Busway Test Run Gives Riders a Jolt

As a busload of transportation officials, reporters and camera operators rolled across the San Fernando Valley for a test ride Monday on the soon-to-open Orange Line busway, they got a jolting taste of the safety challenges ahead.

All of a sudden, the 60-foot vehicle braked hard at Kester Avenue in Van Nuys.

“Whoooa!” the riders said, as bodies, notebooks and camera equipment pitched forward.

The culprit was a motorist running a red light while crossing the Orange Line route, and bus driver Russell Modell -- who had the green light to proceed -- had to react quickly. Officials including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is also chairman of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, later praised Modell for avoiding a collision.

The episode offered an unscripted and unsettling prelude to an MTA news conference Monday morning on traffic safety along the new busway. After the test ride, officials gathered before microphones at the line’s Valley College station to urge motorists to be careful when crossing the bus-only corridor, which opens for business Saturday.

“When somebody runs a red light, makes a wrong turn, it can put people in harm’s way,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor and MTA board member Zev Yaroslavsky. Sheriff’s deputies, who patrol the transitway, will be “ruthless and merciless” in issuing citations to scofflaws, he warned.

But even as officials touted the beefed-up patrols and new warning signs at the line’s 36 intersections, some transit experts said not enough had been done to minimize hazards.

“The problem with the Orange Line is all those intersections. There’s no grade-separation,” said James Moore II, director of the transportation engineering program at USC. “I believe the Orange Line will be fairly dangerous.”

Critics say some basic safety design features -- such as crossing barriers -- should be installed at busway intersections.

“We have buses going through some very, very strange intersections with what I consider not sufficient precautions with speeds that are too high,” said Tom Rubin, a former MTA executive who worked as a consultant for busway opponents. “I’m just scared out of my wits at what the results may be.”

Snaking an east-west route between North Hollywood’s Red Line subway station and Woodland Hills, the 14-mile bus-only corridor runs alongside some streets, forcing motorists on perpendicular roads to pass through multiple crossings or make extra-wide turns past the transitway onto the next cross street. One crossing, at Burbank Boulevard and Fulton Avenue, is bisected diagonally by the busway -- creating a six-way intersection.

Since the Orange Line opened for test runs about two months ago, there has been one recorded accident, when a distracted bicyclist pedaled into the side of a bus, according to the MTA. No one was injured.

But sheriff’s deputies, who patrol the busway in cars as well as on motorcycles, Segway transporters and horses, have issued more than 500 citations to pedestrians and motorists, mostly for running red lights, trespassing, jaywalking or blocking an intersection when traffic was backed up.

Officials say safety barriers such as those at some rail crossings aren’t necessary along the Orange Line because its vehicles can stop more easily than trains. The busway’s special silver buses, which are extra-long and have an accordion-like middle, average 35 mph in the corridor but slow to 25 to 30 mph when crossing an intersection because drivers are required to take their foot off the accelerator and “cover their brakes,” said Modell, a transit supervisor.

The MTA and city traffic engineers say they’ve outfitted the Orange Line’s intersections with hundreds of new traffic signals, electronic displays, do-not-enter signs and turn arrows aimed at guiding motorists safely across the corridor.

They painted “keep clear” pavement markings between busway and street crossings similar to the kind used at rail crossings. Planners and traffic engineers also purposely had the busway bisect the Burbank-Fulton crossing because other alternatives, which would have routed the busway at an angle, would have been more dangerous, they said.

“Safety was an important part of the design of the project,” said Sean Skehan, senior transportation engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. “We incorporated as many safety features as we could. These intersections were designed to the highest standards.”

But Tony Soh, a mechanic at Karsten Imports auto shop near the six-way Burbank and Fulton crossing, said some of his customers “get confused about the intersection, and they miss the turn,” prompting many to make illegal midblock U-turns.

Motorists at other crossings say they sometimes feel befuddled by too many signals and signs.

“There’ll be two sets of lights 50 feet apart. It’s just confusing to look at,” said Larry S. Field, a freight management consultant who lives in Sherman Oaks. “We know there are people who aren’t careful -- on their cellphones, talking to their kids in back.”