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Originally Posted by Illithid Dude
I'm torn about this, because while I agree that Bundy is the superior terminus and four car trains might not have enough capacity I would love to see a new company come in and institute innovative construction techniques and utilize fully automated heavy rail. Hopefully Bechtel's proposal can be improved.
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For the three heavy rail alternatives, the SMB station would actually be located about the same distance away from the 405. A4/5's SMB station would be located between Bentley and Camden, while A6 would be between Corinth and Purdue. Both stations would serve dense residential neighborhoods. A terminus at Expo/Sepulveda isn't the end of the world either, as there's already a TOD built with the potential for more density. The problem is that odds with be heavily stacked in favor of a Sepulveda alignment for phase 2, which would be a true waste.
Regarding technology/operations, I love wider and longer trains that are traditionally associated with heavy rail, and wouldn't like to see this system classified as a "medium-capacity rapid transit system" on Wikipedia... as vain as that sounds. But I do think there's tremendous value in having automated rail from the get-go, with the potential for 90-second headways. Watch a cab ride video of Vancouver's Skytrain and how the trains zip right into the stations. Driver-operated trains, at least in LA, tend to ease into termini stations... basically adding another 1-2 minutes. And who knows when (or if) the Red and Purple Lines will ever be automated. Fast, frequent, and reliable trains running 20 hours a day (and making sure that they're not shelters for the homeless and mentally ill) are how you win over choice riders.
All in all, Bechtel's proposal would create a great template for future rapid transit expansion, especially since it's looking like we'll never have elevated heavy rail. I would like to know roughly what kind of cost savings we'd be looking at using Bechtel's approach. This corridor will naturally be more expensive, but if this type of system can be built underground in other parts of the metro at an average cost of, say, $400 million per mile, I'm sold.