Trains, planes and Trojan Horses

We’ve been getting a big kick the last few days going through this latest documentation for the proposed Burbank Transit Center, the one that’s being planned for down near the train tracks on Empire. We’re probably the only Burbank natives who ever use public transportation around here, so there’s a strange thing about this project that most people probably don’t know about and where we might have some special knowledge.

It’s not needed.

We’ve mentioned a few times that Burbank has no local bus system to speak of, largely because former mayor Stacy Murphy was shacking up with a guy who owned the big taxi monopoly here in town. What that meant was every time a resident would complain to the council about their lack of options and the hardship this created, she’d immediately end the discussion by claiming it was all much too costly a thing to change…

Sometimes as a plus she’d add the line that we have a wonderful little bus program for our senior citizens here in town, which, by the way (she wouldn’t tell you this part), we won’t let you use to go to work as that would be abusing the privilege, because it’s not for that…

So, we don’t have many buses, which rules that out as a reason for needing a new bus building.

There’s also an overpriced commuter train that passes along Empire three or four times a day, and an Amtrak route to Ventura and beyond that’s always threatening to shut itself down due to lack of interest. So what kind of train service this Center is going to be servicing is anyone’s guess too, because we don’t have one of those either.

Actually, right now the only thing the current Empire/Bob Hope station is good for is the free parking, and that’s probably the only useful thing it will ever do. Not once have we seen anyone running from a plane to a train just so they could make it to Simi Valley on time, and that’s not likely to change, either.

The easy explanation for this is that we don’t have a public transportation heritage in Southern California, in the same way that no one ever provides anything to take even if we all suddenly wanted to embrace one.

Now for those council members who’ll claim to be big advocates of this project, and there’s bound to be a few, we have a challenge. Can any of them name the specific MTA bus routes that service the Hollywood Way airport area, or the amount of money it costs to take the train from the airport to, say, Ventura?

We didn’t think so.

So what this means is two things. Any “transit” project will turn out to be a boondoggle, just like that terrible new central library idea being designed by hook or by crook to house a collection that’s getting smaller every year. Make no mistake, the real underlying goal here is to expand the entire Bob Hope facility, and a “transit center” helps make the PR claim that this needs to be done.

If and when it’s finished, the always-stealthy advocates for expansion will point to a new transit center as total proof that the Airport is an important part of a glorious community “hub,” and as such, it absolutely must be “improved” for the sake of all– especially the wonderful center, because that way it will get used by more airport commuters.

This kind of circular logic is not unusual when it comes to controversial public projects, especially when they’re not needed. We have a recent precedent for this, too, in the debacle that some people lovingly refer to as the Burbank and Burroughs high school “modernization” projects, where one improvement became the pretext for a succeeding and less necessary one. Both schools ended up being lots more work (and expense) than our residents were ever warned about at the beginning. And naturally, they turned out to be just horrible, regardless of all the mindless, no-class boosterism.

Remember “small is beautiful?” We like our junior airport and prefer bus routes to bus buildings. But for some reason we always have two-bit hustlers and outsiders in town who try to ruin things all the time and have no sense to boot. We don’t need a new transit center and we don’t want one sneaked in, even if it has moving sidewalks.