make you believe that humanity is doomed.
Things to read whilst transiting: fun story on the history of the Coachella festival in the new New Yorker.
Things to read 2: some notes at LA Kings Insider on the firing Monday of coach Darryl Sutter and GM Dean Lombardi. Tough business. I thought letting Justin Williams go was a mistake; with his teammates on the Capitals he’ll have a shot at hoisting another Stanley Cup this season.
Categories: Transportation Headlines
Shouldn’t that be “eagle’s-eye view”? Anyway, nice pix.
These pics are good but they load very slow. Metro should use https://www.cloudflare.com/ to speed up its site and increase reliability.
The pace of installing protected bike lanes in the city of Los Angeles is going to pickup very rapidly. Protected bike lanes are to be installed on Venice Blvd, Jefferson Blvd between Western and Vermont, Lankershim Blvd, Chandler Blvd, Main St and Spring St in downtown LA and on south Figueroa St. All of these are to be done by 2019. The city of LA will increase the amount of money spent from the local sales tax return on bicycle infrastructure by over 4 times what it is now on July 1st. The additional 12 cents per gallon motor fuel tax will bring in an additional 10 million dollars for bicycle infrastructure in LA starting in November.
Additional street repaving for the city of Los Angeles will be taken care of through the additional 12 cents per gallon tax that will take effect in November. The Los Angeles department of street services has stated that the maximum additional amount of money that they can handle is $100 million per year. This new sales tax will bring in $150 million per year for the city of Los Angeles. This means that the local return for Measure M can be used for safety improvements. The city council is almost certain to approve using the local Measure M money for safety improvements as proposed by councilmember Bonin.
Councilmember Paul Krekorian has already indicated that he wants protected bike lanes on Lankershim Blvd, He is just going through the formality of having meetings. Its already a done deal.
Hey look,it’s someone sticking a flyer on my car!
Is there anyway to extend the Red Line to Bob Hope Airport?
Neat to see that they restored the sign on top of the old Pacific Electric NoHo station. It’s the little things like this that help keep history alive.
With regard to connecting Westwood with Century City, I’m thinking the important thing won’t be connecting the two so much as connecting them to DTLA. Both are employment centers attracting commuters from population centers to the east. Once the Purple line gets that far, I wonder if you might see rush hour subway traffic similar to the dense crowds you’ve already seen on the Expo Line.