Transit Report Offers Options for the Eastside

With the Eastside subway on life support, planners have begun considering alternative projects--from bus improvements to building busways or a light-rail line--to serve the transit-dependent neighborhood.

Those ideas--outlined in a draft report by the Southern California Assn. of Governments--come as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority prepares a study demanded by Latino elected officials. The officials have sought some kind of transit improvements now that the subway has been put off, perhaps permanently, because of a funding shortage.

“The proposed Eastside extension of the Metro Red Line has become all but unrealistic,” says the SCAG study. “This reality presents a new opportunity to consider a host of transportation investments in the Eastside corridor,” a community where more than 19% of workers commute in often overcrowded buses, compared to 6.8% for the county as a whole.

The report proposes, as a starting point, improving existing bus service, citing the nearly 26 minutes it takes a bus rider to travel 3 1/2 miles from Cesar Chavez Avenue and Lorena Street to the Civic Center. “It would only take a little more than twice this time to walk the distance,” the report says. “The same trip would require less than seven minutes in a private automobile.”

The SCAG study, which the group decided to offer on its own to assist the financially strapped agency, was presented to the MTA Planning Department last Thursday and agrees with some ideas already being considered, MTA officials said.

“The report didn’t say anything we didn’t expect,” said Jim de la Loza, MTA executive officer of regional planning. “Their recommendation for a light-rail for the Eastside is consistent with our way of thinking. So is rapid bus lanes.”

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Possible improvements outlined in the study:

* Build an elevated transit way or set aside a lane on the street for buses or a light-rail line. Buses or trains could run from Union Station to Whittier and Atlantic boulevards, possibly along Cesar Chavez Avenue, 1st and 4th streets and Whittier Boulevard.

The costliest alternative would be an estimated $305-million light-rail line that would run along 1st Street. A bus-only lane that would go along Soto Street and the El Monte Busway route, would be the least expensive at $166 million. The proposals would make bus travel considerably faster than the average of about 13 mph. The bus lanes would require taking hundreds of on-street parking spaces--something that could upset business owners. The study, however, says that parking structures could be built to help solve that problem.

* Build a trolley-like rail line that would connect to the existing Los Angeles-to-Long Beach Blue Line and the planned Los Angeles-to-Pasadena Blue Line by extending each segment of the Blue Line to Alameda Street. From Alameda, the rail would go east on 1st Street to Lorena, down to Whittier Boulevard to Atlantic Boulevard.

The report does not specify what the cost would be.

But the project would save the MTA an estimated $100 million because the agency would no longer need to build a separate maintenance facility for the Pasadena line. Trains from the Pasadena line could reach the Long Beach maintenance facility if the lines were connected at Alameda Street.

* Restructuring bus lines to put less emphasis on running buses between the Eastside and downtown, where transfers are necessary to go elsewhere, and instead run buses from the Eastside directly to commercial centers, hospitals, colleges and shopping areas in other parts of the county.

“It means developing a service system that best meets the needs of the East Los Angeles transit riders as opposed to first meeting the priorities of the [MTA],” says the SCAG report.

De la Loza said work on some alternatives to a subway could begin within two to five years, perhaps sooner for some projects.

The MTA will also consider whether a less expensive subway can be built, he said.

The MTA, which will make the final decision, is expected to complete its study by October. A congressional panel last week recommended that the federal government allocate $8 million to the MTA this year to develop transit alternatives on the Eastside and Mid-City.

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Regardless of what is done to improve the transportation situation in the Eastside, the SCAG study suggested the use of “smart shuttles”--taxi or van-like vehicles that would carry commuters to transit stations or popular destinations within a three- to four-mile radius, said Hasan Ikhrata, SCAG’s manager of transportation planning.

The study offers a glimpse into the kind of political, environmental and financial issues likely to be played out in the coming months.

Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles) still hopes the Eastside subway extension of the Red Line happens, said chief of staff Yolanda Chavez, but she is aware of fiscal realities.

And although finding bus-oriented substitutes may be necessary in the short term, in a way it reflects a major step backward, said Chavez.

The subway was originally seen as an environmentally sounder alternative to the street-choking problems caused by crowded buses on narrow Boyle Heights thoroughfares.

“We need more new buses,” Chavez said. “But we don’t necessarily need more buses.”

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The mostly poorer Latino residents of the study area use public transportation more than any other ethnic group, the SCAG report noted. Nearly 39% of households in the Eastside study area have only one vehicle, and one quarter have no vehicle at all.

Nadine Diaz--a member of the MTA’s Resident Advisory Committee and a Boyle Heights resident--said the agency should forget about the subway, sell the vacant properties it has acquired and focus on alternative modes of transportation.

At a Thursday protest organized by the Bus Riders Union--which sued the MTA and won court-ordered consent decree to improve bus service--union members and Eastside residents complained about the conditions on buses.

One bus rider, Carmen Mendoza, described the daily, edgy trips from her Pico-Aliso home fraught with the fear that she and her 3-year-old son would be knocked over in buses that are often standing-room-only.

“Imagine the heat, no air conditioning and people packed in like sardines,” she said.

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Other Ways for East L.A.

A new study outlines transit projects that are likely to be considered as alternatives to the mothball Eastside subway. A sampling of possibilities:

* Create bus ramps on the San Bernardino (Interstate 10), Long Beach (Interstate 710) and Pomona (California 60) freeways that connect to surface streets via bus lanes on Soto Street and Whittier Boulevard.

* Place transit terminals in major activity centers such as hospitals, colleges and shopping areas.

* Set aside one or two bus lanes between Union Station and Whittier and Atlantic boulevards.

* Extend existing bus lines to areas outside the neighborhood with a minimum of transfers.

* Build a light-rail system connecting to the Pasadena and Long Beach lines.

* Set up a shuttle network including taxis and vans to serve high-volume areas.

Source: Southern California Assn. of Governments.