The Downtown LA Cutedoggle -- A Pointless, Expensive Trolley -- Remains On Track
A politician, LA City Councilturd Jose Huizar, is clinging for dear life to the plans to have a ridiculous trolley for downtown Los Angeles -- running on a loop around downtown.

A twain! In a loopiepoo awound downtown LA!

The LA Times Editorial Board, most reasonably, is against it, headlining their piece, most soberly, "A downtown streetcar is not desired":

Last week the Los Angeles City Council approved a nearly $600-million financial plan to build and operate a streetcar on a nearly four-mile loop in downtown. Yet despite the cascade of public dollars being pledged to the project, there's still considerable skepticism over whether the streetcar will -- or even should -- be built.

The streetcar was first pitched more than a decade ago by the Community Redevelopment Agency and business leaders as a way to entice more investors downtown, but there's little need to woo them now. Downtown is teeming with construction crews as developers refurbish historic buildings and erect new ones.

The "twain" was also supposed to cost $125 million. Today's price: $296 million. "And the city has voted to spend an additional $295 million in county sales tax revenue for operations and maintenance for the next 30 years."

In short, city leaders have committed nearly half a billion dollars to build what amounts to a glorified bus. Is this really the best use of precious, limited transportation funding?

The streetcar would cover a 3.8-mile loop between Staples Center and the Civic Center. It wouldn't connect to the booming Arts District or to Disney Hall unless the city comes up with the money for an extension. It wouldn't have a dedicated lane, meaning the trolley could get bogged down in the same traffic as other vehicles. It would travel routes already covered by the city's DASH buses.

Genius!

The fixation on the streetcar crowds out other options to help people move around downtown, such as, say, more buses. Real estate blog CurbedLA outlined several streetcar alternatives, such as a trolley bus or an electric train that rides virtual rails, that could hit the road in a matter of months, rather than years or even decades.

Oh, and as for why Huizar might be clinging so firmly to the streetcar -- entirely in the face of common fucking sense -- might these be the sort of people who fund political campaigns?

Real estate investors also want the streetcar because, unlike a bus, its route wouldn't change; it would be etched in the asphalt. They know their property will always be streetcar-adjacent.

I know many of you don't live in LA, but this is just an example of the behavior of so many pols, elected and re-elected and re-elected again to city councils, state governments, and national government.

They want to build a twain! On a loop around downtown LA! In an age of Ubers, motorized scooters, and buses that ALREADY GO THAT ROUTE.

Here's how a train works (in San Francisco) and doesn't work elsewhere (in San Jose) -- from a comment at the LA Times:

fogcitypete
San Franicsco's [train] works because it is under-ground and goes to every corner of the city. The single above ground line, the F, is historic. Terminates in the Castro, the LGBT community, that has very high public transit ridership which spikes the F's numbers.

Running the trolley through downtown San Jose, pushed by politicians who owned large property holdings there, has hobbled the county's trolley system for years. A trip that should take 10 minutes, has to take a 25-30 minute slow ride through downtown, severely impacting ridership. There has been talk for over a decade of bypassing downtown.

Rule I actually learned at 15 or 16, while planning a big conclave for my temple: When somebody insists it's about the principle, it's almost always about the money.