Expo Line1: USC Trojan Opinions & Support

Daily Trojan:
Published: Friday, October 6, 2000
Letter to the Editor:
Exposition Rail Now
(319 words)

Copyright 2000 by the Daily Trojan. All rights reserved.

I was both astonished and appalled to learn from the Oct. 3 Daily Trojan ("University, bus riders resist city rail line") that the university is opposing the construction of an MTA light rail line from Santa Monica that would pass by USC along Exposition Boulevard.

The shortsightedness of this position is difficult to comprehend. Is this the same USC that encourages effective (and mandated) means of cutting down daily car traffic to the university by promoting van pools, ride sharing and high parking costs?

The article quotes Associate Vice President of Business Affairs Bing Cherrie as saying that the rail "might make life easier. But it might also have a terrible impact on university life." A "terrible impact?"

An Exposition Boulevard light rail line would provide a first-time opportunity for thousands of USC students, faculty and staff to have direct rapid transit connections to campus from the Westside and, through transfers, from other areas now served by the Red and Blue Lines (e.g. Long Beach, the Valley, the northern L.A. basin, and Eastside and Pasadena areas in the future).

Are we to repeat a tragic transit mistake of years ago when USC should have lobbied to have the Blue Line from Long Beach pass by the university instead of bypassing us and disconnecting our 40,000 person community from the growing rail line infrastructure of metropolitan Los Angeles?

I urge the university to quickly reconsider and then reverse its opposition to an Exposition Boulevard light rail line. As L.A. automobile traffic increases yearly, as daily driving times increase, as gasoline costs rise (and will continue to do so) and as external agencies put increasing pressure on USC to cut down its daily vehicular traffic, a USC opposition to the light rail line is out-of-whack with 21st century realities.

Gregory A. Davis
Professor
Earth Sciences

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Daily Trojan:
Published: Friday, October 6, 2000
Editorial:
USC missing opportunity with rail line
(256 words)

Copyright 2000 by the Daily Trojan. All rights reserved.

The university's opposition to an MTA light rail line on the existing tracks that run down the center of Exposition Boulevard is a misstep in policy.

Transportation is a central concern for students living both on and off campus as well as faculty and staff. The light rail presents a significant opportunity for both USC and the surrounding community.

The rail line can help to eliminate the pollution from the fleets of buses normally travelling the Exposition route, while decreasing the frustration of long bus-stop waits and slow traffic.

While the administration's stated concerns about safety for pedestrians are clearly valid, they are not entirely dissimilar from the current issues presented by four lanes of automobile traffic. Trains would run at similar speeds and with similar crosswalk signals and warnings.

Concerns that a rail line could divide the campus from Exposition Park are difficult to understand, considering that the community seems to have overcome what little separation currently exists, and the rail would add only a momentary delay for pedestrians.

At a minimum, USC should actively pursue options to alleviate parking and commuting woes through concepts like UCLA's test program that offers students free use of Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus system.

As a growing campus and a growing city, we must cooperate in and encourage improvements to Los Angeles' transportation infrastructure. The rail line presents an opportunity to create a more efficient and environmentally friendly link between the University Park campus and the rest of the city.

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Daily Trojan:
Published: Tuesday, October 3, 2000
Article:
University, bus riders resist city rail line
(1,121 words)

Copyright 2000 by the Daily Trojan. All rights reserved.

Transportation: Safety and traffic concerns mar MTA’s proposal of an Exposition Boulevard light rail system near campus
By AMANDA CARACCI
Staff Writer

A proposal for the Metropolitan Transit Authority to install a light rail line on Exposition Boulevard, already opposed by university officials, is facing intensified opposition thanks to racial tension exacerbated by the current MTA strike.

The Exposition project is in its second phase, during which an Environmental Impact Report will evaluate factors such as noise, congestion and neighbors' and users' opinions to help decide if building a light rail is an acceptable alternative to purchasing more buses or implementing a Bus Rapid Transit system.

The Bus Riders Union, an advocacy group for inner-city riders, claims that the MTA is spending too much money on its rail lines which it says are more popular among tourists and suburban whites and not enough on bus lines, frequented by inner-city, low-income minorities.

"The Bus Riders Union have the ideology that nobody deserves better than a bus," said Darrell Clarke, a representative from Friends for Expo Transit.

The rail system is faster, more comfortable, carries more riders and is more appealing to those who currently drive than the city buses, Clarke said.

Bus Riders Union members defend their stance against a light rail with accusation that the project is the result of "racist policy-making," said Edgar Sanchez, organizer for the Bus Riders Union.

"MTA is building rails on the backs of the working-class people," he said. MTA denies the union's allegations of discriminatory actions.

"Our goal is to serve everybody who needs transportation," said Ed Scannell, an MTA spokesperson.

The light rail will allow more people to use public transportation because it will carry more people, Scannell said.

The Exposition rail line would provide convenient transportation for students going to the beach as well as those traveling to the museums, California ScienCenter or the Coliseum, Clarke said.

"There's no better place on the west-side to put transit," Clarke said. The rail line would run on the already-existing railroad tracks that run down the middle of Exposition.

The proposed rail line would travel as far west as Santa Monica, and could greatly enhance student mobility. However, it is causing mixed feelings among USC students and senior officials.

University hesitation
The university has told design engineers that USC could not support the idea of building a light rail next to campus on Exposition Boulevard if it were at-grade, or street level, said Bing Cherrie, associate vice president of Business Affairs.

First, the university is concerned about potential safety hazards, he said. Three people have been hit by cars while crossing Figueroa Street or Exposition Boulevard within the past three months, and two of the victims were killed. Adding another mode of transportation to the surrounding streets could potentially increase accidents and fatalities, Cherrie said.

As for the alternative options, adding more buses to the streets of Los Angeles would worsen traffic, and a Bus Rapid Transit system would have serious downsides as well, Cherrie said. A bus in the BRT system would pass every 1.6 minutes, and while this might seem like a good idea, the buses would become backed up if there were an accident, Cherrie said.

Cherrie also expressed concern that building a rail line on Exposition would separate the University Park campus from Exposition Park, physically cutting the campus off from the museums across the street.

"The museums consider themselves as academic institutions in addition to their display functions," Cherrie said. "A rail line would tend to divide the campuses in a very serious way."

The rail would also interfere with traffic at perpendicular streets, as the blocks get shorter in the residential areas. More streets to cross means more people waiting in traffic for the rail to pass, Cherrie said.

"(The rail) could improve transportation east and west in this city, and might make life easier," Cherrie said. "But it might also have a terrible impact on university life."
Instead, USC proposes that MTA build the rail line on Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, or construct a alternative mode of transportation underground so it won't interfere with traffic, Cherrie said.

Bus riders may lose business
To members of the Bus Riders Union, it doesn't matter where the rail line is built. As they see it, any development of rail lines takes away money from buses.
Bus transportation has worsened in the past 10 years because MTA has neglected it, Sanchez said.

Over the past decade, buses have become more overcrowded and are delayed more often, he said. In February 1991, an afternoon bus ride from Santa Monica to Los Angeles took 39 minutes; last April, the average time for the same trip was one hour and 18 minutes, he said.

The Bus Riders Union filed a lawsuit in 1994 claiming the MTA was violating Title 6 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by spending too much money toward the expansion of the rail system and not enough money toward fixing the worsening bus conditions. The union now claims that the MTA is in violation of the legal consent decree that was signed as a settlement to that case.

MTA also denies the allegations of neglecting to fund the bus systems, claiming that legislation passed in the previous two decades requires that 41.2 percent of the budget goes to buses and 24.1 percent goes to the rail system.

Proposition A, passed in 1980, and Proposition C, passed in 1990 both require half a cent so a total of one cent of every purchase in Los Angeles County to go toward the public transportation system. This one-cent tax is split between MTA and the 16 other bus companies that provide buses. Some of this tax is filtered back into the 88 cities in the county, Scannell said.

About 90 percent of the people who use public transportation use the buses provided by MTA. They are minorities or working-class people who depend on buses to get to and from work and they won't benefit from the rail system, Sanchez said.

But MTA officials contend that a light rail line is more cost-efficient than buses. The rail line costs 30 cents per passenger mile whereas a bus costs 47 cents per passenger mile. A rail car also passes by every five minutes, giving public transportation users more opportunities to catch a ride.

One rail car on the proposed Exposition line would have 228 seats, enough to fill six regular low-floor buses that ride 40 people each. Therefore, it will only take one driver to transport six times as many riders.

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Note: This article appeared in the USC Daily Trojan. Briefly it reiterates the USC position for Grade Separation in the area around the Campus as a community migitation.

And it also covers the Bus Riders Union argument that
it costs more to run rail, so there is less bus service.
But they ignore the fact that rail costs less per
passenger mile on high volume corridors than bus
and moves tremendous volumes of riders.