This is an update on a proposal we posted about earlier this year: to replace direct Orange Line service to Warner Center with a circulator running between Canoga Station and Warner Center. The shuttle would make multiple stops whereas the Orange Line now has one stop in Warner Center. A Reseda Station shortline was also proposed.
A public hearing was held at the San Fernando Valley Service Council in May. Metro staff has revised plans and will be presenting them at the San Fernando Valley Service Council meeting on Jan. 3. The goal is to receive more public input and then implement the changes later this year.
The Public Hearing was well attended and staff received many comments and suggestions regarding the proposals. After the hearing, staff felt that a much deeper review of all bus routes serving Warner Center was necessary and that Reseda Station was not the desired place for turning back buses.
A deeper look at ridership, bus stop usage and route designs traversing Warner Center revealed the following:
- Access to retail, new development, local businesses and employment from the Orange Line is limited.
- Local and Rapid routes are not intuitive due to out of direction moves and long one-way loops.
- Due to many turns along the routes, travel time through the area is slow.
- Most customers on Local and Rapid bus service are connecting to the Orange Line, with the greatest stop activity at the Warner Center transit hub.
As a result of the analysis, the Warner Center Improvement Plan was developed. The following study goals were established:
1) Create a new transit hub that would allow for direct connections to the Orange Line, reduce transfers, and provide a terminal location for charging electric buses.
2) Provide more frequent and direct connections to and from the Orange Line and new transit oriented development in the northern portion of Warner Center.
3) Establish a simple and intuitive hierarchy of routes on key corridors through Warner Center.
4) Improve travel time through Warner Center by streamlining routes and eliminating unnecessary out of direction moves.
5) Expand access to the Village at Westfield Topanga.
6) Ensure the Orange Line headway remains the same to Pierce College as currently scheduled.
A full report will be presented at the San Fernando Valley Service Council’s next meeting on Jan. 3. We encourage anyone who wants to discuss these changes further to plan on attending. And, of course, we’ll continue to update riders and readers on The Source.
These are the types of things that staff will be looking at as part of Metro’s NextGen study — the ongoing effort to restructure and reimagine its bus network.
Categories: Policy & Funding, Projects
That’s great but what about the damn Red Line. There is so much low density, parking/ drive thru waste around stations like Vermont/Beverly, Vermont/ Santa Monica, and Vermont/Sunset. Walking north on Vermont Avenue from the Vermont/Sunset station is a terrible experience for a pedestrian. I transfer at Vermont/ Beverly to the 14 bus and am always how the city and metro have done so little to incorporate their stations with the neighborhoods they serve.
I would like to see the Orange Line stop at Warner Center Park. The Valley Cultural Center hosts musical performances, and other special events occur in the park.
Whatever is done, keep all daytime and weekend headways below 12-15 minutes or less, and ensure frequent cross platform transfers at all transfer points. The schedules for all buses should permit prompt transfers even if the arriving bus is late
Specifically, within reason, ALL buses should delay departures from transfer points until buses on intersecting lines arrive. What good is frequent service if passengers experience missed connections? The total trip times may thus be a bit longer that the scheduled trip times, but the passengers would benefit.
1. The whole point of frequent service is that you don’t need to wait for connections. If you miss your bus, the next one is not too far behind.
2. Waiting for every single connection just means all delays get amplified. Back in the 1990s the German railway network had a policy that the last train on every route waited for all the connections. So while daytime schedules were mostly on time, evening schedules started to lag, and by night the delays would spread to most of the system. I can’t imagine what a system would look like if every vehicle waited for all connections throughout the day: L.A. is big enough that every morning there will be a few delayed buses (traffic, mechanical, construction etc); these delays would spread to the entire system by mid-morning pretty much every day.