Metro and the city of Los Angeles are partnering to improve speed, frequency and reliability for the 12,000-plus passengers who ride Metro Line 200 and DASH buses along Alvarado Street. Join us Wednesday for this virtual community meeting on Zoom to learn more about the project:
Wednesday, March 17, 2021, 6 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Meeting Link: bit.ly/3jtTosh
Meeting ID: 993 2190 4334
Passcode: 5851
Call-in: 213.338.8477
Spanish interpretation will be available.
The Alvarado Street Bus Priority Lane Project is located along a 1.7-mile segment of Alvarado between 7th Street and Sunset Boulevard. The project would add a bus priority lane in the southbound direction in the morning peak hours and northbound direction in the afternoon peak hours from Monday through Friday.
As a key element of the NextGen Bus Plan, bus priority lanes have been shown to improve bus speeds by as much as 30 percent and increase reliability of bus service.
These bus lanes would complement the City’s Vision Zero effort to reduce traffic-related fatalities by reducing opportunities for speeding and weaving in and out of the curbside lane, while also maintaining midday, overnight and weekend parking for residents, businesses and visitors to the area.
All Metro meetings are accessible to persons with disabilities. Other ADA accommodations and translations available by calling 213.922.4869 at least 72 hours in advance.
Categories: Transportation News
Is this more or less the same as what is on Wilshire even though those are just called rush hour “bus lanes”? It sounds like the term “bus priority lanes” used here, is actually a more accurate term for what are essentially half baked bus only lanes in that they only run during the stated hours and days (and in this case, peak direction). It’s nice to have more of these but this just isn’t enough, LA needs a full commitment to all day bus only lanes in more places. NIMBYs are just going to have to accept that, period.
Two things to revolutionize bus transit in LA:
1. actually run at consistent and short headways on all major boulevards beyond just rush hour, lets say 12 minute service all day from 6 am to 11 pm including weekends or something thereabouts. Metro has this very bad habit of running long headways on many routes outside rush hour even on major streets often. Metro simply doesn’t want to pay for more service but doesn’t seem to like to admit that.
2. Actual bus only lanes. And yes, LADOT needs to actually move into the 21st century to make some of those lanes possible, clearly. But this is the bigger picture.
The next gen bus plan obviously helps move towards some of this, but, if I’m not mistaken, it seems like metro is just simply rearranging existing funds to try to accomplish that rather than actually allocate more capital funds to bus operations overall then currently exists. This results in having to cut some bus services in areas that still could use them rather than simply expanding on the existing network. We just need more service, period. This also applies to rail, in terms of frequency. 20 minute headways past 8 pm is simply inadequate. It should be no more than 12 – 15 minutes tops.
Having driven Alvarado frequently in the past, there needs to be better coordination between signals. If LA DOT were to set them up so that flow was prioritized, vs rigid timing, special bus lanes would not be needed.
It’ll lot be nice if the hours were extended from 7am to 7pm on both sides and extend the southern portion to Hoover St. 🤷🏿♂️
2 reasons for that probably might be:
Alvarado becomes more narrow south of 7th, hence why it gains a left turn lane as a result, but there’s simply no room for a 3rd lane (the reason for being able implement a bus lane to begin with) and 2nd, exactly how much traffic is there on Hoover. A few years ago, I would use Hoover as an Alternative to Vermont to reach the I-10 much faster and well. . . Success, traffic is surprisingly light on Hoover throughout various times of the day. Most of the traffic going to either Figueroa, Alvarado and Vermont.
But I do agree, I don’t think anyone along this corridor would complain if both of the bus lanes were actually in effect all day long. That and let’s start calling it Line 2 instead of 200 since essentially Line 2 will replace 200 this year.
Would love this to galen but I cannot make that time slot