LAist on MTA vote; Me on LAist

Thursday, February 24, 2005, at 09:40AM

By Eric Richardson

I missed this yesterday, but LAist ran a piece on the MTA subway vote yesterday. The piece is half on the failed motion from last wednesday that attempted to get subway expansion wheels moving again, and half on the motion that went before the full board this morning. I've expressed my non-excitement about LAist various places before, but this piece sort of brings out some of my bigger complaints.

Update (5pm): It looks like the MTA Board vote passed 11-2.

They get right the fact that the committee vote did bring together some unlikely bedfellows. Seeing County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky vote for the consideration of subway expansion is a major sign of changing times. The same can be said about seeing Beverly Hills come out in support of expansion. People now understand that the subway is really the only chance of high-speed transit from the westside to Downtown.

But then they get into this morning's vote:

Regardless, Labonge and his subway-lovin' wrecking crew will take their fight straight to the man tomorrow, going before the full MTA board to make their case that a subway that actually relieves traffic is a pretty darn good idea.

What are the odds that they'll be successful? About the same odds that Jamie Foxx will go home empty-handed on Sunday, but good on 'em for trying.

Granted, I don't know what the results of this morning's vote were, but I think a knowledgable person would take a slightly different tone on the motion's possibility of passage. For instance, consider this from a post by Ken Alpern on one of Transit Coalition's message boards (click here and scroll down a few messages):

Furthermore, Santa Monica City Councilmember Pam O'Connor, Sup. Yvonne Burke (who really wants a Red Line extension westward--at least to Crenshaw Blvd.), and 3 pro-Red Line L.A. City Councilmembers will be part of an overall Board vote on this next week.

Sups. Knabe and Molina could go either way, but even if they're negative, the numbers favor this motion passing 7-5.

I find this argument a lot more credible than LAist's glib dismissal.

And there is sort of the problem I have with LAist; in my mind the editorial voice brings with it a bit more of a responsibility for things like research. There's no personality in LAist stories, yet the authors still throw out quips like this:

No wait, the best use of scarce transportation funds is to create a virtual tour of your underused subway system, post it to your website, and hope that the gee-whiz factor stirs people to actually use the damn thing.

Now I don't know if Scott Garner, the author of this piece, has ever ridden the Red Line, but I tend to not think of the line as underused. Unless I'm riding late in the night I tend to find it pretty full. Sure, the MTA's seating configuration leaves less room to pack standees in than say the subways in NYC, but you can't tell me that for LA the subway isn't an absolute success. Estimates from the MTA give 30.9 million boardings for strike-shortened FY 04 and 17.6 million boardings for the first half of FY 05. San Franscisco's BART system lists 91 million trips for FY 04, but that's on a much larger system (BART's 104 miles of track vs. the Red Line's 17.4 miles).

I'd go on more, but that's enough for now.