On the Mobility Plan and Rush hour Bus Bunching: Equity for Bus Riders?

I was waiting for the Santa Monica Bus at rush hour last week and was struck by the magnitude of delays caused by congestion.

The buses were backed up not for 10 or even 15 minutes but half an hour or more in the eastbound direction. The bus scheduled for a certain time (say 4:45) would show up later than the scheduled arrival of the following bus (say the 5:00 bus) or of the bus after the (scheduled) following bus.

Furthermore, such onerous delays strike at the busiest point of the day for bus ridership. Not a few but a dozen individuals milled the bus stop (in a part of West Hollywood where few locals likely ride). The bus arrives packed to the brim.

Indeed, (perhaps not so) ironically, the greater number of passengers were headed in the direction with more traffic. A stream of workers and housekeepers pile on the buses for East Hollywood at the same time as the motorist bourgeois head towards the 101 for the suburbs.

The biggest problem with rush hour-induced bus delays, such as that I experienced, is that they result in a woefully reduced supply at the height of the day's demand.

Worse yet, the reduced supply is not a result of the bus company providing either an insufficient number of vehicles (this is the time when the most buses are scheduled) or inadequate seating on each bus but the result of thousands of private drivers, over whom a transit agency like Metro has no control, taking over the right-of-way.

To illustrate with an analogy, its as if a clothing store had the least inventory available on Black Friday, because it was forced to give away its wares to other stores (for them to sell at their Black Friday sales) on that day. To make things more accurate, let's pretend this clothing store is Ross (i.e. catering to a lower-income clientele) and the rapacious thieves are Banana Republic and Bloomingdale's.

As with the clothing store's clients, the customers for Metro's bus services suffer competition over limited inventory (known as "cramming") and long waits for restocking of supplies when getting home from work or school.

The immense delays bus passengers must endure at a time of day when they are most in a hurry, not surprisingly turn many away once they can afford the more convenient mode of travel (sadly, in most cases, the private automobile).

This brings me back to the LA's new Mobility Plan.

Much brouhaha has been made about all the automobile lanes that will be lost to bicyclists, who supposedly comprise only 1% of the city's commuters (and who are also hipster elitists, at that).

However, what detractors conveniently ignore is the plan's sweeping Transit Enhanced Network, which will create all-day bus lanes (the ""comprehensive streets") along 13 of the city's most highly-traveled corridors (compare the Transit Enhanced Network map with this list by LetsgoLA) and peak-hour bus lanes on many more (the "moderate plus streets", including my favorite, Beverly Blvd.!).

By allowing for a faster frequency of bus arrivals (assuming that cars respect the bus lanes!) at a time when demand is highest (and speed most desired), Metro and other bus agencies operating in the city can more adequately serve the needs of their clientele.

That's not called elitism but equity.

On a side note:  To those who cry that drivers will suffer an even more severe loss of productive time if a lane is taken out for buses, I say:

 (1) Congestion is already bad enough as it is at rush hour on streets like Santa Monica. How much  worse can it get?

(2)  Cars don't have to pull over and wait for passengers to board every few blocks the way buses do, giving them a natural advantage under the same traffic conditions.

And (3) Cars can always use Waze to meander through side streets when traffic gets bad on arterials. Buses have to stick tho their arterial routes through thick and thin (at least until that far-off point in the future when large agencies like Metro acquire and implement the technology for on-demand scheduling).

Tram-trains for Los Angeles??

As many of you know, I have long been frustrated with the way in which Los Angeles County Metro handles transit expansion.

Its not just that the agency keeps determining construction based on political expediency (rather than ridership levels or trip reduction) but that the light-rail technologies it favors are wholly out-of-sync with Los Angeles' gargantuan urban form.

For instance, the trains on the Gold Line, which will soon offer service to Azusa through the Foothill Extension, currently have an average speed of only 21 miles per hour on its course from East Los Angeles to Pasadena. The entire journey takes about 54 minutes to complete (I frequently completed this route, back when I worked as I delivery driver, in as little than 25 minutes).

Part of the slowdown has to do with the numerous grade-level crossings the line must traverse. (something I could save a rant for at another time) But another is speed. The Ansaldobreda P2550 trains the agency uses have a top operating speed of 65 miles per hour, an upper speed limit typical for light rail (http://www.rtd-fastracks.com/main_398).

Although this may seem high, one has to remember that this is the maximum speed! On a free-flowing freeway, by contrast, cars routinely average 70 miles per hour (even when the posted speeds say 65 miles per hour) or higher.

Light-rail makes a lot of sense on short to medium-length routes through dense inner-city neighborhoods (e.g. Downtown or Boyle Heights) where it complements urban form and allows for frequent stops. And yet, on long routes to more outlying neighborhoods, distances which drivers would travel by freeway, a grade-separated technology that travels at faster speeds is needed.

What I'm thinking of, on routes such as the Gold Line Extension and the Sepulveda Pass line is a high-frequency form of commuter rail.


Commuter rail generally has a higher speed limit than light rail (ranging between 83 miles per hour and 125 miles per hour on the EMD F59PH locomotives that predominate on the Metrolink system). Almost all of the railway right-of-ways that are slated for light rail lines have operated as conventional railroad lines so conversion to commuter rail would be cheaper than light rail.

In addition to the construction of new commuter rail lines, the solution will require increasing the pitifully low frequencies on the extant Metrolink system (which currently only serves peripheral suburbs outside Los Angeles County)  as well as adding both infill stations and outbound "reverse commute trains" (on the Orange County and Ventura County Lines).

In regards to commuter rail's interface with the light rail system, two options would be available.

One possible solution is to have light rail (and subway lines) serve the denser inner districts of Los Angeles County line (for instance, along the Wilshire Corridor and Gold Line to Pasadena) while having commuter rail take over for the outlying districts. For instance, one could ride the Gold Line  up to the Lake Station in Pasadena but then connect to a commuter rail line (running from Burbank to San Bernadino) for the journey to Monrovia.  In this sense, the transit system would mirror the historic division between the "Red Cars" and the "Yellow Cars" in Los Angeles' streetcar era.

A more exciting possibility would be the type of system found in the German city of Karlsruhe. The city's "Stadtbahn" seamlessly integrates tram lines in the city center with commuter lines to the suburbs, System cars are developed for compatibility with both tram and train tracks and electrification requiring only a quick change of wiring to transition between the two. It would be the equivalent (should an analagous "subway-train" vehicle be devised) of combining the purple line to Westwood with the Metrolink San Bernadino Line, so as to allow for a single journey from Miracle Mile to West Covina.

Is it a train? Is it a tram? No, its a tram-train!!

Given that such infrastructure would utilize existing infrastructure (both light rail or subway and rail), only minor improvements to bridge the gaps between the light-rail/subway and train tracks, besides the production of the vehicles themselves.

I don't know if a subway-rail interface is possible but the light rail-rail interface should be (given light-rail's similarity to a tramway).

Have the folks at Metro ever explored this possibility? Do they even know about Karlsruhe?