This whole thing about the ridership numbers, this whole thing about the business plan: you’ve got to fix it yourself first. The train right now has got to step up and answer the critics. But he’s holding onto it like it is, the way it is. Someday someone will be able to explain to me why the President of the United States thinks this is his “Go to the Moon” project à la Kennedy because it’s nothing like that. The problem is Brown realized this late because he took the view at the beginning that this was Arnold’s train: he fought for it he wanted it. The second part of your question: “should it be dead?” You know, it’s going to die on its own, the rate that it’s going. I think we’re going to get a lot of it done, but as David Gratz was saying earlier, it’s going to be in bits and pieces. Thus, there’s a new tool now that obstructionists have in just delaying. So we couldn’t afford to take the time to fight and win a silly lawsuit. If it wasn’t shovels-in-the-ground by a certain date, we were going to lose all that money. And the reason we wound up not fighting those couple of nutjobs on Mulholland who were giving us grief on the 405 was the $190 million to build that Howard Berman got out of DC. They don’t have to take you to the court and win: they just have to delay you past the deadline for TIGER grants or any of the federal money. The opposition to projects now has a new tool. Deadlines are there for a good reason: we want to get money on the street we want it to be spent as quickly as possible we want it to be working for people today. It’s an example of a couple of competing interests and something to watch that we all should be careful of in the future. Richard Katz: I think anytime a project goes from $40 billion to $60 billion just based on a report, somebody ought to take a serious look at where it’s going and what’s going on. Simpson, then suspected in the murder of his ex-wife, in June 1994.Audience Question: Richard, update us on the status of high speed rail, which I know has been an interest of yours: I keep reading that it’s dead in California, and if not it ought to be dead in California. for the widely televised low-speed police chase of O.J. interstate route that runs from Irvine, California, north to the Mission Hills district of Los Angeles, is perhaps best known outside L.A. The canyon pass is a traffic choke point even without a construction project, as it serves as a north-south gateway from the city’s sizzling hot San Fernando Valley to several beaches and the more temperate westside. The stretch of the 405 Freeway that will be closed, known locally as the Sepulveda Pass, is traversed by about 500,000 vehicles on a typical summer weekend, said Marc Littman, a spokesman for Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), an agency handling the project. travelers fearful of missing pre-booked airline flights to more distant destinations.įor those seeking a more casual bird’s eye view of the traffic carnage, and the dose of schadenfreude that goes with it, Adventure Helicopter Tours is offering 45-minute flights over the area, complete with champagne, for $400 per couple. Their main message: Stay away, or at least stay off the roads.Īs Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa once predicted, “It will be an absolute nightmare.”Ĭharter helicopter companies are selling air “taxi” service to Los Angeles International Airport for well-heeled L.A. This being Hollywood, officials have recruited several celebrities to warn motorists of the impending gridlock, including pop star Lady Gaga, newly cast “Two and a Half Men” star Ashton Kutcher and “CHiPs” actor Erik Estrada. And L.A.’s public transit agency will provide free service on 26 bus lines and three of its five light-rail lines. In a sign that few motorists in America’s second-largest city take a breezy attitude toward the closure, Los Angeles plans to open its emergency operations center over the weekend. The unprecedented 53-hour shutdown, expected to delay motorists for hours on alternate routes with ripple effects on about a dozen other major highways, will allow crews to demolish a bridge as part of a $1 billion freeway-widening project. “Carmageddon” is the name Los Angeles residents are giving the inevitable and likely epic traffic tie-up that will result when a 10-mile stretch of the 405 Freeway is closed for construction from Friday night to Monday morning between two of the nation’s busiest interchanges. Traffic is seen on the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles, California July 14, 2011.
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