MTA is currently building a beautiful and innovative 14- mile- long Busway that will run from North Hollywood to Woodland Hills and is due to open later in the Fall of 2005.
According to a recent press release: “When complete, the Metro Orange Line will incorporate a host of innovative construction and design features, from advanced traffic light signal priority system to artistically designed transit stations, more than 3,000 parking spaces at five park & ride lots, bicycle and pedestrian paths and native landscaping.”
There are sections of the busway, mostly in Sherman Oaks and Woodland Hills, where grasses, trees and other shrubs have been planted in profusion. However, where the Busway runs through industrial Van Nuys, the plantings seems to have evaporated or have not yet been installed. One hopes that the MTA has not pandered to the wealthy areas of the city by lavishing all the landscaping on those districts–and suddenly run out of money for the Van Nuys leg of the route.
Maybe the construction schedule has arranged for the end points to be finished first and the middle area of Van Nuys to be last. Here in Van Nuys we desperately need the public transportation and convenience of the Busway as well as its civic and natural beauties.
Here in Van Nuys 
The Orange line busway is a good idea, but it needs to do one more
thing…and soon. There is a huge and free parking lot at the Chatsworth METROLINK train station.
The morning train service inbound is grade to downtown, but stops
much too early. As a result, thousands of people drive to downtown rather than take the train. If they could return on the REDLINE connecting to an ORANGELINE
BUS they could work late in the downtown area. It would serve the North West valley people and the
big crowd that drives in from Simi
on the 118. People who cummute by car clog the freeways and also tend to vote. Both factors are important to grow transit with
ballot box support. I would think
one ORANGE LINE BUS per 30 minutes
going on to Chatsworth would be
very busy in the evenings. The
riders would get to cruise into
Union Station on the big comfortable METROLINK each morning.
Lots more people would use the
METROLINK if it ran on the weekends
or later into the evening. The new
busway would be the only other way
to get back to their car in the
midevening or later. Anybody agree?
LikeLike
I’m not sure that only Van Nuys will experience graffiti. It will hit the whole system unless it is patrolled 24/7 with cameras and cops along the whole line. It is just too vulnerable with those miles of high, blank walls and I can just imagine those roads becoming hang outs at off hours for beer drinking, pot smoking derelicts who will treat it as badly as they treat themselves.
LikeLike
I’ve been crisscrossing the Orange Line ever since they started putting it together (my post on it evaporated as I wrote it yesterday — damn Firefox), and the landscaping is, indeed, quite nice along Chandler Boulevard in North Hollywood, as well as Victory Boulevard in Woodland Hills. The rest, I really don’t think they’ve gotten to it yet — it will look good. Did you see the Daily News story today on graffiti in the Van Nuys portion? More trouble to deal with.
And as I went home last night, they were digging with bulldozers along the Victory portion between Woodley and Balboa — plenty of work to be done. I guess they can be ready with the road itself by late October, but they’ve got quite a way to go on the landscaping.
Aside from that, I have yet to see even a preliminary schedule of when the damn thing is going to run.
LikeLike