MovingLA
By Ken Alpern
Well, the Westside, to say nothing of the greater City and County of Los Angeles, now has a political and moral imperative to truly address how mass transit will interact with the many far flung neighborhoods through which the Expo Line and other passenger rail lines will someday traverse.
Aft er last Thursday’s long and interesting session on the Exposition Line Construction Authority, where much public testimony was aired and considerable political maneuvering occurred, when push came to shove the Authority Board voted 6-0 (not 7-0, because Mark Ridley-Thomas did not vote) to approve the Expo Line Phase 2 EIR.
Yes, Virginia, the Expo Line will actually make it to West L.A., Santa Monica and the beach, and the long effort by the grassroots Friends4Expo Transit (www.friends4expo.org) to create a light rail that parallels (and effectively offers an alternative/addition to the capacity of) the I-10 freeway, as illustrated by the map on its website below:
While some will cringe and recoil, and others will gloat and smirk, I think the right approach is for the Expo Authority, the Westside/Mid-City political cadre, and grassroots entities to be more civil than ever and to confront the logical…while fighting the emotional.
This light rail line is meant to benefit the neighborhoods through which it traverses, be it Rancho Park, Santa Monica, Palms, Culver City, Crenshaw, USC, etc. It is also going to create unavoidable impacts, and the impacts must be weighed against the benefits. At two locations—USC and Dorsey High School, there have been failed political and legal efforts to create a mega-expensive subway portion of the Expo Line as a way to mitigate for a light rail line that (by its very nature) is meant to normally run at ground level and to fit into neighborhoods in ways that subways and freeways never can.
So it is therefore not out of cruelty but a desire to save money, time and grief for Westsiders concerned about the Expo Line’s impacts when I remind these Westsiders about the unsuccessful underground-Expo-Line ventures at USC and Dorsey High School. It’s not just “you can’t fight City Hall” because you can—but the legality and practicality of asking for a $250 million or more tunnel under Overland and Westwood Blvds. has to be seen as risky.
But I do encourage those who raise concerns—as I have and will continue to do—to make their case wherever possible, preferably through compromise but, if the shoe fits, in court. It’s your right, it’s your taxpayer and private dollars at stake, and it’s a benefit of living in a free society…but please realize:
1) There is extraordinary local, state and federal support (even though the feds aren’t paying for it, they’ve got to approve it) for the Expo Line, and the I-10 freeway ain’t getting any less easy to drive in either direction.
2) An “evaluation of all possible alternatives” includes rail bridges as well as subways (a bridge costs $30-40 million, unlike subway portions that are hundreds of millions of dollars), so if you don’t want a visually intrusive rail bridge next to Overland Avenue Elementary School or in the middle of Rancho Park you might understand why the Expo Authority came to the conclusion that an at-grade option—despite its inherent problems—was the least of all evils
3) An at-grade crossing, with gates and all, effectively means an extra traffic signal on Overland and Westwood every five minutes or so (less frequently when it’s not peak hour operations), one that (as with all signals) takes about 30-60 seconds or so; I don’t deny hating to be stuck at a red light, but it’s not the end of the world
So…what’s next, as the line goes from the EIR phase to the Preliminary Engineering phase?
Well, there are certain items that the EIR left open for exploration and evaluation, and there are certain City efforts that are even more important than the Authority’s—it bears repeating, but most of the problems that Westsiders had and will have with the Expo Line lie in the failure of L.A. City Planning, and absolutely NOT with the Expo Authority.
1) Sepulveda should be grade-separated with a rail bridge, and paid for either by Metro or by the City of L.A., and NOT by the adjacent Casden developers who would more likely be granted a variance to create a megaproject entirely out of character with that neighborhood, if not region. BOTH the at-grade and rail bridge options have been approved by the LADOT, unlike Westwood and Overland which were approved at-grade, and BOTH can and should be evaluated during Preliminary Engineering
2) There should be more parking at the Sepulveda station, and virtually none at the Westwood station, with the Sepulveda station being a “regional” station accommodating Westside, South Bay and San Fernando Valley commuter access to the line (it’ll probably be the closest thing to a Metrolink station the Westside will ever have)
3) A Regional Transportation Center accommodating rail, bus, bicycle, car and all other transportation options, belongs at or adjacent to the Sepulveda station (pursuant to the above point)
4) Serious planning and transportation issues need to be revisited at Westwood, with lanes narrowed, bicycle lanes or sharrows established, sidewalks redone and as many trees preserved as possible to retain the residential character of that neighborhood. The Exposition/Westwood station should be a “neighborhood station” with only bus, bicycle and pedestrian access.
5) Better traffic planning for north-south access between National and Pico is in order, because the question of whether the Rancho Park portion of Westwood Blvd. needs to retain its residential character needs answering. Sepulveda and Overland are much, MUCH better alternatives to be utilized for 405/10 freeway access, and the widening/restriping of those two streets as part of Expo Line mitigation might offer an opportunity to address longstanding traffic problems
6) Create an adjacent Expo Bikeway and north-south bicycle connections to Sepulveda and Westwood—both the City of Los Angeles and the Expo Authority deserve to be taken to task for punting this issue to each other, and it’s downright embarrassing that the Expo Bikeway question still remains unanswered
7) Make the Expo Right of Way between Sepulveda and Overland a “Palms Park West” that is so green, tree-lined and attractive that the region will wonder why the heck anyone ever opposed the Expo Line to begin with
8) Nail down police/traffic/safety issues now, and not wait for “incidents” to occur—While it’s good to know that Metro, the Sheriff’s Department and the LAPD are enhancing their enforcement of illegal activities of motorists and pedestrians on the Blue and Gold Lines, the Westside (as with all regions) deserve to have this enforcement consistently applied. Equally important is the need to have sheriff’s deputies routinely assigned to Expo Line stations and to trains so that everyone can feel safe and secure on MetroRail
As the rhetoric ends and the reality begins for the Expo Line, it’s paramount for all of us to confront the challenges of Westside mass transit. Change is always scary, but I don’t doubt Westsiders will easily be more than up to the task.
Oh, and a quick P.S.: Meaning no disrespect to either Bernard Parks or Mark Ridley-Thomas, but speaking of ending the rhetoric and beginning the reality, I suspect that any end to an Overland Ave. Expo Line undercrossing also means an end to the complete subway portion of the Crenshaw Corridor Light Rail Line below Crenshaw Blvd. where it fails Metro Grade Crossing Guidelines to do that. On the other hand, the money saved can pay for a northern extension that MUST be a subway to the Wilshire Corridor, so it’s probably more of a gain than a loss (again, after the rhetoric ends).
(Ken Alpern is a Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC) and is both co-chair of the MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee and past co-chair of the MVCC Planning Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and also chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.) -cw
CityWatch
Vol 8 Issue 11
Pub: Feb 9, 2010
|
