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Southern California Transit Advocates is a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion, development and improvement of public transportation in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

SO.CA.TA Comments on withdrawn proposal for Metro Line 91

Statement sent to Metro San Fernando Valley evaluating public hearing testimony for withdrawn Line 91 proposal


The Metro Connections committee of Southern California Transit Advocates has evaluated the public hearing testimony received for the Line 91 proposal, which was withdrawn by your staff as a result of that testimony.

We conclude that the comments received were highly emotional and have little, if any, factual merit. Specifically, we have come to the following conclusions on the four issues that testimony raised:

1. "Crescenta Valley High School will be impacted." The high school is approximately equidistant from Pennsylvania Ave. (90) and La Crescenta Ave. (91), thus there is no compelling reason why students could not utilize Line 90 as easily as they do Line 91; therefore, Line 90 service should be sufficient for these students' needs. There is also no shortage of Beeline 3 service during school hours, as the line runs from 6:00am to 8:00pm.

2. "Rosemont Middle School will be impacted." The school is north of Foothill Blvd. and east of La Crescenta Ave., which places it farther from Line 91 than from Beeline 3. If students from Rosemont are riding Line 91 -- which we believe unlikely -- they are walking farther to access it than they would to access Beeline 3. Therefore, we believe this argument is a "straw man" and completely without merit.

3. "Harmony Farms and Crescenta Valley Car Wash have employees that need Line 91." Both of these businesses (located near the corner of Foothill Blvd. and La Crescenta Ave.) have predominantly daytime-only hours of operation, well within Beeline 3's span of service. The only potential impact which may require mitigation is late nights (after Beeline 3's span of service) or on Sundays (when Beeline 3 does not run).

4. "Two libraries along Line 91 will be impacted." Both libraries (one operated by the County, the other by Glendale) post their hours of operation on their website. In checking same, we find that -- with the exception of the County library staying open until 8:00pm on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays -- both libraries operate well within Beeline 3's span of service. Both are closed on Sundays, the one day Beeline 3 does not operate. Therefore, we find that Line 91's service to the libraries is duplicative and can be removed without mitigation.

In conclusion, there appears to be no compelling argument favoring continued operation of the inefficient Line 91 branch via Honolulu and La Crescenta Aves. If there is a need for late night and Sunday service to the small segment of Foothill Blvd. between Pennsylvania and La Crescenta Aves. (and we believe that to be only a very small probability), we would then advocate an "alternate" Line 90A alignment, similar to the Line 56A alignment which existed prior to 1963 (operating as Line 90 until the intersection of Montrose/La Crescenta, then deviating via the present Line 91 alignment to rejoin Line 90 at Foothill/Pennsylvania).

On the basis of these conclusions, we urge reconsideration of the Line 91 proposal and advocate its implementation in June 2007, concurrent with the Line 290 proposal. Since our evaluation has taken place within one year of the public hearing, we believe an additional comment period should not be necessary to do so.