Friday, January 23, 2009

Red Line patience

The Los Angeles Times' intrepid transportation reporter Steve Hymon had an update on the Red Line "subway to the sea" extension in today's paper. According to the brief, the good news is that they've approved an environmental study. The bad news is that, like all government projects, that's just the very first step and construction on the extension won't begin before 2013. It's just another reminder that as much as I like the idea of taking the subway to work, it ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

Seeing this reminded me of a story my co-worker forwarded to me a few weeks ago about the expected openings of various subway lines and bus routes in Los Angeles. Among the listing was: Green Line to LAX -- 2016 to 2018. It never made sense why the Green Line subway stopped just short of LAX in the first place, but why it would take so long to add a few miles of track seems ludicrous. I know these things are more complicated than one could imagine, but still, eight to 10 years? Kinda makes you glad that gas prices are low because even though higher gas prices discourage driving, there aren't great alternatives in LA, and there won't be anytime soon. Sigh.

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