Santa's got Monica's monorail raight heah.
Posted on 03/10/2010 8:54:57 AM PST by Willie Green
Santa Monica is known for thinking in ways other cities don't. So where's that thinking as it relates to mass transit? Have you seen any city or area transit authority study comparing different methods of transport and the short- and long-term costs? No? That's because they didn't create one. Is light rail the best plan for Santa Monica? Will it make a profit?
One of our most recent investments in mass transit was the L.A. downtown Metro. Why did the Metro go underground? We have some of the best weather in the world, with only nine rainy days a year and no snow. Why build underground in earthquake country? The reason is simple: $5.6 billion went into a great number of people's pockets so that question did not get asked. Are we suffering the same fate today in Santa Monica?
Local transportation officials keep making the same mistakes when it comes to public transit. Face it, we live in an earthquake zone. The last place anyone wants to be is underground during a quake. Yet we wasted $5.6 billion to build the subway to nowhere. Did anyone notice a drop in traffic when the subway started running?
So how is a ground-level train any better then an underground train? Above ground trains either crowd out our already crowded streets by reducing the number of lanes available to vehicles, or they require a 20-yard path of home demolition right through your neighborhood. They cause delays as they cross busy intersections, making traffic worse. Trains also hit people and vehicles, costing the taxpayers a great deal of money in repairs and lawsuits. To prevent those lawsuits, a massive network of loud-ringing bells must be erected to prevent idiots from parking on the train tracks. Those bells have to be loud enough to be heard by someone in a BMW on the cell phone. That means if you live within a mile of the track, you will hear those bells.
The next problem with ground-level trains is the cost. Trains are expensive to maintain and that means more money for the company selling us that train. That may be good for the train business, but it's bad for the people who pay the bill. Since the 1950s, there's been a long-term campaign to make money off the people of the Los Angeles area. It started with the demolition of the "red cars," an efficient working rail system that was in place before the city grew. That system still has the right of way, but it's been quickly used for other purposes.
Open corruption is what Los Angeles mass transit is about. I had the pleasure of asking former L.A. Mayor Jim Hahn in a town hall meeting, "Who took the bribe to terminate the Green Line two miles from the airport? He replied that he'd look into this. Now, six years later, the train is still no closer to the airport. The city of Los Angeles is one of the only cities to host the Olympics and make a profit. So why hasn't someone asked the obvious question: How do you make mass transit profitable in Los Angeles?
The reason no one asks how to make a train profitable is because they don't want it to be profitable. If you care about profit, then you have to care about costs. The people that sell and maintain the trains don't care if it costs too much. The elected officials obviously don't care or they would be asking that question.
According to the Federal Transit Administration, the Seattle monorail is the only profitable train system in the United States. If you want a system to work, connect people from where they are to where they want to go. Connect large malls first. Imagine spending a day shopping going from the Third Street Promenade to Century City, to the Beverly Center and never having to drive. Connect airports down the middle of freeways. We have massive rideshare parking lots right off the freeways. Imagine how many people would use the monorail if it went down the center of all of the freeways? What if you could take a monorail to the airport from Santa Monica, Century City or the San Fernando Valley? Why is it that the largest monorail in the United States is owned by a private, for-profit company called Disney? That's an example of how a profitable route can grow without taxpayer money.
So why is a monorail not even being talked about? Anyone who has gone to Disneyland knows that a monorail is fun, quiet and a safe way to travel. Monorails are above the road and run on rubber tires over dedicated concrete which make them whisper quiet. They are reliable and run on time. They don't hit cars or children and offer a great view of the city. The fact is for the first time in almost 50 years, the Seattle monorail is having to refurbish its monorail trains. The track is still in good shape and has not been replaced. Santa Monica, demand the best mass transit.
David Alsabery is a high-performance driving instructor, a Republican and an all around nice guy. He can be reached at alsabery@gmail.com.
Yeah, and the Mojave and Sahara deserts need bars and restaurants, too.
Santa Monica needs an enema!
Say what? Come on down to Chicago and stand outside Union Station during rush hour. Millions of people take public transportation every day here. I used to be one of them when I worked downtown. I'm afraid that this statement is simply untrue.
Because there's better use for urban real estate than occupying it with railroad tracks?
Well yeah... but the author's point is that monorail also avoids occupying urban real estate with RR tracks.
By going over-head, all that is needed at ground level is a small footprint for the support pillars.
It's cheaper than tunnelling and uses much less land in congested urban areas than traditional ground level rail systems.
They should be sure to connect it to the new Unicorn Museum.
Thanks for the clarifacation! It was probabley a great idea at the time, but these days the government would have to invoke iminment domain, and trample over private property rights to build it now, besides the fact were just plain broke. Another case of vision being trumped by political kick backs to the unions, who built are wonderful freeway system no doubt.
Damn, you beat me to it...
My first thought exactly!
When I saw how the Las Vegas Monorail was implemented, it was pretty easy to predict what would happen.
It's off the strip. To get to it, you have to walk through the casino, and a casino's layout is designed to keep you from leaving without being impeded or distracted.
It doesn't stop at every casino. If you aren't staying at a casino with a monorail stop, you have to walk out to the strip and then back in again (see above).
It actually diverges from the northern part of the strip so that it can stop at the city convention center next to the Hilton. That made it that much harder to redevelop that part of the strip.
It doesn't (yet) go to the airport. If that extension is implemented, it might be useful. But at the moment, it's not very useful for commuting up and down the strip. There are city-operated shuttles that work better.
I’m here, too! Glad to meet you two — let’s see - that makes 3 of us here in liberalville.
—primary reason the Las Vegas one didn’t work is that it doesn’t take anyone from where they are to where they want to be-—
Santa Monica has only Fonda Communists, don’t spend one taxpayer cent on that hellhole!!
Like I need piles
Guess WHICH supervisor for more than 20 years has backed the sensibility of monorails and not let himself be railroaded (no pun intended!) by idiots who think that just because Disneyland uses them, they're fantasty fun and not seriously sensible? L.A. County supervisor Mike Antonovich, a Republican (though that's pretty relative here in So Cal!). Subways in Southern California are ridiculously stupid. It's like building a gigantic freezer in Anarctica -- totally wasted effort. But worse -- this writer didn't include the fact that when that silly, ridiculous "subway" that goes only a few short miles in downtown L.A. was built, it not only went overbudget by a huge percentage, but the shaking and rattling from the excavation caused serious damage and closures in many local businesses and really whanged a lot of business owners. It was stupid from the git-go. This is NOT the East Coast, and East Coast transportaion models don't work here.
Monorails should have been installed at least 20 years ago on the already existing and well-though Red Car right-of-ways that are still all over the place (they go all the way from Pasadena to Huntington Beach, if I remember correctly) in the form of very wide medians down main boulevards. They went to Redlands, San Bernardino, Long Beach, Riverside -- pretty much where there are freeways now, Red Car right-of-ways go or went.
For the specific circumstances in Southern California, considering its climate, traffic density, and geography, monorails would perfect and extremely cost-effective not just in terms of materials and right-of-ways and maintenance, but in terms of safety. Again, this article (probably for reasons of space) really downplayed the lethal danger that Light Rail presents in So Cal. People get killed via the ligh rail trains all the time, plus they're noisy as hell and disrupt traffic.
If you've ever been to Disney World's Contemporary Hotel, you know EXACTLY how sensible monorails are. The monorail runs literally through the hotel, where and while guests are sleeping, dining, etc., and they're so quiet you don't even hear them. The tracks can be pre-fabbed, trucked to the location, and erected so the trains run with minimal disturbance to traffic -- again, it is well demonstrated at WDW.
But most of the time, people who object to monorails do it on pure emotion, though they tell themselves that it's the opposite. One guy who should have known better told me the reason I, Antonovich, and others liked the idea of monorails for LA was because they're "sexy," sexier than light rail or subways. This guy was more worried about being perceived as a non-macho Disney geek than he was about a sensible, smart solution to a pretty ugly problem in L.A. HE was the one rejecting it based on emotion, not reason. Very ironic.
They can pay for it with the fines from all of the scam tickets their cops give to commuters.
“And millions of us use public transit to commute back and forth to work every day.”
A few of you enviro whackos use it!
The new Sprinter in San Diego County doesn’t even get enough riders to pay for the help.
Buy a car and become a human!!
Sound Transit finished an elevated train to the airport from downtown Seattle last year. It seemed like a good way to spend a few billion dollars. Ridership thus far has mostly been dismal. The fares do not cover even a tiny percentage of the operating expenses. Even if it really catches on, there is no projected point in the future when fares will ever even cover the operating expenses let alone the capitol expenditures.
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