Because Exclusive Bus Lanes Aren’t Expensive Enough

Los Angeles transit officials are eagerly contemplating the opportunity to spend money converting the Orange bus-rapid transit line into a light-rail line. To promote this idea, they are letting people know that light rail will be faster, more comfortable, and operate more frequently (so riders will be less likely to have to stand) than buses.


These lanes are exclusively dedicated to buses, but transit agency officials say they need to replace them with light rail because there is no room to run more than one bus every eight minutes.

Of course, all of these things are wrong. The current bus line averages 26 mph, about 4 mph faster than the average light-rail line. Buses can be just as comfortable as light rail, and when vehicles are full, a higher percentage of bus riders get to sit down (about two-thirds as opposed to less than half). As for frequencies, the current schedule of the Orange line calls for one bus every eight minutes at rush hour. Since the road is closed to all other traffic, somehow I think they could squeeze a few more in if they wanted to.

That the line is a bus line at all is due to a curious law passed in 1991 forbidding the use of rail in the corridor, which had been used by Pacific Electric streetcars until 1952. So Metro built an exclusive bus corridor at a cost of $18 million a mile–$22 million in today’s money. That law was repealed a few weeks ago, allowing L.A. Metro officials to think about spending more money in the corridor.

Years ago, a researcher named Jonathan Richmond interviewed Los Angeles public officials and discovered a disconnect between their views of light rail and reality. The interviews would go something like this:

“Why do you support light rail?”

“Because it is so fast, people are sure to want to ride it.”

“You know it will only go 22 miles per hour.”

A viagra pill team of qualified and experienced sports therapists in Dublin. Apart from that salmons and nuts are also great sources of Arginine. levitra no prescription Headache, facial flushing etc. are some of the most viagra free pill common propels which lead to sexual dysfunction or performance. Webcopy Services the levels of sugar in the blood, urine and usually go back to normal and continue to remain order cialis online look here stable with the help of chiropractic adjustments. “Really? I thought it would be faster than that.”

“Yes, and many light-rail lines are even slower than that. So, now why do you support light rail?”

“Because it is so fast.”

The same disconnect continues today. After a collision between a bus and a car at an intersection, officials slowed down the buses, and one state senator warned that the bus line was “unsafe at any speed.” But trains will be able to go faster because being hit by a 300,000-pound train is so much safer than being hit by a 50,000-pound bus.

“With as many as 40,000 new jobs expected” in the area, officials say, “a light-rail system that could handle up to 60,000 riders a day is needed.” Because a bus line couldn’t possibly move that many people per day, could it?

Buses, in fact, have a clear capacity advantage over light rail. For example, Metro could rebuild platforms at each station to handle four buses at a time. Each bus could stop at each station for up to a minute unloading and loading passengers. Then the line could move four buses per minute, each capable of hold 100 people, for a total of 24,000 people per hour. By comparison, three-car light-rail trains, each car hold 150 passengers, can safely operate no more frequently than every three minutes, thus moving about 9,000 people per hour.

Moreover, buses have at least two other huge advantages over rail. First, without reducing the number of other buses, express buses could be added that skip some of the stops along the route. Because light-rail lines have no passing tracks, they have no options for express rail.

Second, when reaching the end of the exclusive bus lanes, the buses can continue on city streets, reaching more neighborhoods and job centers. Trains have to stop when the reach the end of rails, forcing people to transfer.

Los Angeles’ fixation with rail reminds me of Cordelia Chase, the Valley girl who was Buffy’s in-school nemesis in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In an early episode, we overhear Cordelia tell her friends, “When I go shopping, I have to have the most expensive thing. Not because it’s expensive, but because it costs more.”

This attitude has many causes, but it is reinforced by the fact that spending more money creates more opportunities for contractors to earn profits and generates more political favors. But spending more on rail also means spending less on something else. Since rail has no inherent advantage over bus, and many disadvantages, a decision to convert the Orange line to light rail would reveal a callous disregard for both the facts and for taxpayers’ interests.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

54 Responses to Because Exclusive Bus Lanes Aren’t Expensive Enough

  1. gattboy says:

    although consulting the catechism, that cracker is also the host, right?

  2. letsgola says:

    FWIW, LA Metro actually doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about converting the Orange Line to LRT; they’ve already got enough on their plate. LA Metro has repeatedly said that the Orange Line is not at capacity, and those of us here in Los Angeles that care about building good transit have been arguing that there’s no reason to convert the Orange Line to LRT for over a year: http://letsgola.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/orange-crushed/ The bus is running on 4 minute headways, which isn’t even close to capacity.

    The push for Orange Line LRT is coming from some elected pols and from the usual urban planning suspects.

  3. transitboy says:

    We can’t add any more buses on the Orange Line and maintain their rapid nature, as the signal priority won’t work at headways less than every 4 minutes. While as letsgola points out the signals could be retimed to allow slightly less headways, I can’t really imagine the volume of north-south traffic allowing for signal cycles of less than 2 minutes. Note that only if both directions of the Orange Line pass each other at an intersection will the headway between buses crossing a street be four minutes; an eastbound one could just as easily go through an intersection 2 minutes after a westbound one did, which would equal the minimum cycle time.

    Also, letsgola notes a couple of locations where reduction of the signal cycle might not be possible. If any one intersection could not allow for an increased frequency than an increased frequency would not be possible.

    The antiplanner also talks about how many more buses can proceed down a street than light rail lines. While true, these buses will not be rapid transit – they will be slow congested transit, with the possible exception being if you have the money to build a 300 bay bus terminal with direct freeway access.

  4. Tom Rubin says:

    The following is from my response to recent series of postings on a local LA forum on this subject.

    THOMAS A. RUBIN, CPA, CMA, CMC, CIA, CGFM, CFM
    2007 Bywood Drive
    Oakland, California 94602-1937
    Home Office Telephone/FAX: (510) 531-0624
    LAUSD: (213) 241-5182 Mobile: (213) 447-6601
    e-mail: tarubin@earthlink.net
    Licensed by the California Board of Accountancy

    ORANGE LINE vs. RAIL – STREETBLOG LA
    MAY 27, 2014

    http://la.streetsblog.org/2014/05/27/the-myth-of-the-magic-bus-the-weird-politics-and-persistently-strange-logic-behind-the-orange-line/

    For those that don’t know me, I’ve been in the governmental transportation business, mainly public transit, for about four decades, was the last chief financial officer of the Southern California Rapid Transit District before the merger that formed MTA in 1993, and was the chief expert on the CEQA challenge to what we now call the Orange Line before it opened – which, in the legal sense, we won and, I believe, our concerns were proven, even though MTA did go ahead and build it.

    This discussion has a lot of good information, but there is also a fair amount of misunderstanding – and a lot left out.

    (One quick thing – what we now call the Orange Line never had that name during the planning and environmental clearance process, but I’m going to use the name “Orange Line” back through its history anyway.)

    First, with some important exceptions, there is not really much difference in operating speed and carrying capacity between bus rapid transit and light rail for the Orange Line as it was designed in this specific alignment within available financial resources and other political constraints.

    Let’s start with speed. The key limiting factor has not much to do with the selection of the transit mode, but a lot more to do with the design of the guideway. For the Orange Line, the basic decision was, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA – yes, I know it are currently using “Metro” as a service mark, but there are about six dozen other “Metro” transit agencies in this nation right now, and only about a dozen MTAs, so I’m going to use MTA) was not going to pay for grade separation; this was going to be an at-grade transit guideway – with all the intersections, many of them extremely strange, just getting through them safely is a major concern, with speed having to be the secondary consideration (well, not at first, but, in the end).

    Further, MTA agreed to limit the speed of the vehicles on Chandler Boulevard to the speed limit for rubber-tire vehicles, rather than the 55 mph that had originally been planned – which was never really all that realist, as anyone who thinks about the problems of trying to do traffic signal progressions for a 55 mph transit guideway in the median of a 35 mph street can figure for themselves (yes, it can be done, but it is certainly not simple, and that is being very kind).

    MTA also planned to operate buses through intersections at 45 mpg, without any kind of grade crossing safety devices other than traffic signal preemption, signs, and paint on the concrete – which was rather idiotic to begin with, given that the maximum speed through similarly designed intersections for light rail transit (LRT) was 35 mph with crossing gates, etc. The key difference was, for LRT, there were California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) requirements for grade crossings, but the PUC has no authority over BRT – and there is no other external authority, either, other than the cities, counties, and State in a very general sense.

    What is even more interesting – as a commentary on how MTA approaches guideway transit planning – is that MTA maintained in the Orange Line DEIS/DEIR that 45 mpg through intersections without any rail crossing-type devices was perfectly fine, but in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement/Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIS/DEIR) for what became the Expo Line, in discussing similar types of intersections for the bus rapid transit (BRT) option, stated that intersections with crossing speeds over 35 mph would require rail crossing-type safety devices.

    Given the history of the Blue Line, the most dangerous light rail line in the U.S., due to operating trains at high speed (55 mpg) through a dense urban street network with many cross streets and other issues, it was simply not realistic to believe that operating a surface busway at high speed was ever going to be possible. MTA was told this by many people – myself most certainly included – and simply chose to consistently say, yeah, we hear you, but we’re right and you’re wrong and that’s how we’re going to plan, design, and operate it – which, as it turned out, was not possible.

    For a light rail line at grade, there would not have been any huge difference in the outcome or operating speed, given this basic at-grade, keep-the-cost-down, design decision. It is not a matter of rubber tire or steel-on-steel, it is that there some things you just can’t do with surface running transit vehicles through large numbers of at-grade intersections.

    High speed bus operations quickly proved impossible for several reasons. In the end, the key one was simply the basic rule of bus operator survival: if your bus is in a collision, chances are very high that you will be the first one who knows about it. During pre-revenue operations, the operators simply refused to drive through the intersections at what they considered excessive speeds – and MTA management realized the wisdom of their judgment and accepted it.

    There had been numerous strong objections to the MTA 45 mph through intersections plan, particularly after the results of a very similar such operating rule for the Miami-Dade Transit South Busway, the only other operating busway in the nation at the time, became known. MDT’s operation, like what latter became known as the Orange Line, was also a former rail line converted to a busway, was also located very much close-by and parallel to a major surface road, and also had a number of very strange intersections. The collision/fatality/injury history for it was terrible, with high numbers of collisions and injuries, and, after the second fatality – a County Deputy Sherriff who was the nephew of a sitting member of the Board of County Commissioners – the rules were changed to require all buses to come to a complete stop at each intersection, even when the bus had a “green.” After several years, and various changes to the corridor and the operating rules, this requirement was changed – and buses were allowed to go through, with greens, at 15 mph.

    The first day of Orange Line revenue service, there were two collisions, including one where over a dozen passengers were carried off the bus and laid down on an orange tarp while awaiting transport, all very well covered by the press and media. The rules were soon changed for a maximum speed through intersections of ten mph – with the City of LA assigned traffic officers to try to keep collisions to a minimum.

    Let’s start with a basic understanding of traffic flows in the San Fernando Valley. It is long (E-W) and narrow (N-S) and has an outstanding “grid” network of N-S and E-W major arterials at one mile intervals and semi-major arterials between the majors. This is certainly not a totally uniform pattern through the entire Valley, but it a more uniform and comprehensive grid that the vast majority of major urban areas have.

    At the risk of considerable oversimplification, the major E-W traffic flow is on the freeways, CA118 and CA101/134. With the obvious exception of I-5, I-405, and CA170, the N-S flow is on arterials – and LA-DOT times the arterial signal progressions to favor N-S.

    This caused a major problem when MTA did the original Orange Line DEIS/DEIR assuming that buses would get total signal preemption most of the time (meaning that whenever a bus wanted to cross a street, it would get a green) and signal preference the rest of the time (see explanation below). LA-DOT – which, if it isn’t the best in the world at this type of traffic control, is certainly within spitting distance – refused to go along.

    … and, IMHO, were absolutely correct in drawing that line in the sand; MTA eventually had to agree and to back off.

    What was agreed to was that the Orange Line would get the same type of traffic signal progression that it got for its Rapid Bus (Metro Rapid) bus lines, which has two parts:

    1. The lights are timed so that, once a vehicle leaves a station, it will get “greens” all the way to the next station. This is actually the more important component, even though the next one tends to get far more publicity.
    2. Buses can “borrow” up to 10% of a signal cycle to get an early green or to extend a green. In the East Valley, the usual cycle is 90 seconds (longer in the West Valley), measured from Northbound traffic at an intersection getting a green to the next Northbound green initiated. If a bus is approaching an intersection where its signal is red, a system of advance loops and bus-mounted transponders detect, track, and time the approach and, if an early initiation of green will be useful, it can be initiated up to nine seconds (10% of 90 seconds) early. Alternatively, if a bus is approach an intersection with a green signal, but will not make it in time, the green signal will be extended up to nine seconds. The “loan” is then repaid to the perpendicular street signal timing over the next two cycles and no new “loan” can be made until the first loan is “paid off.”

    This is helpful to getting buses faster along their route, but it was far less than MTA had hoped – and planned – for.

    Finally, we had the MTA’s choice of vehicles. The key considerations were: (1) it had to look as much as possible like a light rail vehicle, or at least not look like a bus, and (2) it had to be clean green to the max.

    So, MTA decided to go with a 60-foot artic, which does have higher capacity, a desirable attribute for a high-capacity transit guideway, but carries with it some negatives, such as longer headways – and a far lower horsepower/torque-to-weight ratio. The clean green requirement turned out to be more problematic, because MTA wanted a CNG/Hybrid – which did not exist anywhere in the world. So, it had to settle for straight CNG when it threw a bid opening party for the CNG/Hybrid and no one came.

    Unfortunately, the 60-foot artic turned out to be just about the slowest bus anywhere – for a busway that was originally spec’ed to operate at 55 mph, the zero-55 speed with a full load was 85 seconds and required just short of 5,000 feet – which meant that, with average distance between stations of about one mile, and at-grade intersections between almost all the stations, there was only one place on the entire route that 55 mph was possible – and it is not clear that these buses can consistently hit 55 mph on the Orange Line even in that spot.

    The basic justification for the Orange Line was speed of travel – the original DEIS/DEIR had MTA saying Guideway BRT would go from Warner Center to North Hollywood in 28.8 minutes (which would be an average speed of 29 mph, remarkable considering that the Red Line subway from Union Station to North Hollywood, which has absolutely no at-grade intersections, far longer average distance between stations, and has a 65 mph top speed for a lot of the route and 75 mph for the rest, does 30 mph), vs. 50 minutes for rapid bus.

    Of course, it turned out that, not only was the 28.8 minutes based on many assumptions that MTA knew were impossible even back then (such as doing 55 mph on Chandler, which MTA had already agreed it would not), the 50 minutes for Rapid Bus was based on the travel time between Warner Center and Universal City, which was over a mile longer than the Warner Center-North Hollywood route, mainly over a road (Ventura) with far higher traffic, more signalized intersections, and a lower speed limit than the main street (Victory) for the North Hollywood route – and MTA had the Ventura Rapid Bus line 750 shown as 45 minutes end-to-end at peak in its published schedules.

    In the final errata to the revised FEIR for the Orange Line, MTA has a travel time for the busway of 40 minutes (it still had the 28.8 minute figure in it, but that was under the totally non-operative assumption that the Orange Line would get near-total traffic signal preemption, which LA-DOT has never given any indication it would ever be open to) – and 34.4-38.7 minutes for Rapid Bus on the Victory route.

    Of course, that came out late on the Friday afternoon before the Monday morning MTA Board meeting when the final decision was made to build the line – as if anyone was at all surprised.

    The current MTA scheduled times between North Hollywood and Warner Center for the Orange Line is 44-47 minutes at peak – which is right about 18 mph.

    So, let’s see if we can get this straight – MTA made its decision for BRT based on a travel time of 28.8 minutes for a dedicated guideway that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but the actual was ~45 minutes, with MTA sixteen minutes too low – so MTA’s assumed travel time was about 64% of actual. The main alternative was shown at 50 minutes, but, when MTA finally had to come clean, it was about thirteen minutes less – about 26%.

    BRT started out with a 22 minute advantage – and, at the end it had a seven minute disadvantage.

    Sure, these are people I can rely upon for important decisions, with a track record like that. (I think that we can all agree that we will not be looking to the people who did the original analysis to invest our IRAs.)

    So, you are wondering, for the criteria of travel time, doesn’t this mean that the Orange Line should have been done as LRT?

    Well, no.

    Or, more properly, just because MTA completely screwed up the projection of the BRT so badly, that doesn’t mean that LRT would be all that much faster than BRT in a comparable Orange Line alignment.

    Yes, LRT would be faster, primarily due to the very slow buses selected. Generally, urban rail vehicles can start their acceleration from a stop at about three mph/second, which means it takes about five seconds to get to fifteen mph. Buses – most, not the Metro Liners – do about two mph/second up to fifteen mph, or about seven-and-one-half seconds. The acceleration gets slower for both from then on, but there are not a whole lot of people who will try to tell you that buses can get up to speed faster than rail, at least, most types of rail. However, braking is pretty much similar for both – the limitation is how much you want to bounce around the passengers – and rail doesn’t always use its full acceleration.

    There are models that can be (and need to be) utilized for projecting end-to-end travel times. There are a lot of inputs, and you need to have all of them before you really know the result. For example, faster acceleration, of the type I just laid out for LRT vs. BRT, can wind up saving several seconds on a one-mile run from a dead stop at station one to a dead stop at station two – but, if the traffic signal progression is not established to allow the faster vehicle to depart that many seconds earlier than the slower vehicle (assuming the same station dwell time), there is no saving.

    This could go the other way, as well – if that saving a few seconds allowed the start from station two to being early enough to catch an earlier signal cycle, it could save a full 90 seconds (at the Eastern end of the Valley, even more at the Western end). This is less likely to occur, but it is a possibility.

    Of course, one of the big problems with the Orange Line was that original assumptions for vehicle acceleration and speed. I saw the original model runs, which were done with standard 40-foot buses, which are far faster off the line than the Metro Liners, which made a big enough difference that they actually were getting to 55 mph for a lot of the sections on the Western end of the line – but, when the actual details for Metro Liners were known, they were so different from the original assumptions, it was start over time.

    I never actually got any feedback from LA-DOT as to how effectively they were able to configure the traffic signal progressions along the Orange Line to minimize travel time. This is a highly complex and detailed process that requires a lot of professional knowledge and experience. LA-DOT is very good at this, they have been very successful in setting these up for Rapid Bus Lines line the 720 Wilshire – but the Orange Line is so slow that (45 minutes to go 13.7 miles is a bit over 18 mph, not particularly high, particularly with a dedicated guideway for the vast majority of the alignment), and from my own travels on the Orange Line, I’ve always wondered how successful this was.

    As far as speed of travel, that’s about it for the difference with usual buses – which MTA wasn’t interested in using for the Orange Line because, after all, appearances are far more important than performance.

    LRT would be faster due to its acceleration advantage. Also, it is a bit easier setting up a signal progression for station to station with LRT because the acceleration and speed can be more consistent than with bus – not a big difference, but there is a difference, particularly in the high speed sections where the trains are under automatic train control, which doesn’t exist for buses.

    However, unless there was a decision to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for guideway grade separation, the light rail vehicles would not be able to actually get along the alignment all that much faster than buses – and that money never existed, still doesn’t, and it is hard to see how it ever will. I can’t see where the money to just put down the rails, do the special trackwork, signals, etc. – and, don’t forget, if you want to do any kind of rail on the Orange Line, not only do you need an operating yard somewhere reasonably close by (good luck finding several acres, particularly since doing rail maintenance at night is not exactly the quietest operation in the world), but you also need to lay down rail to get from the yard to the revenue track.

    The main problem with the Orange Line speed is the Orange Line alignment. Next time you’re on the Orange Line, watch the intersections carefully as you are going down the line. There are several of the nuttiest you will see anywhere, such as cutting right across the middle of an intersection diagonally, and having parallel roads with very little separation from the busway, plus diagonal crosses and merges. The slowdowns are not so much bus vs. rail as they are that any type of guideway transit, at grade, along the Orange Line alignment is going to be extremely problematic, particularly given the negative impact on N-S traffic signal cycle time at so many arterial intersections.

    Now, let’s spend some time on what it costs to build things – in the only comparison that is worth doing, comparisons to what is possible in LA. Comparing what it costs to build BRT in LA to LRT somewhere else or diesel multiple units (DMU) is Orange County or New Jersey is just not really valid.

    Including the extra station that was added for the North Hollywood-Warner Center Orange Line after the original design was well underway, and including a fair portion of the $159 million that MTA spent to buy the Burbank Branch (to build the San Fernando Valley East-West Subway under) the total price was about $450 million for the original Orange Line (not counting the more recent extension up to Chatsworth).

    By the way, one of the main reasons for building the Orange Line was so that MTA would not have to explain why it wasted $159 million for something it had no use for – and, in case you had any questions on this, yes, MTA overpaid incredibly for this and the other rail lines it bought from the ATSP, the SP, and the UP – as they were known at the time.

    And, while we were at it, yes, Zev may have sketched the Orange Line alignment on a napkin at some point, but he was hardly the originator. The Burbank Branch was where it was, the North Hollywood Station was where it was, Warner Center was where it was, and where the Hell else was the Orange Line going to go, particularly after Burbank decided it had no interest (at that time) in having go their way? One other very critical, but very little known factor is that the Warner Center specific plan specifically prohibited any further development without guideway transit going to it, which made a busway (or LRT or subway, but neither of these were going to happen) to Warner Center an absolute must requirement.

    I was in the first tour that Martha Welborne, then a private architect who was very interested in promoting BRT, and now the MTA Executive Director, Countywide Planning, took to Curitiba; Zev was in the second. I actually organized an afternoon driving up and down the Expo corridor looking at what would be involved in trying to do BRT on that alignment, and a lot of the time was spent at the Western end, trying to evaluate the options for actually getting to Santa Monica from where the then existing rail alignment stopped. This was a real issue and there was no clear winner, which is why so many alternatives were studies for a busway alignment – or light rail, which, of course, is what was eventually built.

    We didn’t bother with a similar tour of the Burbank Branch because there was never the slightest doubt where it would run; the only alternative corridors studied were for non-BRT.

    I give the MTA staff great credit for accomplishing the absolute ne plus ultra of a successful planner – convincing a key powerful member of the governing board that the project was his idea.

    When you are trying to get a project approved, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

    Getting back to our cost comparisons, the cost of the Pasadena Gold Line, which opened a few years earlier, and is almost the exact same length of the Orange Line, was $755 million – about two-thirds higher per mile for LRT than was spent, all in, on the Orange Line. Of course, the PGL cost doesn’t include the cost of the alignment, so, on the basis of construction and equipment costs, the PGL is closer to double the cost per mile of the original Orange Line.

    Did the public get more? Well, the ridership is similar – right now, the Gold Line is higher, but the Eastside extension is longer than the Chatsworth extension and has been in place longer, but I’ll give the Gold Line a small plus overall. But, the Gold Line serves downtown and there is no trip generator on the Orange Line that generates that much ridership – Red Line connections are the main event – so this should be expected.

    The big difference is speed – the Pasadena Gold Line is much faster than the Orange Line, but the Eastside isn’t.

    That’s really what the extra money went for – well, along with putting the rails down, new bridges, electrification, signals, train control, an operating yard, elevating sections of it, getting it into Union Station, constructing part of it in the middle of a live freeway, things like that. However, having spent a lot of time going back and forth on both the Gold and Orange Lines, I believe it would have been a lot more expensive to build additional speed in the Orange Line than the Gold Line. Trying to get around – or, more precisely, over – the many nutty intersections would have cost tens of millions of dollars for each intersection, and there are a whole lot of them.

    The Expo Line, which originally was going to be BRT, had costs in the EIR of $429.2 million – and $674.4 million for LRT.

    The actual for Expo LRT is now coming in at $2,442 million (and long experience of tracking costs of MTA major capital projects leads me to lack confidence that this will be the full and final cost for Expo).

    MTA was actually relatively close on the cost of the Orange Line. They played some of their usual games, such as not disclosing that the original cost in the EIR included the costs for the fleet two decades out, but the actual fleet for opening was much smaller, and I’m not including the cost of having to repave after they figured out their wonderful new paving idea (high concentration of recycled rubber tire content, which was to have the dual benefit of being green and keeping the noise down) couldn’t handle the loads from the heaviest bus ever. They also decided that, since they already owned the Burbank Branch, there is no need to show the costs of buying in years earlier – nor did they include as a cost of the Orange Line the millions of dollars per year lost from the lease payments from the companies that were paying to use the land that had to be taken back to put the alignment on.

    While I have every confidence that MTA would have exceeded the budget for Expo BRT, BRT started 36% lower and no way in hell that BRT was going up anything remotely close to 250+% like MTA has done with Expo LRT, let alone 470% to be as expensive as Expo LRT.

    OK, now let’s talk about capacity. Yes, the Orange Line is overloaded at peak – and some other times. Of course, with LRT, you can just add cars to a train to increase capacity. But you can’t do that with bus.

    Ahhhhhh – why not?

    Just platoon them – run two buses together, one right on the tail of the other.

    If you design the original station platforms long enough, not really difficult to do that. If you didn’t, well extend them – like MTA had to spend $10 million doing for the Blue Line after it decided that it would be necessary to operate three-car trains to handle the loads. But, next time you are riding the Orange Line, just take a look at a bus as it comes to a stop and do your own eyeball of how well two 60-footers would fit in that station. (Hint: I’ve seen it done, during various pre-opening demo runs, and there are no problems at all – and three 40-footers take only slightly more length than two 60-footers.)

    Wouldn’t actually be all that much more difficult to run three 60-foot bus “consists” – but, doubt there is a going to be a need any time soon.

    This is not quite a simple as it sounds – but, there is nothing terribly difficult about it if you plan and train for it.

    One of the big problems is that people tend to board the first bus that shows up. So, to get around this and balance the loads, the buses will have to periodically “flip” – with the follower passing the leader.

    MTA has never done this on the Orange Line and has worked strongly to prevent it. Yes, there is some additional risk involved (for example, it would not be at all good if the follower is moving around the leader and the leader decides to pull out at the wrong time), so, one has to have procedures and training, and perhaps even some technology, but, believe me, this is far less difficult than many things that MTA now does dozens, if not hundreds, of times per day – and this type of flipping is something that happens frequently on MTA street-running bus lines.

    Let’s get into the reason that the Orange Line was built – and then why it was built as BRT.

    Over the previous few years before MTA got heavily into getting this thing going, MTA had gone through another of its periodic financial melt-downs. Usual reason, trying to do too much at once, assuming sales tax revenue growth that didn’t happen, underestimating construction costs so that more projects can be done at the same time, and then “forgetting” that, once you build something, not only do you have to pay to operate it, but to do capital renewal and replacement to keep them running.

    (Oh, and then there was the Consent Decree, which MTA originally told the Board would cost either nothing or $20 million [depending on which Board Member or Board staffer that was in the back room when it was briefed you ask], but would up being just a bit more than that.)

    But, after the Red Line Eastside and Mid-City were both outright cancelled (after spending about $155 million on them) and the Pasadena Gold Line construction had to halted mid-construction, it was getting difficult to figure out how to keep the construction program going – particularly since every Member of the Board and every community wanted “their” project to be next. So, something had to be done to try to do as much as possible with limited financial resources.

    So, MTA was very interested in anything that would reduce costs, particularly construction costs – and BRT looked like a good thing to check out.

    Now, keep one other thing in mind – one of the main events going on when the Orange Line was getting going was the Valley succession movement – and one hell of a lot of people in the City, particularly City Hall, were very worried about it.

    One of the big issues was, the money is coming from the Valley and being spent on the other side of the Hills – without the people that the money was coming from having enough say over that. Well, there is certainly some truth in that, but …

    So, what was going to be done about that by the powers-that-be? The obvious thing was to spend a lot of money in the Valley for a landmark project so that there would be something to point to in order to prove the secessionists wrong.

    Well, actually, the Valley wasn’t doing that bad, at least on rail lines. With the Red Line going to North Hollywood and two Metrolink Lines, the Valley was doing very well against any other portion of the County except downtown – where just about all rail lines, all over the U.S., wind up.

    But, that wasn’t the point, the point was to get something being built – and quickly.

    (Some of you may have noticed a minor little logic gap here, namely that, what the people in the Valley were complaining about was the CITY OF LA was taking their money and not giving enough back, but the “solution” was to have MTA spend money in the Valley – interestingly, at the same time that the City was using its local return funds to pay for part of the costs of the Red Line MOS-2 to Hollywood – to which, the response is, so?

    If we can get MTA to spend its money for something that will help keep the Valley off our back down at City Hall so we can do what we want to do with City money, wasn’t that the entire point of setting up MTA in the first place?)

    So, what was proposed to be built in the Valley was really important, what was important was getting something prominent going – and soon.

    Now, we shouldn’t forget the legacy of then-Senator Robbins – before he was awarded long-term room-and-board by the Federal government – of rail in the Valley.

    He was in a position of power in Sacto and he wanted to make sure that, if those people on the other side of the hills were going to get a subway, by heavens, the people in his District were going to as well – so, he put that into law.

    Now, you have to understand that his bill required that any transit along this segment be subway. Specifically, there were several provisions of what is now PUC §130265 that were on point, but the key one in regard to the Orange Line, as build, was:

    “(a) In the area between the western curb of Hazeltine Avenue and a line parallel to and 50 feet west of the western edge of the Hollywood freeway, there may not be constructed any exclusive public mass transit *** guideway, rail rapid transit or light rail system, or other track, other than as a subway system that is covered and below grade.”

    OK, except for the “***” – which I added for a reason that will become clear in a moment, that was the statute that Senator Robbins got passed – and I think anyone who reads it will conclude that it gave MTA a really major problem in building BRT in this corridor.

    Now, the reason that the “***” is there is, when I went to get that section printed out after the Legislature session before the Orange Line construction started had ended, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, one word – “rail” – had been magically added.

    I started calling people, including attorneys familiar with the subject, and no one had the slightest idea what I was talking about – I wound up sending out a lot of e-mails with the URL and “don’t believe me, go see for yourself.”

    I had been very carefully following everything going on in Sacto and I had known that there had been no bill introduced, no amendment, no hearings, no nothing – but, on the last day of the legislative session, that one word addition somehow found its way into a bill that had absolutely nothing to do with transit or the San Fernando Valley, got passed by both houses, and got signed by the Governor.

    If you weren’t on the floor of the Senate and the Assembly, you would have not had a chance in Hell of knowing about before it was voted on – and, even if you were, changes were close to certainty you had no idea what you just did.

    Wasn’t the first time that this had been done and I am very confident it won’t be the last.

    Well, you have to give the devil his due – MTA managed to get rid of what would have been a huge legal issue in building BRT in the Valley along this alignment.

    Let’s spend a little time on diesel multiple units (DMU), aka railbus. It is a useful tool for many transportation situations, but the Valley wasn’t and won’t be one of them. It is widely used in Europe and elsewhere, including Canada, and has been implemented in Austin, Denton (TX), Miami-West Palm Beach (Tri-Rail), New Jersey (River Line), North San Diego County, and Portland (Tri-Met WES), with construction underway for Sonoma-Marin Area Rapid Transit (DUMB – Note: while it might not appear that this is what the long name spells out, trust me, after spending years studying it, no one with a brain would ever call it “SMART”) and moving forward for BART going into Eastern Contra Costa County. There are studies going on in other places in the U.S.

    First question – is DMU light rail, or is it commuter rail?

    The answer is no.

    Well, since the Federal Transit Administration’s 2010 National Transit Database (NTD) reporting year ended, it isn’t either, so the correct technical answer is no.

    In most cases, DMU’s are used for commuter rail-type service in corridors where there is a perceived need for long-haul commuter express type service, but not enough to consider traditional long trains, particularly of the electric catenary powered variety.

    Some people are using DMU for something that is sorta between light rail and commuter rail, although generally a lot closer to commuter rail, and this was causing confusion – so, FTA decided to stop the confusion and, beginning in the 2011 NTD reporting year, we now have “hybrid rail” – DMU.

    So, it ain’t light rail, it ain’t commuter rail, it is its own thing.

    Although it is certainly possible to operate long DMU trains, this generally is not optimal if there is sufficient demand for this type of service – although, if the idea is to start low and then increase as required, it could make sense. Don’t really know where in the world this has actually happened, but, I’m not going to say it couldn’t.

    But, in general, it is sorta like, what is the right tool for the job? If you need to carry four people, their tools, and some supplies to a job site, a crew-cab pick-up might be just the thing – but, if you need to bring in twenty tons of high-volume building supplies, well, yes, you could do it with a pick-up truck, but don’t you think that a big rig might be a little better way to go?

    DMU is most commonly utilized for single-track operations with long headways, with dominant one-directional service, such as to the center city in the morning and then back to the suburbs in the evening. It is very difficult to operate headways much below 30 minutes on single track in this type of service, and getting below 20 minutes more difficult still, particularly if you are starting with an existing rail line where it is not easy to go in and put in sidings all over the place.

    DMU best case, if there is an existing track, and it is in good shape, all that might be required is very simple station platforms, parking, and drop-off facilities. Nothing ever works out that well in the real world, of course – some of the DMU lines listed above spent hundreds of millions of dollars and one may have gone over one billion dollars – but, it can still be cheaper than other options.

    I’m going to break the discussion of DMU in the Valley into two parts, the first as it might have been used, in the typical way that DMU is used, as the initial operating mode on the Burbank Branch and the second as how it might be utilized today as a replacement for the BRT Orange Line.

    The typical DMU type of alignment – more specifically, single track operation – simply would not have been very useful in the Valley. The pre-existing single track Burbank Branch was very little utilized – like less than one train a week – and not in the best of shape. Undoubtedly, it would have required some track upgrades, as well as signaling and coordination with the traffic signal system. The stations would have had to have been constructed, as well – although the station platforms could have been done with a few loads of redi-mix.

    One basic decision that would have had to have been made is to leave the existing single track as is, more or less, or double track it back then. I tend to believe that the decision would have had to have to double track, primarily because the headways for single tracking would be too long for the type of service that was required in the Valley. Taking the problem to the essence, look at it this was: with Red Line trains arriving at North Hollywood every ten minutes at peak, and multiple bus lines arriving there as well, would a 30-minute headway for departing DMUs be acceptable? How about 20 minutes? What would be acceptable?

    There is no one “right” answer – but, currently, there is an Orange Line bus departing North Hollywood every four minutes at peak.

    It would be improper to state that DMU operations would have to match the BRT schedule. With DMUs somewhat larger, and having greater seated and total passenger capacity than a 60-foot Metro Liner bus, the headways could be reduced somewhat to match the BRT capacity – and, if DMUs were to be run as multi-car consists (or as powered/trailer consists), the capacity could be matched with significantly longer headways. However, it must also be considered that one of the main arguments why the Orange Line should be converted to rail is that its carrying capacity needs to be increased (let’s put aside for the moment potential methodologies for increasing the BRT passenger capacity of the orange Line), which would require headways to be reduced somewhat. Also to be considered is that, as headways are lengthened, demand decreases (although this impact tends to increase significantly from, for example, an increase from four minutes to five minutes to an increase from four minutes to ten minutes).

    Again, there is no one right answer, but I’m going to hazard a projection that DMU operations would have to be in the range from ten minute to fifteen minute headways, preferable the shorter. Keep in mind that the MTA light rail lines have peak period headways of six minutes (Blue, Gold) to seven-and-one-half minutes (Green) to twelve minutes (Expo, for Phase I, almost certainly to be shortened significantly after Phase II goes into operation and is given a few years for ridership to mature), operated generally with two-car consists (except the Blue Line, which has three-car consists at peak) with each car having approximately the same carrying capacity as DMUs.

    It would be difficult, but not impossible, to operate DMUs on a single track Orange Line alignment on ten-minute headways. At a minimum, there would have to be passing tracks added at various locations along the alignment. Using a very simplistic methodology, if we assume 40-minute end-to-end travel time and ten-minute headways, and trains leaving from the end stations simultaneously, there would have to be at least seven passing tracks mid-corridor; for a 50-minute end-to-end travel time and the same assumptions, a minimum of nine.

    In such situations, particularly when starting with pre-existing infrastructure that was never designed for such operation, it is never possible to place the passing tracks exactly where one would prefer them to be. Most likely, most, or all, of these would be placed at stations, where the trains will have to stop in any case, which would reduce total travel time somewhat. Also, if there were to be consideration for eventual upgrade to full double-track, it would be best to begin that process with stations that are already double-tracked for a variety of reasons.

    The reason I assumed both forty- and fifty-minute end-to-end times is because, without a lot more analysis and detailed modeling, which would have to be integrated with the Valley traffic signal system, it is simply not possible to be able to state at this time what the end-to-end travel time will be. We know that the current BRT time is 44-47 minutes at peak, and while, as has been discussed, part of this is due to the very slow-off-the-line buses being utilized, which, presumably, would be replaced by swifter DMUs, it cannot automatically be assumed that DMU single-track operation of the Orange Line would be faster. Indeed, it is very possible that the single track/passing track configuration would require that trains remain at one or more station longer than desired in order to allow the train approaching from the opposite direction of travel to reach the station and clear the track, or that travel speed between stations would be limited to allow for trains in opposing directions of travel to safety and consistently pass. There are a lot of very well-known tools that experienced rail engineers and schedulers can utilize to minimize such issues, but it is impossible to know for sure what the end-to-end travel times would be until substantial research and modeling is done – and, even then, nothing is certain until the trains actually begin operation, as can be shown by the failure of the Orange Line BRT schedule to meet the 28.8 minute original projection, or even the final environmental clearance projection of 40 minutes – and, in most ways, scheduling buses is a lot simpler than scheduling trains on a single-track alignment.

    Another important consideration for BRU operation of the Orange Line would be the requirement for an operating and maintenance yard – which, unlike a BRT operation, requires rails on the ground from the revenue track to the yard.

    There are limited opportunities for such a facility anywhere along the Burbank Branch without taking out existing structures and/or attempting to place the yard in a current recreational facility. Finding a site for such a facility, acquiring it, and then constructing it would be a major expense, most likely in the several tens of millions of dollars, perhaps more, and would likely require several years.

    An alternative could have been to maintain the link from the Burbank Branch to the other existing freight/Amtrac lines and simply operate DMUs in non-revenue service to an operating/maintenance facility along this alignment. This would likely require contracting with Metrolink, a freight railroad, and/or Amtrac to provide these services, which cannot be guaranteed to be possible, and would also likely involve fairly extensive deadhead operations from the operating/ maintenance facility to the revenue track. The deadhead path to this facility would be, at a minimum, very “interesting” to plan, gain approval for, and implement and utilize.

    Such an approach would also almost certainly require the use of Federal Railroad Administration-compliant vehicles, which are heavier in order to provide additional protection against collisions. FRA-compliant vehicles are generally more expensive than non-FRA-compliant vehicles to procure and are somewhat more expensive to operate.

    Operation of DMUs would bring the design and operation of the line under the PUC’s regulations (and/or, very possibly, under FRA’s). This would, among other things, put in far more stringent requirements for grade crossings, including, at a minimum, full grade crossing gates for speeds of travel over 35 mph, and visual and audio warning signals, which would likely require 96 dBa horns – which would undoubtedly cause major issues with the people living nearby, and could call even into question operation at speeds over 35 mph, at least along parts of the alignment.

    All of these combine to question if single-track DMU operation would be significantly faster than BRT operation, if at all, and if there would be significantly greater capacity.

    There isn’t a lot of single-track LRT – for good reason. To save money on its first light rail line, Sacramento Regional Transit single-tracked a key portion of the alignment, which meant that the shortest headway it could run was fifteen minutes – so, to get the required carrying capacity, it had to operate four-car trains, which in turn caused a lot of extra work to be sure that trains this long would not be blocking streets. Fortunately for Sac RT, Sacramento has big blocks, but fifteen minutes is the upper limit of what most people would call decent transit service.

    Turning now to conversion of the existing BRT Orange Line to double-track DMU operation, most of the issues above – such as the requirement for an operating and maintenance facility, PUC rail operating requirements, travel speeds through at-grade intersections, interaction with the Valley rubber tire traffic control system, etc. – would be substantially identical as for single-track operations.

    Double-tracking would allow far simpler operation of the DMU Orange Line and would also likely be faster, although the amount of added speed and saved time is very difficult to determine without significant research and analysis and, even then, the projections would include an uncertainty factor.

    There would, of course, be considerable up-front capital costs, primarily for the rail and special trackwork (including crossover tracks) and some station changes – such as conversion of the North Hollywood BRT Orange Line Station into, most likely, a typical two-track one-way-in, transfer control to the cab at the other end of the train, configuration (this would require “double-ended” [cars with control cabs at both end of the vehicle] DMU’s, which certainly exist, but are somewhat higher in cost than single-ended models, and lose a portion of their passenger carrying capacity).

    If it is possible to find an existing operating and maintenance facility and, most likely, contract with Metrolink, an existing freight railroad, and/or Amtrac to operate it, this would substitute for an new operating and maintenance facility somewhere, preferably close to, along the alignment.

    Comparing the costs of DMU operations to those of the Orange Line, or BRT for that matter, really doesn’t have much point – and, by the way, the New Jersey River Line was not a prize. What was really going on there was that NE Jersey was getting a lot of new rail lines, so SW Jersey had to get something, and this was the “something.” This has been one of the most difficult projects to get anything approaching full data on, but, from press accounts, it appears that the original planning cost estimate was $314 million, the approved construction cost estimates were approximately $450 million, and actual construction cost was between $800 million and $1.2 billion. North County’s Sprinter also came in far over budget and behind schedule. Tri-Met’s WES had multiple problems, mostly having to do with the choice of a very poor DMU vehicle contractor, which also had cost and schedule compliance problems.

    Again, it is not clear that there would be a significant advantage in DMU operation of the Orange Line over the current BRT operation. At this time, while it is expected by proponents that DMU operation would be faster, it is not known how much – nor can we be assured that there would be any savings at all, and the experience of MTA in projecting BRT travel times on the Orange Line makes any projections for travel times of other types of transit subject to considerable precision risk, at least perceived. Any actual reduction in travel time would have to be offset against longer DMU headways, which are an important factor in rider perception of travel time.

    If the ability to operate BRT in platoon fashion is considered, there may not be any difference in passenger capacity – indeed, given the difference in headways, BRT may actually have more capacity than DMU in this alignment.

    Switching to LRT, there would be significant cost to convert the Orange Line from BRT, far more than for DMU, because of the requirement for the overhead catenary, propulsion power supply stations, and a far more expensive central control system. Also, while there could be some possibility of finding an existing, off-site BRU operating and maintenance yard, there is no such possibility for LRT vehicles. The options appear to be to either build a new light rail facility near the LRT Orange Line or to connect the Orange Line to another MTA light rail operating and maintenance yard – which seems non-viable because the of the long distances that would be involved, including significantly new track and (most likely) overhead catenary, and the lack of capacity for additional vehicles at the existing MTA light rail yards.

    There are some definite advantages of BRT over LRT (just as there are some for LRT over BRT), including:

    1. Rail guideway maintenance and capital renewal and replacement is far more expensive than BRT. Some things are pretty much the same – stations, fare collection, parking lots, landscaping – but, slabs of concrete and asphalt are much easier to deal with than rail, special trackwork, signal systems, propulsion power systems, etc.
    2. Operating costs – this can vary, but BRT is generally comparable to LRT. For the Orange Line, the costs for BRT are higher than for MTA’s light rail lines, and MTA’s light rail lines are very expensive to operate on the national scale, but I’m still trying to figure out how the costs of Orange Line security and revenue collection can exceed 40% of total costs. MTA is just not real good at running its fixed guideway transit in a cost-effective manner, which is odd because it is very good at running regular bus. While the Orange Line is expensive to operate as BRT, MTA also has high-cost LRT, compared to national norms, and some of the reasons that Orange Line BRT is so expensive may not change if the mode becomes LRT.
    3. BRT can be operated far more flexibly. You want to operate LRT, you need to lay down rail. But, with BRT, you can enter or exit the guideway just about anyplace that makes “transportation” sense – so people can get on one bus near their home, take it to the guideway, and then travel down the guideway without having to do a transfer, which is great.

    So, how about conversion of the Orange Line to LRT?

    Well, there is actually one real good reason to do that – namely, that MTA used some State money that was restricted for rail to construction the Orange Line, and, if it doesn’t do such a conversion within a few more years, will have to give the money back to the State if it can’t figure out some other way do get around the requirement. I haven’t checked this recently, but I think this was something like $40-50 million.

    That ain’t chump change, but, in the overall MTA scheme of things, not really all that big a deal.

    Here’s the reality – MTA has a huge list of projects that it has Board Members and other powerful people lined up to get done. Given this, spending more money on the Orange Line – some people already “got theirs” and now they want a second bite at the apple? – is going to be very difficult to get through a Board full of people who haven’t gotten theirs yet.

    Just ain’t gonna happen, folks.

    Also, if the Orange Line were to be converted to BRT, it would have to be shut down for quite a while, most likely years, while substitute “rapid bus” style service on arterial streets would replace it during construction.

    Now, here’s the nutty thing – based on MTA’s own environmental clearance document, it appears that running substitute Rapid Bus service on Victory and Lankershim would be faster – as well as cheaper – which would be terrible for MTA: how does it explain that it spent hundreds of millions of dollars extra to operate a slower service that is more expensive to operate and, on top of that, it then decided to take the first mistake out and spend hundreds of millions more for LRT that isn’t really much, if any, faster?

    Oh, also, there is no really much transportation justification for doing it, not that this has much to do with MTA major transportation project decisions.

    Perhaps, there will be some powerful individual who really wants to do this and can figure out how to do it, but … I’m having a real hard time figuring out how this is going to happen, or why, or who is going to do it.

    There was a comment on quad gates. Speaking as the person who first suggested quad gates for the Blue Line, where they have been used effectively at some intersections, the problem is, there are a lot of really weird intersections along the Orange Line where it gets very difficult to put in quad gates.

    If there are streets parallel to the transit guideway close to the guideway, and you have vehicles that want to make left turns after crossing the guideway, they can wind up having the gates close on them on both sides. Now, these aren’t really much in the way of barriers, they are designed to break very easily – the wood in RR crossing gates is about one grade up from balsa and, if you just put it in your gut and walked forward, you’ll break it – but, all too often, you get the deer-in-the-headlight syndrome and people just don’t move, or even get out of the car, as the train comes barreling down the track towards them.

    As to costs of transit capacity, it is certainly true that LRVs are larger, generally about 75 seats to about 40 in a 40-foot bus and about 60 in a 60-foot bus. LRV’s are also designed to have more standees than buses, being wider and having more space near the doors for standees.

    LRV’s also last longer, with the FTA standards being 12 years for full-sized buses and 25 years for rail vehicles.

    However rail vehicles are generally fare more expensive, such as ~$350-400k for 40-footers, $600-650k for 60-footers, and well over $3 million for LRVs.

    When costed on the basis of unit of capacity (seated, standing, crush) per year, rail capacity is generally about double that of bus.

    … and guideway costs of rail are higher still.

    Sooooo, what should MTA have done?

    Not BRT.

    Not LRT.

    Not DMU.

    Rapid bus – more particularly, a network of both E-W and N-S routes.

    When we forced MTA to redo the EIR, the results – MTA’s own model runs – actually showed that this would produce faster travel for more people from more places to more places. And, they would do this at much lower cost and could be implemented in far less time.

    The basic reality is that there really isn’t in the Valley what you like to see for guideway transit: major trip generators. Yes, we have places like the government center, two U’s, some fairly good-sized shopping districts and centers, heavy rail and commuter rail stations, etc., but there is not really anything approaching something like downtown LA – and downtown LA is, by far, the smallest major city central business district relative to urbanized area population in the world.

    So, the Valley is very much an “everybody-going-everywhere” type of travel pattern – which is not very likely to change any time in our lives, or that of our grandkids.

    … and, the Valley has some natural advantages, such as a truly outstanding grid system of major N-S and E-W arterials, and one of the top traffic engineer outfits and traffic signal control systems, and people who know how to use it, on the planet.

    The nice thing about Rapid Bus, as opposed to surface street-type guideway BRT, is that is it far cheaper as to capital costs, rarely hitting 5% of the cost of full guideway BRT, but you can get 75% or more of the speed advantage (I must admit that even I was very surprised when MTA finally promulgated that Rapid Bus on Victory would be faster than the Orange Line, but I’m very sure that Rapid Bus can be competitive). One caveat: When you are operating on city streets, you will run into traffic, which will slow you down, even with all the other gadgets you have going, so guideway BRT does have an important advantage in regard to schedule reliability.

    But, for the cost of the Orange Line, we could have added, to the Ventura 750 line, Rapid Bus on Victory, Sherman Way, and one or two more E-W streets farther North – plus a bunch of N-S streets, and had the whole thing up and running in less time than it took to get the Orange Line into operations, and we would have served a whole lot more people, more quickly, and at far less taxpayer cost. Total transit ridership would have gone up far more than we had with the Orange Line (actually, it is difficult to say that Orange Line increased transit ridership overall because total transit ridership is pretty much a push since it went into service, in large part because MTA has had to reduce service provided and raise fares).

    Not that anyone at MTA really cares about any of those things, of course.

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