The third Los Angeles: Can it truly become a green, sustainable city?

Re:The third Los Angeles: Can it truly become a green, susta... by maceo on Monday April 20, 2015 @10:46PM (#9412010)

As a life-long LA resident, I say don't believe the hype. The article says that the centerpiece is the revitalization of the LA river. As far as I can tell, this isn't happening. Some bike paths were added along the river, which is nice, but that's far from what I'd call revitalization. The bike paths are still poorly lit, they still smell like shit, and they're not getting much use. There's a huge trainyard east of downtown (one of the coolest parts of the city, imo) called Piggyback Yard, which is owned by Union Pacific, who doesn't want to sell the land. It'd be hard for the city to do any significant revitalization of the river without turning the Piggyback Yard into a park that can provide flood control. Furthermore, the US Army corps of engineers controls the LA river, so the voters have no say in what happens here.

The metro extensions have been planned for decades, and there never seems to be much movement. Recently the blue line has been creeping steadily towards Santa Monica but I doubt this will have much of an impact on city life even if it does connect downtown LA to the westside beach communities. I used to encourage everyone to try taking the train, and I used to do it myself all the time, but I haven't hopped on the train at all in the last 12 months. The stations are too spread out, the paths of all the lines make little sense, the trains only come every 15-20 minutes, and a huge chunk of the city is totally cut off from the transit lines. As much as I don't like uber/lyft, they've made it much more enjoyable to live in LA.

Ciclavia is cool, but its just 1 day out of the year. LA is the worst city in the country to ride a bike. They claim to have more bike lines than any other city, but that's only on paper. Just because you paint a person riding a bike next to the gutter of a 2 lane street doesn't make it a bike lane. Yet that is exactly what the city has done in the name of adding bike friendly streets.

All of these projects are little more than photo-ops for city politicians.

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Re:The third Los Angeles: Can it truly become a green, susta... by gamblor956 on Tuesday April 21, 2015 @01:22AM (#9412414)

The LA river revitalization project is a decades-long project that just began 4 years ago. It's already made significant progress in restoring portions of the LA river (though no significant stretches near downtown).

The metro extensions are almost complete for the Expo and Gold lines. Initial preparations for the regional connector connecting the various lines underneath downtown (i.e., utility removal) began 2 years ago. Construction on the Airport Spur and a line connecting the Expo and Purple line (extension) has already begun. This time next year, construction will have begun on the next extension of the Gold line, heading for the eastmost reaches of LA County. (By the way...the Red and Purple lines run every 7 minutes during busy hours, the Blue and Expo lines run every 10. Only the Gold line runs every 12 minutes or less.

Civlavia is held multiple times a year. LA does have more bike lanes than any other city...but LA is also geographically one of the largest cities in the world, so the density of bike lanes is poor.

There is real change in LA, and they're definitely not photo ops.

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Re:The third Los Angeles: Can it truly become a green, susta... by Cloudy on Tuesday April 21, 2015 @01:32AM (#9412432)

The Third Los Angeles is really about how the internet has allowed awareness of otherwise buried treasures of LA to be lost in the noise. The greater Los Angeles area is becoming somewhat what it was intended to be, with the hundreds of surrounding cities converging upon LA as a magnet. Whenever I've attended interesting events in LA, it's never just people from LA proper it's people who've hopped in a car and drove 40 miles to converge with a bunch of other people who've done the same.

This article seems to spin green development, but it's mostly just normal development and the rapid gentrification and rezoning of the old industrial & wholesale districts.

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Re:The third Los Angeles: Can it truly become a green, susta... by CodeWriter23 on Tuesday April 21, 2015 @03:26AM (#9412669)

The real problem with their plan, it is heavy on developing the central city, and light on developing The Valley. But most of Los Angeles' tax revenue comes from The Valley. It has only been about 12 years since the last time The Valley threatened to secede. If this plan goes forward, they won't be threatening next time.

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Re:The third Los Angeles: Can it truly become a green, susta... by Animats on Tuesday April 21, 2015 @03:25AM (#9412668)

I like the concrete river. Since there's little water most of the time, it looks better than muddy dirt. It's also useful for film production. It's there for heavy-rain emergencies, on the rare occasions that LA has to dispose of a lot of water all at once. Does that job fine.

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