Los Angeles Infrastructure or Bust
Whenever politics controls what is happening with a project everyone looses.
Back when Miami was building its original Metrorail route, the northern part of the route was not determined by what was best option, instead the politicians overruled good transportation planning which has resulted in a route that is questionable at best.
Will the same thing happen when it comes to the Airport TRAX line? What will be the unintended consequences of going with embedded rails over the standard design? What is going to keep drivers from declaring the lanes their own and causing havoc with rail schedules?
Once again because of a few people with inferiority complexes and politicians too willing to give a vocal minority whatever they want, the best options are not pursued but instead politics rule the day.
Of course looking at the Los Angeles situation things could be much worst. Of course we can always ask, how bad would things be if the state politicians were given more control of UTA? I hope we never have to find out.
2 comments:
Wait... what's wrong with embedded rails on North Temple? We have them through most of downtown... it costs more, yes, but it looks much, much nicer.
They are wonderful if people obey the traffic laws. In downtown where the trains are not traveling fast it is not critical, in fact it makes it more pedestrian friendly.
However, out on North Temple where the trains and autos travel faster, there is a bigger danger with cars getting on the tracks and interfering with TRAX operations.
The North Temple issue was just used as an example of how things can go wrong with political interference.
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