 |
|
|
| |
Mass Transit vs. Massively Expensive Transit
|
2590 Reads
|
|
|
|
| |
Pretend you've got $4.8 billion to spend but, alas, you can only spend it on mass transit for L.A.
We already know how Mayor Villaraigosa would spend it: he would pay $369 million per mile to extend the Red Line subway 13 miles, underneath Wilshire Boulevard, to the ocean. Construction, by the way, would drag on for 10 years.
That may sound good to you -- you know, if you live near the Wilshire corridor, plan to live there another 10 years, and have no fear of traveling in a tunnel surrounded by hydrocarbons in an earthquake zone ...
|
|
But before you write that big check, consider an alternative: buying a fleet of busses, powered by nice clean natural gas, running not just along Wilshire, but instead criss-crossing the entire city. Consider buying so many busses, in fact, that you could even ban cars from using most major surface streets. Sound crazy? Do the math:
For $4.8 billion, you could buy 14,769 natural-gas busses. (They sell for $325,000 each; slightly more if equipped with MP3 player.) That works out to 32 busses for every square mile of L.A. In other words, each bus would serve a mere 20 acres. (MTA's current fleet provides 1.9 busses per square mile, which amounts to 344 acres per bus.)
With your massive new fleet, you could essentially eliminate car traffic -- and car pollution -- from Los Angeles altogether. You could ban cars from Wilshire, Pico, Ventura Boulevard, Sepulveda -- virtually every major street you want -- and have busses showing up at bus stops every five minutes. You could do so, moreover, as soon as you buy the busses, not 10 years from now.
Heck, you could probably buy enough busses to criss-cross the city and eliminate traffic for half the $4.8 billion that Villaraigosa wants to spend to extend a single subway line. Think of what you could do with the $2.4 billion you'd save . . . .
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| Posted by: WalterMoore on Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - 10:39 PM
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
