Orange Line Extension to Break Ground Next Month

The Metro Orange Line busway that connects the North Hollywood Red Line station in the East to the Warner Center in the West, will soon extend northward from the Canoga station and will terminate at the Chatsworth Amtrak station - the site of last year's tragic derailing. The 4-mile dedicated busline will add 3 stations to the line, at Sherman Way, Roscoe Blvd, and Nordhoff St, before the terminus. The short extension endured a long acceptance process, beginning with a study in 2003 and finalizing in January of this year with the completed EIR. The main goal of the project is to improve north-south traffic conditions in the sprawling Valley. Completion is scheduled for 2013.

The original 14-station Orange Line opened in 2005 to both local and worldwide acclaim, as one of the first North American examples of a successful dedicated "busline." The busway, which was chosen as the locally preferred alternative in the scoping process, utilizes long articulated buses on a reserved transitway. This system, which was largely developed in the 1970s in transit-conscious Curitiba, Brazil, is low-cost and high-efficiency. Like a light-rail, the buses run on a dedicated path, eliminating both the danger of collision and the impediment of traffic lights. The line seems to be the perfect fit for the Valley, a region that is still relatively low-density, but suffers from strangulating congestion.

The extension however, has been met with much local condemnation, not for construction inconveniences or noise, but for the displacement of area businesses. LACMTA owns the path that will be tapped for the line, and has been leasing out the properties along this right-of-way for 50 years. The county transit agency has retained all the rights-of-way of LA's original Pacific Electric redcar system since its closure in 1961. Long leased out to private businesses at cut-rate prices, these transit corridors have proved extremely convenient in Metro's avid rebuilding of transit lines beginning in the 1990s. But despite complaints from local businesses about government intervention in an already sagging regional economy, local officials will continue to laud the project as a universally beneficial and a much-needed improvement to area mobility. You can make fun of the Valley all you want, but in a city infamous for car dependence, the Orange Line is hurtling into the 21st century.

Van Nuys Residents Fight to be 'Part of Sherman Oaks'

Some Van Nuys residents who live in the southern part of the neighborhood have embarked on a mission to annex into Sherman Oaks, the tonier Valley neighborhood to the south. The residents, who call their group 'Part of Sherman Oaks,' argue that they already shop and work in Sherman Oaks, and send their kids to Sherman Oaks schools. The two neighborhoods are both incorporated in the City of Los Angeles, but were individual cities before LA's water-related annexation in the 1940s. Their taxes go to LA and their municipal services come from LA but they often use their neighborhood name on their addresses. The area, bounded by Sepulveda Blvd, Oxnard Blvd, Burbank Blvd, and Hazeltine Ave, houses some 18,000 residents.

The southern area of Van Nuys is notably nicer than the rest of that neighborhood, so it makes sense that they would want to identify more with their ritzier sister to the south. The Metro Orange line, and the industrial train tracks that preceded it, is the defining boundary of Van Nuys' two halves. It is true that lines like railroad tracks can form unforgiving urban boundaries, but wasn't Metro's landscaped transitway supposed to cleave the area's opposing neighborhoods?

It sounds like the case of an insecure child who, having been handed into the custody of one parent after a divorce, longs to be with the other parent simply because she is prettier. The upscale residents of south Van Nuys want to rid themselves of the associations of crime, filth, and disrepair that come with that neighborhood. But calling themselves something else isn't going to get rid of those problems. Instead, if the switch happens, Van Nuys will lose some of the important funding and attention that come to that city district. Funding and attention that Sherman Oaks would hardly benefit from. Just seven years after the failed Valley secession movement, some Valley residents just can't get enough gerrymandering.