Tinseltown's best kept secret comes off the rails

[question everything]

Tinseltown's best kept secret comes off the rails

Sydney Morning Herlad

March 4, 2006

Trains may soon join plastic surgeons in the LA pantheon, writes Phillip McCarthy in Los Angeles.

IN THE film Collateral Tom Cruise races through a gleaming underground concourse and jumps on to a late-night train. In another thriller, Harrison Ford, a cop chasing a deadbeat down subway stairs, vainly pushes by commuters as the doors of a brightly lit train close. In the remake of The Italian Job Mark Wahlberg drives a Mini Cooper down the same stairs, right on to the train tracks.

(snip)

Who knew Los Angeles, a city famed for sprawl, strip-malls and gridlock, had trains? It probably was a first for Cruise, Ford and Wahlberg to be on one; perhaps the last, barring another scripted set up. Trains are not up there with palm trees or plastic surgeons as potent symbols of Los Angeles. In New York, knowing the difference between the F train and the V train and when it is smart to switch proves you are street smart. In Los Angeles, knowing where the Blue Line meets the Red Line merely suggests you cannot afford a car, and that makes you a loser.

Wahlberg says: "I didn't know you could take a train in LA, that there was a subway here. You can drive around LA and never notice. You never come across anyone who uses it." Chances are Wahlberg's maid or gardener uses public transport to get to and from work. A Los Angeles transit system seems like an oxymoron or an urban myth. This is the city of stretch limos, intricate on/off cloverleafs and road rage. Transport solutions here always had an automotive focus: tougher emissions controls and more car pool lanes. But over the past decade the city has rediscovered rail.

(snip)

With the Green Line, which swoops by Los Angeles International Airport, and the new Gold Line, from downtown to inland Pasadena, they make up a 117 kilometre network that has cost $US10 billion ($13 billion). In a metropolis of 17 million, the system carries a modest 217,000 passengers a day. But that translates into many cars not on the roads.

(snip)

You can already get to the Oscars. Tomorrow night late arriving members of the Australian contingent could get from their inbound sleeper beds to their seats at the Kodak Theatre entirely by train (plus five minutes on an airport shuttle bus). They could strut the red carpet after riding the escalators up from the Hollywood and Highland Red Line train that pulls in directly below the theatre. Think of the greenie points accruing to an Oscar-winning train traveller compared to last year's eco-conscious entry vehicle: a petrol-electric hybrid compact. The phrase Metro Rail is unlikely to supercede last year's Toyota Prius, but Sydney jetsetters would at least find pluses over train travel at home.

(snip)


http://smh.com.au/news/world/tinseltowns-best-kept-secret-comes-off-the-rails/2006/03/03/1141191849884.html#

[Touchdown]

1. Speed is the first movie to show the LA subway.

Much of it was still under construction in 1993, as it's still being built today. The Hollywood line (don't know the color) got too close to the surface and Hollywood Blvd. sinkhole collapsed onto the tunnel, which is where Keanu's "Whoa!" train flew up onto the street at the end of the film.

[Richard Steele]

2. I assumed this was gonna be a Tom Cruise thread. nm

[JohnyCanuck]

3. Ridership on the LA commuter rail system has nowhere to go but up

along with energy prices, even though sprawling, low-denisty suburbs don't make the best configuration for successful mass transit systems.

Now that the topic of Peak Oil and it's effect on energy costs is being broached in the NY Times as a serious and valid concern, maybe more cities will join LA in implementing a commuter rail infrastructure.

Published on 1 Mar 2006 by New York Times. Archived on 3 Mar 2006.

NY Times: The end of oil

by Robert B. Semple Jr.

When President Bush declared in his 2006 State of the Union address that America must cure its "addiction to oil," he framed his case largely in terms of national security — the need to liberate the country from of its dependence on volatile and in some cases hostile nations for much of its energy. He failed to mention two other good reasons to sober up. Both are at least as pressing as national security.

One is global warming. This is not an issue Mr. Bush cares much about. Yet there is no longer any doubt among mainstream scientists that the earth is warming up, that increasing atmospheric temperatures have already damaged fragile ecosystems and that our only real defense against even graver consequences is to burn less fossil fuel — which means, among other things, using less oil.

The second reason is just as unsettling, and is only starting to get the attention it deserves. The Age of Oil — 100-plus years of astonishing economic growth made possible by cheap, abundant oil — could be ending without our really being aware of it. Oil is a finite commodity. At some point even the vast reservoirs of Saudi Arabia will run dry. But before that happens there will come a day when oil production "peaks," when demand overtakes supply (and never looks back), resulting in large and possibly catastrophic price increases that could make today's $60-a-barrel oil look like chump change. Unless, of course, we begin to develop substitutes for oil. Or begin to live more abstemiously. Or both. The concept of peak oil has not been widely written about. But people are talking about it now. It deserves a careful look — largely because it is almost certainly correct. (My emphasis /JC)

I. Peak Oil

In oil-patch lingo, "peak oil" refers to the point at which a given oil reservoir reaches peak production, after which it yields steadily declining amounts, no matter how many new wells are drilled. As Robert L. Hirsch, an expert on energy issues told Congress last December, the life span of individual oil fields is measured in decades. Peak production typically occurs 10 years or so after discovery, or when the reservoir is about half full. An oil field may have large estimated reserves. But a well-managed field that has reached its peak (as most American fields have) has also reached a point of no return, no matter how much new technology is applied. And what's happening in individual fields will be reflected on a global scale, because world production is by definition the sum of its individual parts.

http://www.energybulletin.net/13368.html

[question everything]

4. And Mayor Antonio is trying to compensate for the moronic

planners who stopped one of the lines just short of LAX. All over the world one can take a train from an airport to the city. Even NYC and Chicago have connections.

But yesterday he announced the establishment of FlyAway service - with bays for luggage - from Union Station to LAX, and the first two weeks are free.

[trackfan]

5. I ride the trains here all the time

The Gold Line runs close to our house.

[underpants]

6. Leif Garrett knows

:smoke: