China's Subway Boom

An article in the LA Times discusses the subway boom that is going on in China. Realizing that they can't fit their population into cars without choking on the result, they decide to expand rapidly like Robert Moses. While its fast and it gets it done, I'm not sure I would want the government to come and just kick whole neighborhoods up to build lines. On the other hand, it sure beats having to wait ten years for the New Starts program. Ridiculous. We could build a system like that with all the public involvement we enjoy, it just needs to be funded. Subways for America. How about starting out with massive expansions of Subways in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Baltimore etc. Perhaps even lines in places like Minneapolis and Tampa. Being a little selfish, could we put one on Geary and Van Ness? It would really help me get to the In N Out Burger and the local gatherings on Saturday's for Texas football without spending an hour on transit to go 5 miles.

Brian Taylor, a professor of urban planning at UCLA, noted that the United States used to be much more heavy-handed in its planning policies. Consider, for instance, the way whole swaths of central Los Angeles were razed to make way for the Santa Monica Freeway. Perhaps, he said, China is simply at a different stage in its evolution, both in terms of economic development and political participation.

From about 1890 to the late 1970s, he said, Los Angeles expanded its transportation system at an astonishing rate, first building the world's most extensive streetcar system and then tearing it down and building the world's first and largest freeway network.

"So it's not as if we haven't had these enormous investment eras in transportation infrastructure," Taylor said.

Cities "go through these various epochs of growth," he said, and at the moment, Los Angeles is in a very different stage than Shanghai.

(The Other) Subway to the Sea

With Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa planning the subway to the sea on Wilshire in Los Angeles, I think Mayor Newsom should start his own program in San Francisco. One of most ridden bus lines in the United States, the 38 Geary is always plastered with faces on the windows because it is so full and needs more capacity. The Geary Corridor also has the limited service 38L which acts as an express bus. So why are they going to spend millions of dollars to take away a lane and save riders only a few minutes while using the same buses?

The first step of the second subway to the sea is the 3rd Street light rail which opens in the next few months. The next step is the central subway project which leaves a spur going west to link up a future Geary Subway before it turns off to go under Stockton(which by the way should continue past broadway). The decision to build the GS to at least Masonic though is very far off while they wait for more money. But really the line is ready to go.

So the problem with this picture is that while the United States FWHA would put in 90% of the cost for a road that desperately needed to be built, they would do it. This is the top example of what is happening with the new starts program. Funding for major urban rail projects is getting stymied for artery clogging BRT and unneeded roads by folks who don't like to invest in infrastructure needed to make cities work. aka the libertarian movement. Where would they be without the Federal Highway Program in their arguments? Probably arguing for better transit to support the free market.

The point is that projects like Geary are the projects that need to be funded. Folks shouldn't be plastered on the windows bus service is not adequate. This is why the case needs to be made for a major transit infrastructure initiative that rivals that of the Highway expansion of the last century. The first project? Geary Subway to the Sea