You don’t know the area, especially if you’re comparing it to the Northeast LA area of the Gold Line. I say that not as a person looking at the area from a map, but a person who has lived in the area 16 years of my life.

Again the hills exist between Stocker and tapper off as Crenshaw heads further south to Slauson. At the foot of the hill to the north is Baldwin Village (aka “The Jungle”) and at the foot of the hill to the south is Hyde Park and Inglewood. Baldwin Village is not flatland, but the elevation is minimal outside of the Dons. It’s nothing like Highland Park or Mt. Washington around the Gold Line. The Baldwin Village area has so much density it has a rapid stop in the middle of nowhere at the base of it on King. And it’s a high ridership stop.

Indeed the most perplexing part of your supposition regarding the impact of the Baldwin Hills is that the area in question would be serviced by Crenshaw Line stations at MLK and Leimert Park Village. MLK is a major transfer location and plans exist to drastically increase the residential density of the area (to the WEST of Crenshaw) on the site of the mall and Marlton Square, and Leimert Park Village, which is as a significant cultural center on our rail system as any other. Collectively there’s over $1 billion of private investment projected for the 0.5-mile area.

The entire Crenshaw Blvd portion of the line has existing commercial/retail with plans to convert much of the currently single-story properties into mixed-use, and unlike other areas in LA, most of Crenshaw Blvd (with the exception of the portion from Stocker to Vernon) has the land mass to comfortably fit it.

Regarding the city of Inglewood probably, it has some of the highest density of any city in LA County west of the river, and the small residential section the line runs through is among it’s most dense portions.

There are ridership issues with Crenshaw, but they have nothing to do with topography or the area being served. It has more to do with the areas not being served (i.e. the northern terminus). Expo/Crenshaw is not a major economic center right now. Indeed, when the line was envisioned as a branch off Expo that would head into Downtown LA (this is before someone at MTA did basic arithmetic apparently) the Crenshaw Line’s ridership projection was three times as high as it currently is for the segment that dead ends at Expo. Again, that indicates a problem with the terminus, not the corridor.

You have a similar problem here as the Gold Line in Northeast L.A. The density supports rail ridership; it’s the topography and the street grid that depresses it, though.

I’ve framed the likely route in this Google Map:

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=34.011546,-118.311424&spn=0.042119,0.137329&z=13

Note to the east of Crenshaw how the street grid is free-flowing and balanced between north-south and east-west streets.

It’s a whole other matter west of Crenshaw. South of Exposition you have long north-south parallel streets and very few east-west streets, except for the arterials in yellow.

The farther you get away from Crenshaw, the terrain is hillier and the roads are more curvilinear.

Unfortunately for the route as designated, the ridership is hemmed in by the hills with very little flatland ridership on the west.

Yonah is right to assume this project would be rated medium-high for cost efficiency if it were extended to Wilshire. There are just a lot bureaucratic hurdles to considering that at this stage and some politics.

Of course, the Crenshaw project would have far more to gain if it were a branch of the subway. That’s primarily because the network effects of being an extension of a very busy subway system make the project worthwhile. A stand-alone project is useless, and making Crenshaw a branch of the Expo Line produces some network effects but introduces operational nightmares. Look at the unreliability of Muni Metro or Boston’s Green Line when branching and different operating characteristics are introduced.

These aren’t typical times. For the past year transportation projects across the country are coming in underbid because government work is the only work available right now and will be available in the states for at least the next 2-3 years.

On top of that the LRT corridor north of Expo hasn’t even finalized a route or has an EIR approved going for that Northern portion so the earliest construction could possibly begin for that northern section is maybe 2014 or 2015.

Since when does ANY EIR process take 4 years, and the bidding process another year, after the alternatives analysis and preliminary study has already been conducted?

There’s no need to exaggerate costs and timetables. Nothing has been finalized at this point. An LPA hasn’t been selected, the DEIR period has just opened. Conducting the EIR along the full corridor now would be the smartest course of action. And something all who claim to be advocates should request.

Furthermore, unlike at-grade or elevated rail, with the northern section being all underground and mostly bored tunnel there’s significantly less preliminary design work to conduct.

The problem with Crenshaw as a corridor is that ridership is limited because of the Baldwin Hills as a barrier for much of the route.

By much of the route you mean 1/2 mile? I haven’t looked at the census tract data, but I’d bet that Crenshaw from Adams to the right-of-way has density as great or greater than the Blue Line and Expo. The problem is the northern terminus. Crenshaw/Expo as of today is not a major activity center. The ridership with that extension nearly triples (31K), and that’s without considering the additionally 10-15K riders that Metro would be allowed to calculate if the model were allowed to consider Phase 2 of Expo and LAX passengers and put the Leimert Park Village station in the baseline. This is a line from Wilshire to LAX is at a very conservative 45K, far more than almost all the other projects in the Measure R plan, and comparable to several others across the country. Yonah is right to assume this project would be rated medium-high for cost efficiency if it were extended to Wilshire. There are just a lot bureaucratic hurdles to considering that at this stage and some politics.

http://www.reedconstructiondata.com/news/2009/09/chinese-economic-growth-rate-will-set-us-inflation-rate/

Pay attention to that third paragraph to see why this 2.5% is such a short fleeting time that this project or even any project in the LA area could not capitalize on.

Typical construction inflation is 4-6%. On top of that the LRT corridor north of Expo hasn’t even finalized a route or has an EIR approved going for that Northern portion so the earliest construction could possibly begin for that northern section is maybe 2014 or 2015.

That value doesn’t include construction contingencies (which is a cushion needed to pay for unforseen events or environmental variables) which is typically between 4-7% of the total project cost, Professional services of the designers and engineers to make the documents and needed on the site changes that is between 15-20% of the total project costs.

MTA has been operating a Rapid Bud Line 710 on Crenshaw for years. The ridership is in the 7,000 a day range. This barely qualifies it for a Rapid Bus Line.

Well, Crenshaw qualifies for a Rapid bus line because limited-stop service made sense on it. The total combined ridership for local 210 and Rapid 710 is about 22,000 a day.

The ridership on the Rapid alone is more toward the 8,000 range. Local 210, has about 14,500 boardings along a 19.5 mile route from Hollywood to Redondo Beach.

It’s very low to warrant a rail line.

The problem with Crenshaw as a corridor is that ridership is limited because of the Baldwin Hills as a barrier for much of the route. A Crenshaw line won’t be able to draw riders from the west. However, both Western and Vermont avenues draw at least twice the ridership on much denser corridors. Western’s combined local and Rapid ridership is about 40,000, and Vermont’s combined bus ridership is 57,000!

Plus, Vermont already has a subway along it, which would push up corridor ridership another couple of thousand. It would bring boardings into the 65,000 to 70,000 range.

Ideally, the best choice for the community would be to extend the subway south of Wilshire along Vermont. This draws more ridership from east and west of Vermont (as far as I-110 to the east and Western or Crenshaw to the west).

This would also free up buses operating on Vermont that would be redeployed on intersecting east-west lines.

If there’s any money left over, Crenshaw is a wide enough street for exclusive bus lanes. A lot of Crenshaw has medians that aren’t occupied by traffic, and the street can be re-engineered to maintain street capacity. The benefit here is that bus running times would improve, boosting ridership and lowering operating costs.

You can see Metro’s boarding stats here (start on Page 142):
http://www.scribd.com/doc/14037876/Overview-FY09-Q2

A table of contents for it is on MetroRiderLA at:
http://metroriderla.com/2009/09/17/metro-by-the-numbers/

With $1.8 billion Metro should be able to build this line from Wilshire to LAX.

Metro’s got a lot of splanin to do.

“The deadline for comments on the DEIS/DEIR is Monday, October 26, 2009, 5PM. Comments can be made at the public hearings or submitted to: Roderick Diaz, Project Manager, Metro, One Gateway Plaza, 99-22-3, Los Angeles CA 90012 or diazroderick@metro.net.”

If we build Crenshaw with 2 way connection at both Expo and Green lines, we can then run trains on the track like this:

Alternatively, you can avoid the interlining snafus in New York, and instead have cross-platform transfers. In Vienna and Singapore, some transfer stations are configured to have cross-platform transfers for the logical transfers; in Vienna trains are scheduled to arrive at such stations at the same time, and are then held for about 30 seconds, to enable people to make a transfer instead of just miss it.