As a busload of transportation officials, reporters and camera operators rolled across the San Fernando Valley for a test ride Monday on the soon-to-open Orange Line busway, they got a jolting taste of the safety challenges ahead.
All of a sudden, the 60-foot vehicle braked hard at Kester Avenue in Van Nuys.
"Whoooa!" the riders said, as bodies, notebooks and camera equipment pitched forward.
The culprit was a motorist running a red light while crossing the Orange Line route, and bus driver Russell Modell -- who had the green light to proceed -- had to react quickly. Officials including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is also chairman of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, later praised Modell for avoiding a collision.
The episode offered an unscripted and unsettling prelude to an MTA news conference Monday morning on traffic safety along the new busway. After the test ride, officials gathered before microphones at the line's Valley College station to urge motorists to be careful when crossing the bus-only corridor, which opens for business Saturday.
"When somebody runs a red light, makes a wrong turn, it can put people in harm's way," said Los Angeles County Supervisor and MTA board member Zev Yaroslavsky. Sheriff's deputies, who patrol the transitway, will be "ruthless and merciless" in issuing citations to scofflaws, he warned.
But even as officials touted the beefed-up patrols and new warning signs at the line's 36 intersections, some transit experts said not enough had been done to minimize hazards.
"The problem with the Orange Line is all those intersections. There's no grade-separation," said James Moore II, director of the transportation engineering program at USC. "I believe the Orange Line will be fairly dangerous."
Critics say some basic safety design features -- such as crossing barriers -- should be installed at busway intersections.
"We have buses going through some very, very strange intersections with what I consider not sufficient precautions with speeds that are too high," said Tom Rubin, a former MTA executive who worked as a consultant for busway opponents. "I'm just scared out of my wits at what the results may be."
Snaking an east-west route between North Hollywood's Red Line subway station and Woodland Hills, the 14-mile bus-only corridor runs alongside some streets, forcing motorists on perpendicular roads to pass through multiple crossings or make extra-wide turns past the transitway onto the next cross street. One crossing, at Burbank Boulevard and Fulton Avenue, is bisected diagonally by the busway -- creating a six-way intersection.
