LOS ANGELES | Downtown Project Rundown 4.0

[202_Cyclist]

How come SF never fall apart the way dtla did? was it cuz of cable cars? but that system was mainly localized. SF didn't have BART til 1972. so did cable cars prevent SF from becoming burbanized the way LA did?

There are a couple of reasons. First, geography limited suburbanization in the Bay Area. Southern California is bounded by mountains but in between it has vast flat coastal plains (the "plains of ID" according to Kevin Starr, the official CA state hisotrian) and the vast flat expanse of the San Fernando Valley. The Bay Area is bounded not only by water but mountainous and hilly territory, much of which is protected state park land.

Second, the type of people the respective cities and metro areas attracted can explain some of the development patterns. San Francisco certainly hasn't been immune from its bouts of provincialism and NIMBYism (height restrictions in downtown SF to limit shadows, etc...) but in much of the early 20th century and post WWII era, the Bay Area and Los Angeles/OC attracted vastly different groups of people. San Francisco tended to attract people from the large East Coast cities who were use to denser living and transit. Los Angeles, on the other hand, had a large migration from the Midwest and plains states, especially during and after World War II with the dramatic growth in aerospace manufacturing. For this group of newly-arrived residents that lived through the Great Depression and fought abroad in Europe or Asia during World War II, the detached single family homes with a car in the driveway was a very attractive lifestyle.

I encourage you to read "Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963" to find out more about this.

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/su.../~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5NTE1Mzc3NA==

[202_Cyclist]

How come SF never fall apart the way dtla did? was it cuz of cable cars? but that system was mainly localized. SF didn't have BART til 1972. so did cable cars prevent SF from becoming burbanized the way LA did?

If I'm not mistaken, SF, partly as a legacy of the gold rush, is also an older city that had more of its development prior to the post WWII era freeways and auto-dependent growth.

[DJM19]

LA had a very extensive rail system that allowed people to not live downtown very easily. Also, the car culture hit LA very early on in a pretty big way which further allowed people to leave the core. LA spread to a much larger area than SF, and real estate was also a bigger industry in LA.

[ladowntowner]

Originally Posted by citywatch

Did hoods like samo & pasadena not go downhill---& become as battered up as dtla---cuz of better transit? Are the hoods around century city or ucla nice cuz of transit?

This is funny because I distinctly remember visiting the downtown areas of towns such as Pasadena and Santa Monica (and Long Beach, San Diego, etc.) with my family as a young child in the mid to late '70s and noting just how grimy, abandoned (other than by the homeless) and scary those places looked at that time.

For whatever reason many people seem to think that this problem was somehow isolated to dtla, and while it may have manifested more severely here than many other places and has taken longer to reverse, what did happen here was part of a more general urban decay nationwide starting from the great depression onward to the '80s and affected the centers of even smaller cities and towns (think "main streets"). The reversal of this trend has been a long time in the making and in many places has yet to commence...

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by LAofAnaheim

It's official!!! Judge has overthrown the Neighbors for Smart Rail case on the Expo Line. The rail line can proceed as planned! Construction for Phase II expected to begin in March 2011!!!

Another obstacle was the L.A. Department of Water and Power. Before the rail line could be built, power lines would have to be moved out of the way. This is a basic requirement of any urban rail project, and an obvious source of potential delays because neither the Expo Authority nor FFP could control DWP's schedule.

Beginning in 2007, Expo held meetings every other week with DWP staff to coordinate the relocation of power lines. Throughout that year, as DWP showed no signs of progress, there were increasingly urgent messages pleading with the DWP to get to work. The utility coordinator began bringing brownies to the meetings in an effort to win over DWP staffers.

When the DWP got around to burying its power lines at La Cienega Boulevard, it was a year behind schedule.

Originally Posted by DJM19

LA had a very extensive rail system that allowed people to not live downtown very easily. Also, the car culture hit LA very early on in a pretty big way

DJM, I hope you realize you're saying that the old rail system made it easy for ppl to abandon or avoid dt, & that cars also made it easy for ppl to do the same thing. btw, I agree with you.

The point I was trying to make to everyone is that it wasn't transit or cars----or too much or too little of both or either----that made ppl not want to stick around. It's that when ppl kept running into spots like what's shown below, & were unimpressed or actually felt , they found it easy to walk away from the hood.

the first pic shows one way to enter dt from the north on sunset blvd, the second is from the southeast. Ppl will be less committed to a hood, or city overall, when it's not nice enough in the first place....

[ziggy331]

Speaking of the metro, I thought I'd share this text I got from my brother last night:

"Decided to have friday night dinner and drinks downtown at Bottega w friends. Took the metro- only to get stranded at Union Station because trains don't run past midnight. Had to take a $40 cab ride back. LA has to do better."

He lives in Pasadena so he takes the Gold Line out to Lake. Like he said, if LA expects to be a world class city, shutting down public transport at 12am on a Friday night isn't going to cut it, especially with all the nightlife in places like downtown and even Hollywood.

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

yes, thats a huge deterrent to using public transit at night. the trains need to run until 3 am on thursdays - Saturdays. thats the main reason i dont use them when going out to pasadena or hollywood. the cab ride back from hollywood is 30 dollars.

[ChrisLA]

Originally Posted by ziggy331

Speaking of the metro, I thought I'd share this text I got from my brother last night:

"Decided to have friday night dinner and drinks downtown at Bottega w friends. Took the metro- only to get stranded at Union Station because trains don't run past midnight. Had to take a $40 cab ride back. LA has to do better."

He lives in Pasadena so he takes the Gold Line out to Lake. Like he said, if LA expects to be a world class city, shutting down public transport at 12am on a Friday night isn't going to cut it, especially with all the nightlife in places like downtown and even Hollywood.

Not that I don't agree that the metro should run past midnight. But how does that not make it a world class city? London, Montreal, San Francisco, and even Paris metro does not run as late as it should. Anyway the Gold Line at one time ran well past 12am, but I do believe they cut back service like a lot of cities have due to budget problems.

[colemonkee]

^ The entire Tube system in London shuts down for the most part at 12:00 - 12:30, depending on the line and the zone. So in that respect, it's not much different than our system (last trains from Hollywood on the Red Line leave at 12:30ish). But I do agree with the other posters, it would be more convenient if the trains ran later, Metro just doesn't have the budget for it, and the ridership just isn't high enough to cover the additional costs.

[ziggy331]

Originally Posted by ChrisLA

Not that I don't agree that the metro should run past midnight. But how does that not make it a world class city? London, Montreal, San Francisco, and even Paris metro does not run as late as it should. Anyway the Gold Line at one time ran well past 12am, but I do believe they cut back service like a lot of cities have due to budget problems.

I agree, simply having the metro run at later hours won't make LA a world class city on its own. But I think it's a cog in the wheel to say the least.

[mdiederi]

On the 2010 Global Cites Index Los Angeles is rated number 7 overall, and number 3 for GDP.

[Illithid Dude]

Originally Posted by colemonkee

^ The entire Tube system in London shuts down for the most part at 12:00 - 12:30, depending on the line and the zone. So in that respect, it's not much different than our system (last trains from Hollywood on the Red Line leave at 12:30ish). But I do agree with the other posters, it would be more convenient if the trains ran later, Metro just doesn't have the budget for it, and the ridership just isn't high enough to cover the additional costs.

Certain lines definitely have ridership at the levels high enough to cover the additional costs. We have the seventh highest ridden heavy rail system in the United States, and that is really just with the Red Line. The Blue Line, also, is the second highest ridden light rail line in America. We have the second highest ridden Light Rail system in America, too, and with the Expo Line it will probably reach the top spot. So, yeah, we have high ridership levels.

[bobcat]

Even Tokyo has a whole "Last Train" phenomenon where everyone rushes to catch the last train of the day (usually around midnight). Missing the last train means a night spent in a capsule hotel.

[202_Cyclist]

ziggy331:

"Decided to have friday night dinner and drinks downtown at Bottega w friends. Took the metro- only to get stranded at Union Station because trains don't run past midnight. Had to take a $40 cab ride back. LA has to do better."

If it makes you feel any better, I got my bulgogi street-meat lunch yesterday in DC and had to wait for either the Blue/Orange line for 15 minutes in the middle of downtown DC. DC is suppose to have one of the best metro rail systems in the US and there were 15 minute headways in the middle of the central business district in the middle of the weekday.

I think metro rail ends service at 12 or 12:30 AM here in DC on weekdays, far too earlier to serve the bar scene in many neighborhoods.

[DJM19]

I agree Citywatch, but its the chicken-egg argument. Did the neighborhood's neglected look cause people to move? Or did people moving cause it to look neglected.

The question may not matter. What matters is people will not want to move BACK when it is in such a state. We in LA need to work on urban design. No more strip malls, vast blank walls, ragged strips of grass pretending to soften the sidewalk.

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by DJM19

Did the neighborhood's neglected look cause people to move? Or did people moving cause it to look neglected.

[Milton]

Originally Posted by ChrisLA

Not that I don't agree that the metro should run past midnight. But how does that not make it a world class city? London, Montreal, San Francisco, and even Paris metro does not run as late as it should. Anyway the Gold Line at one time ran well past 12am, but I do believe they cut back service like a lot of cities have due to budget problems.

You can also add Tokyo to that list. The trains stop at midnight as well.

[LosAngelesBeauty]

However, in all those cities, even after the metro system closes down, it is reasonable to say that they have other alternative ways to get around such as buses, cabs, and walking that make it possible. LA is different because it isn't dense enough and it's separated by huge vast distances of nothing (think of Hancock Park along Wilshire).

LA will need to have later hours of service because it's different from all those other cities. At least 30 minute headways perhaps after 1AM?

[LAofAnaheim]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesBeauty

However, in all those cities, even after the metro system closes down, it is reasonable to say that they have other alternative ways to get around such as buses, cabs, and walking that make it possible. LA is different because it isn't dense enough and it's separated by huge vast distances of nothing (think of Hancock Park along Wilshire).

LA will need to have later hours of service because it's different from all those other cities. At least 30 minute headways perhaps after 1AM?

On the busy routes, we do have 30 minute to 1 hour headways between 1 am - 5 am. Think of the 2, 4, 10, 14, 20, 37, 40, 60, etc.. The bus somewhat replicates the Blue Line service during the midnight/early morning hours. I took that once from LB Transit Mall to 7th street at 2 am. Not bad.

I agree we need a Nightbus system that runs the exact route of the rail line (not a mile deviation). London has this. When the underground stops, people take the Nxx buses that replicate the same route. That's exactly what we need...with 30 minute frequencies.

[DaveofCali]

Originally Posted by LAofAnaheim

On the busy routes, we do have 30 minute to 1 hour headways between 1 am - 5 am. Think of the 2, 4, 10, 14, 20, 37, 40, 60, etc.. The bus somewhat replicates the Blue Line service during the midnight/early morning hours. I took that once from LB Transit Mall to 7th street at 2 am. Not bad.

Ever taken the 60 at night? You'll feel like your in the Twilight Zone (or some nightmare) I assure you. That's the bus that runs closest to the route of the Blue Line.