Oscars, art+transit, 5G, Evs, LAX & transit: HWR, March 5

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Dept. of Academy Awards

Dept. of Sportsing: Impressive. LAFC won its first-ever Major League Soccer match, knocking off the defending Western Conference champs, the Seattle Sounders. LAFC’s home opener at their new stadium — in Exposition Park and a short stroll from the Expo Line — is against the Sounders on April 29.

Art of Transit

Dept. of Snowy Mountains

Castaways in motor homes on society’s fringe (LAT)

Good photo essay by Luis Sinco on the number of homeless living in motor homes parked around L.A. County.

5G cell service is coming. Who decides where it goes? (NYT)

Unlike 4G service, 5G requires equipment in a lot of places. Excerpt:

The companies, like Verizon Communications and AT&T, say that the equipment will be safe and unobtrusive, and that it is needed to support future applications like driverless cars. Dotting them throughout neighborhoods is necessary for full coverage, they say, because the new 5G signals do not travel as far as the radio frequencies now in use.

The NYT says there are about 300,000 in the U.S. currently and that new 5G service will expand that by the hundreds of thousands or millions because the equipment needs to be about 500 feet apart. Hmm.

Dorm living for professionals comes to San Francisco (NYT)

A screen grab from Starcity’s website; click to visit their website. The firm is offering dorms for adults.

The units cost $1,400 to $2,400 a month and are 130- to 220-square feet. Bathrooms are shared but furnishings, wifi and utilities are included. Woohoo! Apartments in S.F. are typically $3,000 and up. We’ll see if housing-challenged L.A. gets dorms, too.

2018 Will Be the Year You Join the Electric Car Bandwagon (Wired)

I think a lot of people — including me — want to see more electric cars out there but I’m not convinced they’re really affordable to the masses yet.

Question for readers: when EVs get more popular and widespread, what happens to the price of gas for those still driving gas-powered cars or hybrids?

LAX ranks near the bottom among U.S. airports when it comes to getting to the terminal (LAT)

Not really news. The story was written from a press release by the firm that burped out the study.

In case you didn’t already know, LAX isn’t the easiest airport to reach from the downtown L.A. core via transit. You can either do the Blue Line to Green Line to free airport shuttle or take the subway to Union Station and board the FlyAway bus.

We’re working to make things easier. The Crenshaw/LAX Line is scheduled to open in fall 2019 and a station will later be added to that project at Aviation and 96th where passengers can board the new (and free) LAX people mover to the airport terminals.

From 7th/Metro that should be a ride that takes under an hour with transfers and will cost $1.75.

State may tear down major Sacramento bridges to build bigger ones for mega-trucks (Sacramento Bee)

Trucks are bigger and heavier and about 170 a day have to detour around the older bridges over the American River. Caltrans officials hope to use funds from SB 1 to fund similar projects around the state.

 

 

Categories: Transportation Headlines

5 replies ›

  1. At least with transfers, it’s possible to get from downtown to LAX by rail. For most of the Westside and the Valley, this won’t be possible until sometime in the second half of this century.

    Technically, one could take a misdirectional Expo east to Crenshaw, but does that really make sense?

    As it stands, Sepulveda line phase one ends at Wilshire. A route through the Westside to Expo and LAX still needs to be drawn out.

    Crenshaw North seems a long distance away from reaching either the Purple or Red Lines.

    And light rail down Lincoln seems light years away.

    All of these seem more critical than a two-seat (counting the people mover) ride from downtown.

  2. It’s really amazing the MTA is unable to to provide a seamless ride from Downtown L.A. to LAX. It’s not like other systems are not seamless as well, most are to major destinations. And after all both the Pacific Electric and and L.A. Railway were able to do it. But other than the Blue Line and Expo Lines terminating at Seventh and Flower it seems like an impossibility. Perhaps the inept transit planners should take the elevator to what ever floor the MTA library is on and read the history of the great transit systems we formally had and the ability to run more than one route on the same track.

    The Blue Line should have a alternate route on to the Green Line to the airport. And the stupidity of having the Expo Line on street level and the Crenshaw Line underground makes absolutely no sense where they meet at Crenshaw and Exposition. This again could be another seamless route to the airport but that was just to easy and to convenient.

  5. Besides the Expo Line, the new stadium is also served by a whole bunch of bus lines – something even the stadium’s website doesn’t mention. You’ve got a bunch of Metro local routes, the rapid route on Vermont, the Silver Line, and a DASH line nearby. This is a big opportunity for you guys to advertise the bus system (using specific route numbers), and potentially win back some of the ridership you’ve lost in recent years.

    Same goes for LAX, with its bus center. Think of the Green Line as only one of several transit options in a more expansive system.