MTA Delays Fare Hike Until Just After Next Mayoral Election
I'm sure the timing is just a coincidence. After all, there are sound public policy reasons to wait exactly until July 6, 2009, rather than imposing the fare hike now. Yeah, right.For the record -- there is a record here, right? -- and per my platform, I favor eliminating the fares altogether, and focusing the MTA budget on buses and bus lanes, not subways, which cost too much and take too long.
Posted by Walter Moore @ 5/24/2007 05:33:00 PM
10 Comments:
I favor light-rail in conjunction with buses, Walter. You should have been here in the late-50's through the early-60's... we had a light-rail system that traveled all over L.A., and parts of Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties.
Yes, those were indeed the good old days, especially prior to 1964, when the electric trolleys were in operation (L.A. Railways, Pacific Electric).
light rail WOULD be great...i just think you have a better chance of getting "George Jetson Moblies" in the air, before you can raise the money and get everyone to agree on a plan and actually make effective light rail a reality.
but i am a fan of stephen c foster, and I agree light rail IS fantastic, and I would love it and use it.
I just think it'll be too tough to pull off. meanwhile, the money could be used for much suckier busses.
So basically, I'll take a lot of something not as good, over the possibility of something that may, or may not happen thirty years from now.
Well...let's see...Light Rail is happening on the Westside (the most congested part of LA)
Having a few miles of rail here and there is not a solution. We need city-wide reduction in traffic, and we need it yesterday.
My platform includes measures to make it easier for people to live closer to work. The more people we can get within walking distance of their jobs, the less traffic we have.
My platform also includes buying many more buses, and adopting bus-only lanes, so we can get city-wide rapid transit right now, not 10 years from now, and all over the city, not just along Wilshire.
yeah walter...i like that idea.
i call it "poor man's subway to the sea." it's called busses. and at least it's a tangable reality.
And it can be done overnight. We could have buses streaming back and forth on Wilshire, up and down on Sepulveda, etc., in no time at all. We've already got perfectly good roads built and paid for -- why rip 'em up for subways or rails? And buses can be put into operation right away.
Plus, if we're not collecting fares, the buses can get people on and get moving faster. Eliminating fares will admittedly reduce revenues, but it will also eliminate the expenses associated with colllecting the fares: gathering the money, counting it, accounting for it, printing tickets, having machines to print tickets, make change etc.
The MTA and LAUSD should both be blown up an sold off to Wall Street. Let the private sector compete and run things for a change. In a few years you will have a system that works as good as.....FEDEX.
Nobody here, either the original poster or any of the commenters, seemed destined for Mensa memberships. Me neither, but I did pay attention to the realities underlying the debate at the MTA yesterday about raising transit fares (not just bus fares).
One reality is that they could close down the MTA bureaucracy entirely and the actual transit system would still be way in the red (and that begs the question of how to manage the system without any staff - it doesn't manage itself). Local, state and federal government, and, yes, the taxpayers, haven't been willing to commit enough money to public transportation in recent years to properly pay for it. I don't see anybody here on MayorSam saying anything about that that makes any sense.
Whoever thinks the system should be privatized so it can run like Federal Express needs to consider something: no privatized company is going to run the system at a loss. They'll have to charge fares at levels that will allow them to make a profit. As has become painfully obvious, current fares are way below that level and the people who need the system most won't be able to afford the even more massive fare increases that would be necessary to make a privatized system break even, let alone make a profit. And that will be even more the case if the public subsidies go away, as some might argue they should once a for-profit company is running the show. Whoever thinks this is such a spiffy idea should sort that out and explain it to us dummies.
The folks talking about making quick and arbitrary decisions to make big streets one-way apparently would be surprised to hear what people in adjacent neighborhoods might say about that. MayorSam bloggers make a big deal about listening to community folks on some issues. Are they now advocating that those people should just be trampled in this case?
Since the MTA can't afford to run the buses and rail lines with the fares as they are right now, how would they run them without fares? Nobody's giving them free fuel for the buses. We'd all love a free ride - the proverbial "free lunch" - but somebody's gotta pay the piper.
Walter Moore's credibility is completely undermined when he says they'd save money by not having to print tickets, count change, etc. Well over 90 percent of the system's riders ride buses and the buses don't require tickets. The printing of monthly passes for those who use them represents a miniscule part of the overall expense of running the system. All Moore's comment proves is that he doesn't ride the system enough to know how it actually functions. Has he ever run anything larger than a one-man law practice?
Moore also hasn't been listening very closely to the debate over the bus-only lane on Wilshire. It's not like it has anything resembling universal support or acceptance.
As for implementing it "in no time at all," he's got a lot to learn about what it takes to prepare a major, heavily-trafficked boulevard - or a bunch of them, as Moore prefers - for bus-only lanes. It requires inter-agency collaboration, changes in traffic signal management, major changes in signage, re-striping, education of the public that drives and rides on those boulevards. The list could go on.
But it appears Moore thinks he has the magic wand that will fix everything overnight. He sounds more and more like just another bogus politician every day, except that he's one who obviously is clueless.
Gotta love the fighting yesterday at MTA meeting with Antonio going against Zev. Sorry but Antonio's side was shot down big time by votes. Leave it to Jabba The Hut Molina who's proposal was voted in. This is what the radical Busd Rider's Union gets for suing the MTA and making them more buses they didn't need. Now again they don't want increases so they threaten another lawsuit. Bus Riders are a bunch of illegals who demand and threaten. Get over it!!!
....The decision by the MTA's Board of Directors marks a stinging defeat for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who had tried to broker a compromise that would have raised most fares only 5% a year. But the board roundly rejected the mayor's proposal, saying it would leave the agency with a deep operating deficit and would delay future rail projects.
....A visibly angry Villaraigosa shot back, accusing Yaroslavsky of mischaracterizing private conversations and then lashing out at the supervisor for sitting in his office while the mayor was in Sacramento on Wednesday trying to get more transportation funding.
6:25:
With all due respect, this is NOT rocket science.
Nor is my proposal that L.A. adopt "bus rapid transit" (BRT) fanciful or impractical. On the contrary, cities all over the world already use it.
Don't take my word for it. Google it. Bogota, Colombia, for example, apparently manages to move 600,000 people per day, rapidly and efficiently, on buses using "bus only" lanes.
As noted in my platform, moreover, we need to eliminate the legal barriers that helped create the problem in the first place, i.e., people not being able to find housing near where they work. Repealing rent control -- while guranteeing full Section 8 funding at market rates for poor people currently in rent-controlled apartments -- would effectively free up around 620,000 units so people could move closer to work.
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