Transportation projects may get going -- slowly
Covering transportation is kind of like watching fossils form, but for the fact that fossils form faster than transit projects get built. But after an election in which voters committed billions of dollars to improving traffic, here are a few things to watch for:
Gold Line
The Foothill Extension’s goose is cooked if Measure R doesn’t pass.
Measure R was the half-cent sales tax hike on the ballot last week. The tax increase is holding a slim lead and is likely to pass, but as of Monday ballots were still being counted.
Measure R would provide $735 million for the Gold Line. But San Gabriel Valley officials campaigned against it because they didn’t think they’d actually get the money and they were upset that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority -- and in particular Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa -- wouldn’t give them $80 million in seed money this summer.
That’s fine, except that there’s no Plan B in place to pay for the Gold Line project, which would extend the rail line from Pasadena to Azusa. Instead, there’s loose talk from officials that they may try their own Foothill cities tax increase (businesses will love that), try another county tax increase, or maybe try to persuade the Legislature to extract the Valley from the MTA.
Chances of any of those happening? Not good.
If Measure R passes, the MTA may get its revenge on opponents by denying the Gold Line any money -- and if it doesn’t pass, San Gabriel Valley officials will have gotten their revenge on the MTA and the mayor. But their constituents -- remember them? -- won’t be boarding the Gold Line extension any time soon.
ne more Gold Line thought: “My only angst on this thing is that history has taught me that we’ve never been near the favored-nation status when it comes to building a project,” said Monrovia Mayor Rob Hammond. “I’m asking, ‘Prove me wrong.’ ”
That’s a fair point. Memo to MTA Board: Prove him wrong and get the thing built sooner rather than later.
710 Freeway tunnel
The long-talked-about 710 Freeway tunnel project could get $780 million from Measure R. So, if you live in Alhambra, South Pasadena or Pasadena and you’re against the project, you may now begin worrying, although the tunnel, which would fill the “missing link” to the 710 Freeway and provide a full Long Beach-to-Pasadena route, is still pretty much a multibillion-dollar pipe dream.
f the 710 tunnel is ever built, I think the interchange of the 210, 134 and 710 freeways in Pasadena will truly be something to behold. In a bad way. The westbound 210, with all those trucks, is already a glorious bottleneck.
‘Subway to the Sea’
Speaking of Villaraigosa, he’s slowly moving the ball forward on the “Subway to the Sea.” If Measure R’s lead holds, the tax hike could provide $4.1 billion for the project -- exactly $4.1 billion more than is currently available.
The mayor’s next task is persuading the MTA board to launch a full environmental study of the route, a key step toward its eventual construction. The line would run from the Koreatown area west to Santa Monica, likely below Wilshire Boulevard.
Such a vote could happen as early as next year. As of now, it appears the mayor has the votes.
Bullet train
The California High-Speed Rail Authority released its business plan Friday -- three days after Prop 1A, the $9.95-billion bond measure for the project, was on the ballot.
The Authority is predicting more than $1 billion in “surplus revenues” for the rail line. That’s kind of intriguing, because most rail lines in the U.S. operate in the red.
It will be fun to see how the Authority cracks that nut.
Parking tickets
Transportation projects aside, it seems like it’s getting harder to avoid parking tickets in Los Angeles these days -- at least it’s getting harder for me to avoid them.
But the Department of Transportation reports that the city is on pace to issue about 2.7 million tickets this fiscal year compared to 2.9 million in 2007-08. So I’m wrong -- and now utterly convinced the city is out to get me.
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latimes.com
/bottleneck
For more transportation news, check out The Times’ Bottleneck Blog.
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