L.A. Metro Unveils New Expo Line, Approves Billions More in Rail; Gadfly in Obama Mask Isn't Happy

By Simone Wilson Fri., Apr. 27 2012 at 11:15 AM

Wikipedia

The Expo Line, now from downtown to La Cienega.

The inimitable John Walsh, L.A.'s favorite gadfly (unless you work at City Hall), will show up to protest the triumphant Expo Line opening at USC today, where the train will reportedly break through a welcome banner as confetti and cannon fireworks go off in the background.

The Bus Riders Union is similarly displeased with the county's priorities. After much prompting, they even got the feds to tell the L.A. Metropolitan ~~Transit~~ Transportation Authority...

... to look into the apparent civil-rights disaster that is Metro's favoritism of subways over bus lines.

But a stern letter from the Federal Transit Administration will do little, for now, to curb rail mania in L.A., as young business professionals marvel at the New Yorky possibilities and pols pump their chests like Green Gods, declaring themselves the leaders of this new sustainable world within car capital USA.

It's hard to keep track of all Metro's latest subway openings/approvals. But here's our best attempt at a roundup:

• The Expo Line from downtown L.A. to Culver City opens today at noon. Free rides all weekend! Cost to taxpayers: $930 million.
• By 2016, the Expo Line will run all the way to Santa Monica. Cost to taxpayers: $1.5 billion.
• By 2015, the Gold Line will run all the way to Azusa. (It currently ends in Pasadena.) Cost to taxpayers: $1.4 billion.
• Metro decided yesterday to construct a complex, two-mile regional connector joining the the Gold Line, Expo Line and Blue Line beneath Little Tokyo. Riders will be able to stay on the same train all the way from Montclair to Long Beach, or from East L.A. to Santa Monica. The connector will open in 2018. Cost to taxpayers: $1.37 billion.
• Metro also decided yesterday to build out the Purple Line one more stop westward to mid-Wilshire, phase one of the mayor's highly political "Subway to the Sea." (However, they still have to battle Beverly Hills a while longer on the next two stops, as those stops would require the train to run beneath precious Beverly Hills High.) Cost to taxpayers: $5.6 billion.

Let us know if we missed any.

To appease the bus folks, Metro's also throwing in an $185 million extension of the Orange Line bus from Canoga Park to Chatsworth. (See how much cheaper buses are than trains?)

Obama is watching you, Metro.

Anyway, onto the raving gadfly in the Obama mask, because that's an opening-day spectacle we'd way rather see than any old cannon firework. Walsh says in an email titled "OBAMA LOOKALIKE CRASHES EXPO LINE'S VIP MAIDEN VOYAGE" (oh hell yes) that a mysterious "demonstrator" plans to dress up as Obama and carry a sign with the words "OBAMA SAYS MTA IS RACIST!"

Walsh is also concerned, to put it mildly, that Metro is rushing ahead with all these shmancy new subway projects while the city can't even pay for the ones it's already got.

A Los Angeles Times story last week reported that Metro has racked up over $1 billion in deferred maintenance costs.

L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has an equally flaky track record of promising big rail majesty built on funds from some fantasy piggy bank. Desperate to secure the federal loans he would need to build the Subway to the Sea in under three decades (before he, you know, croaks), Villaraigosa has proposed a hilarious "forever" tax that would shake down L.A. County taxpayers of the future to secure his political legacy ASAP.

Which is all to say -- welcome to L.A., Expo Line! Try not to hit quite as many cars as you did during your test runs, and do beware the man in the Obama mask. 'Cause he's got a point.

[@simone_electra / swilson@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

Tags:

Bus Riders Union, Expo Line, John Walsh, Metro, Metropolitan Transit Authority, MTA, protesters, Purple Line, Subway to the Sea

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edgar

Comic strip about Expo line: http://www.kchronicles.com/201...

John

Please tell me the Weekly didn't pay for this. Did Simone text this baby out at red light or something? Avoid referencing any data on existing or projected road congestion - check. Completely omit the fact that buses share the same congested road grid - check. Ignore the cost of real estate and construction for roadway capacity improvements to equal projected growth - check. Gosh, it looks like the case against subways is pretty ironclad. Stop the digging, boys!

Dunhamj

This is idiotic. I cant even...

Thehonorarysenior

1 Like

Ironically, yes LA Weekly you did miss something...the Crenshaw Line. You know, that 8.5 mile, mostly grade-separate light-rail line set to run through one of the most iconic Black communities in America?

ChrisLoos

"Desperate to secure the federal loans he would need to build the Subway to the Sea in under three decades (before he, you know, croaks), Villaraigosa has proposed a hilarious "forever" tax that would shake down L.A. County taxpayers of the future to secure his political legacy ASAP."

Let's do some back-of-the-napkin math to see what Simone is talking about here.

Median annual income for LA County: $33,190Median annual net income for LA County: $28,629Average % of income spent on rent in LA County: 34%.

So that leaves the average Angeleno with around $18,895 that they could POSSIBLY spend on taxable goods. Of course, not all goods are taxable. Prepared food in the grocery store is, but raw ingredients are not. Restaurant meals are. Cars and other durable goods are. Medicine isn't. And so forth. But give Simone Wilson and the LA Weekly some credit and assume for a moment that EVERY cent of that $18,895 is used to purchase taxable goods. How much of that money goes towards the Measure R transportation tax?

Measure R Tax = 1/2% ($.005)x $18,895 taxable goods purchased---------------------------------$94.48 per year, or $1.82 per week

So the average Angeleno, under these EXTREMELY generous sake-of-argument circumstances is paying $1.82 extra in sales tax per week because of Measure R. As you can see, they are really breaking the bank here.

Now, the people of Los Angeles overwhelmingly agreed to tax themselves this amount every year from now until 2039 when they passed Measure R in 2008. So Measure R+, or as Simone Wilson calls it "Mayor V's forever tax", would make this increase permanent.

So that's what we're really talking about here. That extra $1.82 that you're already paying every week to live and shop in LA County could get extended past 2039. The horror.

And what do we get for this soul-crushing "forever tax"? Let's see.

Using the "30/10" dates as a guideline, we have:

- The Purple line extending to Westwood in 2017 instead of 2036- The Gold line eastside line extending to Santa Anita and beyond in 2017 instead of 2035- The Green line LAX connector hitting LAX in 2018 instead of 2028- The Crenshaw line being completed in 2016 instead of 2018- The Downtown Regional Connector being completed in 2017 instead of 2019- The 405 Corridor line being completed in 2018 instead of 2039

So that's what your $1.82/week post-2039 buys you. All these desperately needed projects, THIS decade. Sorry for the rant. I just thought you guys should know exactly what the LA Weekly is whining about. The antidote to hyperbole is facts.

Sources:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/in...http://estimatepension.com/Inc...http://datacenter.kidscount.or...http://www.thetransportpolitic...

Jake Wegmann

LA, of all US cities, takes the most dramatic steps to invest in building a better future for itself, by building a real public transit system, and all LA Weekly can do is whine about how much "taxpayer money" is being expended.

Who are these cranky, angry git-yer-gummint-hands-off-mah-money people that LA Weekly is pandering to? Where are they? I don't get it. I'd change your tune, and fast.

Herc Rock

Yeah, and in every article I read about "carmageddon" and the widening of the 405 FWY and bridge replacement no on never mentioned costs, (or delays for that matter) but in every article about the Expo Line (or any train/subway project) it's front and center.

ChrisLoos

Seriously. LA is bluer than blue. Even Beverly Hills is overwhelmingly blue. If there are tea party anti-infrastructure republicans around, I sure haven't seen them. So LA Weekly, and Simone Wilson, I ask you the same question Jake did: Why exactly are you pandering to? I don't get it.

Big Homey

LA Weekly is a joke...

"Metropolitan TRANSIT Authority???" You can't even get the name of the agency right!!!!!

Regis

I did a search for Expo Line news today. I saw the LA Weekly link and got exactly what I expected to see--nonsense. Unlike you, most people are not surprised that building a subway costs money, because WE ALREADY VOTED FOR A SALES TAX INCREASE FOR THIS PURPOSE ALONE! Did you think someone was going to build it for free? Do you even live here?

Herc Rock

Wow, how in God's name do the editors let this kind of rant still go through? It's obvious that no one at the LA Weekly has ever deinged to ride a train in LA County. If they did and saw the color of the vast majority of riders the "racism" argument they parrot from the shameless "Bus Riders Union" would be revealed as the hollow point in their empty gun.