Mod: For years various LA County governmental entities have been proclaiming the great benefits of public transportation. The need to "get people out of their cars" and onto buses and so-called light rail has been celebrated as a panacea for many ills, and in all sorts of ways. Yet few people want to take them up on the offer, despite the billions of dollars spent and many tax increases put into place. And why is this? Here is an editorial that ran in the Pasadena Star News recently that points out a few things.
Metro gives you a slow ride to nowhere (Pasadena Star Newslink): Billions of your dollars have been spent on Los Angeles County’s transit system and tens of billions more will be spent over the next four decades, yet ridership is going in the wrong direction.
In August, Metro released ridership statistics showing a decline of almost 20 percent systemwide since 2013. There were an estimated 39.8 million boardings in July 2013, and that fell to about 32.3 million boardings in July 2017.
Ridership on the Orange Line in the San Fernando Valley is sinking, too. Metro says average weekday boardings in November were 24,009, down from 25,473 last November, and 26,692 the November before that.
Last spring, Metro did a survey of more than 2,000 of its former riders and discovered one major reason that people don’t use transit: It doesn’t go where they are going.
So the transit agency ordered a study of its bus service, including routes and schedules. Results of the study are expected in April 2019.
That’s right. The transit system in the second-largest city in America needs a survey and a two-year study to figure out a bus schedule. This is why people think government can’t run anything.
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But the technology is not the most interesting part of Musk’s proposal. What’s so revolutionary, in comparison to Metro, is that his plan is built around the idea of getting people to their desired destinations. The map of the system shows stops at LAX, Long Beach Airport, USC, UCLA, Dodger Stadium, the Getty Center, Staples Center and the Convention Center, as well as stops in Sherman Oaks, Santa Monica, Culver City, Inglewood, Hawthorne, Lawndale, Torrance and Carson.
In contrast, Metro doesn’t really care where you want to go. It tells you where to go. One L.A. city councilman and Metro board member enthused that a proposed plan to turn the Orange Line into a rail system would give commuters “a one-seat ride from Chatsworth to Claremont.”
It would probably cost more than $1 billion to meet the fictional demand for a one-seat ride from Chatsworth to Claremont, and it would be no help at all to anyone who wanted to go to the airport.
Metro does have a plan to get Valley residents to the airport, as long as the flight departs LAX after 2057. That’s the target date for opening “Phase 3” of the Sepulveda Transit Corridor project. In the interim, the transit agency is planning a “fixed guideway” system on the 405 between the 101 and the 10. Metro is presently in the midst of a 20-month feasibility study. One proposal floated to a local Chamber of Commerce group envisions removing a traffic lane in each direction to make room for a busway.
The evidence continues to accumulate that transit planning in Los Angeles isn’t really about transportation at all.
Consider the effect of SB743, a 2013 state law that eased environmental rules for the Sacramento Kings’ new arena. Under a provision of the law, certain projects within a half-mile of a major transit stop — existing or planned — qualify for exemptions from some environmental-impact study requirements. The developers can skip the studies of their project’s impact on traffic, parking and neighborhood aesthetics.
It’s part of the state’s policy of encouraging “transit-oriented development.”
Now the Los Angeles city planning department has released its proposed Orange Line TransitNeighborhood Plan, which would encourage extra-dense development clustered around the Orange Line stations at Sherman Way, Reseda, Sepulveda, Van Nuys and North Hollywood.
It’s all supposed to be “pedestrian-friendly,” which is planner-speak for “not much parking.” Nearby residential streets are likely to receive the overflow from the businesses and residents of the new commercial, residential and mixed-use multi-story buildings that are imagined in the plan.
Every time Metro draws a line on a map and makes a dot where the stops will be, the real estate within a half-mile radius of the dot becomes more valuable, because “transit-oriented” projects built on that land qualify for expedited approvals and other breaks.
Commuters may have to wait until 2057 for their investment to pay off, but developers are cashing in immediately.
Mod: Remember a few years back when the "transit oriented development" topic was widely discussed here in town? And how the Gold Line was going to bring big changes to our area? Now crowded and overdeveloped Pasadena went for it in the biggest of ways, but Sierra Madre? Not at all. It's great to be right.
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Mod: You have been told often that you are about to receive a tax cut courtesy of Washington DC. So why is this happening?
Long lines at tax offices as homeowners try to beat hike (Houston Chronicle link): Homeowners are lining up in droves at local tax collection offices, hoping for one last chance to take advantage of a major tax deduction before it is wiped out in the new year.
In Hempstead, town Tax Receiver Donald Clavin said "thousands" of people packed his office Tuesday trying to pay their 2018 property and school taxes a year in advance.
"This is almost chaotic,"Oyster Bay Tax Receiver James Stefanich told Newsday. He said homeowners began lining up in the cold an hour before his office opened. Similar scenes played out at tax collection offices around the country in places with high local taxes.
The tax overhaul signed last week by Republican President Donald Trump puts a new $10,000 limit on the amount of state and local taxes people can deduct from their income when calculating their federal tax liability.
That new cap could translate into a tax hike of hundreds or even thousands of dollars in mostly wealthier, high-tax communities in California, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey and other states.
Mod: The rest of this article is available at the link. Don't look now, but chances are if you are reading this you live in a town where this tax hike is going to hit hard.
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