Streetsblog Los Angeles

Whether or not to put the bikeway in this trench for a portion of the path is still up for debate...but we now know the legal hurdles have been removed. Photo: Damien Newton/LA Streetsblog

Coming fresh on the heels of news that the California Supreme Court won’t halt construction while they consider an appeal filed against the Expo Line Phase II, comes news that a different Expo legal challenge has been resolved.

Last May, a group of Cheviot Hills homeowners filed sut against the portion of the Expo Bikeway last May arguing that the environmental documents prepared for the bikeway were insufficient. Word leaked earlier this week that a settlement was reached between LADOT and the litigants. While details of the settlement are not publicly available, Streetsblog has confirmed that design and construction of the bikeway through this area can proceed without further litigation.

The lawsuit only protested the portion of the bike route in the City of Los Angeles, and not the part in the City of Santa Monica or Culver City.  The 3.85 miles of bikeway will run mostly along the Exposition right-of-way except for a portion on the street in Cheviot Hills. In exchange for dropping their lawsuit, LADOT will make provisions in the design to mitigate impact on the local homeowners such as extra lighting and a privacy wall.

Construction underway at Palms Station for Expo Phase II. Photo: Gokhan Esirgen

By now, you’ve probably read the action alert from the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition or read the article on Biking In L.A. warning that things are not going smoothly for planning of the Expo Bikeway. As you might remember, I serve as a member of the Expo Bicycle Advisory Committee (EBAC), and wanted to share some thoughts with you.

First, it’s important to note that despite it’s name, the EBAC does not have a similar structure as the City of Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee, a committee formed by the mayor and run under the state’s open public meetings act known as the Brown Act. The agenda is set by the Expo Construction Authority and the meetings are run by agency staff. The presentations are done by Expo Staff. The information is controlled by Expo Staff. At our last meeting, in May, Expo Staff and staff for the City of Santa Monica actually got in an argument over a proposed change to the route at intersection of the bike path and Centinela Boulevard.

I am far from alone on the committee in thinking that EBAC is more about controlling bike advocacy than receiving meaningful input for a safe and useful bike path.

The first step in reclaiming the EBAC came when a group of EBAC members spoke at a recent meeting of the Expo Construction Authority Board of Directors meeting and asked that staff hold monthly meetings. Following the Board’s direction, a meeting was scheduled for next Tuesday, August 21. Our meetings are open to the public, and LACBC is urging cyclists to attend and make their voices heard. Meeting details are at the end of this article or you can download the agenda, here.

While I won’t be attending, Councilman Rosendahl’s office will be sending a replacement. I’ll be in New York.

If you can’t make the meeting, LACBC provides a draft letter and the addresses for the Expo Construction Authority Board and staff. With design of the rail portion of Expo almost completed and station construction underway, we’re late in the game but there’s no time like the present to start making some noise. Read more…

The sign reads, "Children and trains don't mix." The balloons suggests otherwise.

The California State Supreme Court will hear the case of Neighbors for Smart Rail (NFSR), a coalition of Westside homeowners, community groups and businesses, against Phase II of the Expo Line.  NFSR alleges that the environmental documents for the line were improperly compared because it based traffic on future projections instead of the current status on the street.

Phase II of the Expo Line will eventually connect the existing Expo Line, which runs from Downtown L.A. to Downtown Culver City, all the way to Santa Monica. Construction of the line is already underway.

Two lower courts have already ruled that the Expo Construction Authority (Expo) acted properly basing their traffic studies on future conditions instead of current conditions. However, attorneys for NFSR point to two cases Madera Oversight Coalition, Inc. v. County of Madera (5th District Court of Appeals, 2011) and Sunnyvale West Neighborhood Assn. v. City of Sunnyvale City Council (6th District Court of Appeals, 2010) where state appellate courts ruled that agencies cannot use future conditions as a baseline when evaluating the environmental impacts of proposed projects.

Faced with conflicting opinions, it’s natural for the Supreme Court to want to have the final say in this case and establish case law for similar legal conflicts in the future. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of NFSR, it could require the traffic study for the entire Expo Phase II to be done over.

After a string of legal defeats, NFSR has two wins in recent months. Last month, the California Public Utilities Commission announced they will take a second look at some of the controversial crossings in Phase II.

No timeline has been announced for the appeal. At this point, the Supreme Court is not requiring that Expo halt construction on Phase II.

Photo: LA Streetsblog/Flickr

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), a state regulatory agency which regulates privately owned public utilities in the state of California, including electric power, telecommunications, natural gas and water companies, is going to take a second look at the environmental documents for Phase II of the Expo Line.  Responding to a complaint filed by Neighbors for Smart Rail, a homeowner’s group on the Westside that has made no secret of its desire to stop the Expo Line at all costs, four CPUC Commissioners ordered a review of the environmental documents for the extension of the light rail line from the Culver City Station to Downtown Santa Monica.

CPUC originally gave Expo the green light in November of last year. Neighbors for Smart Rail asked for a second review arguing that CPUC didn’t follow its own rules set out by policy and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and that the Expo Construction Authority failed to study every intersection of the rail line.

The review will consist of a thorough review of the environmental documents and a hearing. The “order for rehearing” could result in little more than a review by staff that does little to impact the timeline of the project.  However, when CPUC looked at Phase I, they ordered the construction of a rail station adjacent to Dorsey High School that wasn’t in the original plans adding cost and delay to the project. Read more…

Looking down from a bridge in Cheviot Hills at the proposed future Expo Bike Path. Photo:LA Streetsblog/Flickr

A group of Cheviot Hills residents who’s property abuts the proposed Expo Bikeway on the Westside of Los Angeles have filed suit for the second time in two years alleging that environmental clearances given the bikeway were given in error.  Their first lawsuit, filed in June 2010, resulted in the City of Los Angeles and Caltrans reversing their original environmental clearance decisions and re-working their studies.  The bikeway was granted a second environmental clearance, known as a Categorical Exclusion (CE), in November of 2011.

The second Categorical Exclusion (published here, on Streetsblog) was received no better than the first.  Attorney S. Zachary Samuels filed suit again alleging that the new CE is no better than the old one.   While the current complaint is not available online, passages appearing on Courthouse News sound word for word identical to ones from the 2010 lawsuit.  Named in the suit are the FHWA, who provide the $2.5 million budget for the bikeway, Caltrans, who granted the CE, the City of Los Angeles, who applied for the CE and Metro, who is responsible for building the bike path.

The lawsuit only covers the portion of the bike route in the City of Los Angeles, and not the part in the City of Santa Monica.  The 3.85 miles of bikeway would run mostly along the Exposition right-of-way owned by Metro from Robertson Boulevard and Venice Boulevard to Centinela Boulevard and Exposition Boulevard where the path is picked up by Santa Monica.

Details on the lawsuit are sketchy, but based on what appears in the Courthouse News article, we can make some assumptions about the lawsuit’s chances of being successful.

The homeowners say the bike path would run behind their properties and “through what is now green space which serves as a buffer between the I-10 freeway and the plaintiff’s homes and other homes.”

Read more…

Photo: Jim Shanman/Culver City Bike Coalition

Talk about mixed messages.

In preparation for this morning’s meeting of the Expo Bicycle Advisory Committee for Phase II, Culver City’s representative, Jim Shanman, visited the bike path for Phase I that starts at the La Cienega Station going west.  At least he thought it was for the bike path, since apparently the path is closed to bicyclists and pedestrians and e-bikes.  The bollards also close it to cars, so I guess it’s just for rollerbladers, pogo stick riders and skateboarders.

Oddly, even though Metro’s bike tour of Expo Phase I showed up just as Shanman was leaving, this picture didn’t make their write up at The Source.

We’re kidding of course.  Expo Construction Authority staff confirmed the sign is an error, most likely it got switched with a freeway entrance sign.  The sign will be replaced soon.

Touring Expo phase II corridor by bike with contractors, planners, and Expo BAC members. Photo from the pedestrian bridge overlooking the trench right of way following the 10 freeway crossing.

On Earth Day this past Sunday, the Expo Line Phase II Bicycle Advisory Committee, of which I am a member, was given a tour of the Expo corridor and bikeway proposals with a few of the private consultants and public planners involved in the project. Looking at diagrams is never a sufficient replacement for some on the ground perspective, so I was glad we had this opportunity to scope everything out. It was also exciting to see a few testing trains in operation in preparation for tomorrow’s opening.  I had not had a chance to get out and see the trains in action previously.

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A small contingent of BAC members and interested parties met up a little earlier than the scheduled meeting where Phase II begins, to take a look at the tail end of the Phase I bike route and get a sense for how it will flow together. While I am incredibly excited about the opening of the Expo Line, looking at the bikeway connections in Phase I did not inspire confidence in Metro and LADOT’s ability to plan for pedestrian and bicycle facilities to connect to rail stations.

As with many grand infrastructure projects, the engineering of Phase I overlooks many of the details of both form and function that matter to people at the street level. Either they still don’t get it, or Metro and LADOT just don’t care to make more than a minimal or required effort. What ever the case, bicycling was clearly the afterthought in the Expo planning and engineering.

Even simple and inexpensive things such as wayfinding are deficient, especially where on-street facilities transition to off-street paths. The crosswalk connecting to the La Cienega station from the northeast intersection corner was less than ideal. It is broken up by a right turn pocket with a traffic island. The island had landscaping across most of it, narrowing it to a small choke point, reducing the functionality of the island for people trying to get across and limiting standing room.

Even when building trains, it still seems that it’s all about the car in L.A. Getting a new bike route is better than the former lack of one.  In the case of the Phase I Bike Path, critical deficiencies at various points diminish the usefulness of this route as a feeder for the rail line or as a stand alone facility.  Metro representatives often remind me that cars take priority at intersections and cannot have their green time affected.  Bicycling ridership is modest, they say, never acknowledging that bicycling remains marginal because it is marginalized by design.

Take for example the absurdity of this post on bicycling safety along the Expo Line from Metro’s The Source. Riders are directed in the post to cross tracks as close as possible to 90 degree angles, but the bike lane striping pictured does not allow enough room to do so properly. Have none of the people responsible for designing streets and rail crossings ridden a bike since they were children? The depth of incompetence and lack of basic understanding of operating a bicycle within the American traffic engineering profession never ceases to amaze and dumbfound me. Read more…

As part of a collaboration with Intersections, South L.A. I had a chance to speak with Damien Goodmon, the head of the Citizen’s Campaign to Fix the Expo Line.  While I jokingly refer to Goodmon as “my evil twin,” a reference to both some people getting us confused and his no-holds barred style of advocacy; I’ve come to respect him for relentlessly pushing his causes even though I don’t agree with him all the time. Of course, I’ve never been on the receiving end of one of his attacks.

On Monday, we were joined by Intersections’ film maker Molly Gray and we chatted about the campaign, lessons learned, the Crenshaw Suhway, and what are the next steps for the Citizens’ Campaign.  At one point (not included on the film) he stresses that it’s the Citizen’s Campaign to FIX the Expo Line, not defeat it.  In their view, there are still crossings that need to be improved before they can rest.

When asked about Farmdale Station, Ground Zero for the battle over grade crossings and safety, and whether he was happy with it, Goodmon gave a complicated answer, “Absolutely not. But it’s hard not to claim victory when you see what they were going to do at this intersection and others … I want to believe the kids are safer than they would have been. Safe would have been grade separating it.”

Intersections posted the video as well, feel free to join the conversation there as well.

It's over. Maybe.

As excitement builds over the soon-to-be opening of Phase I of the Expo Line, it appears the legal challenges to Phase II may be at an end.  Earlier today, the State of California Court of Appeals Second Appellate Division Eight formally rejected the appeal of an earlier decision that the Expo Construction Authority followed state environmental laws when completing the environmental review of Phase II of the Expo Line that will complete the light rail line from Culver City to Santa Monica.

The entire draft of the ruling can be found here, but here is the most relevant paragraph.  Streetsblog will continue to update this story as people react to the ruling:

We find no merit in petitioner‟s contentions and affirm the judgment. Because we  disagree with Sunnyvale and Madera, and hold that use of projected future conditions as  a baseline for analyzing environmental impacts is proper in this case, we publish that  portion of our opinion.

Update I, 3:00 P.M.: So, it’s probably not over.  A lawyer familiar with CEQA cases and this case in particular notes some language makes an appeal to the California Supreme Court likely because the appeals court disagreed with existing case law from the Sunnyvale decision which said that CEQA studies should be based on existing conditions and not future ones.

Oct. 24, 1990.

As long as I've known Darrell Clarke, he's been willing to defend and promote the Expo Line to anyone who will listen. At the 2008 "Car-Free Wilshire" event on Earth Day, he manned the booths for the Sierra Club and Friends for Expo Transit. Photo:Wad/Flickr

That is the date when the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, one of the predecessor agencies to Metro, purchased the right of way from Southern Pacific that the Exposition Line is being built on. The remarkable thing is among those commenting on the item at the LACTC meeting nearly a quarter century ago is Darrell Clarke. Clarke has been a stalwart advocate of the Expo Line whose role in making it happen cannot be overstated (as has been noted previously on this blog).

It all started with a vision shared by a small group of committed activists along the Exposition corridor. Under the name Committee to Preserve the Right-of-Way they worked to convince the powers that be that the alignment, which Southern Pacific had ceased using for freight service in the late 1980′s, be purchased to save it for use for a light rail line linking downtown Los Angeles and the Westside. Clarke teamed with a rail buff named Russell Davies who also spoke at the 1990 meeting to build support for the purchase. Davies continues his involvement with advocacy to this day as a longtime member of Metro’s Citizens’ Advisory Council.

In that pre-Power Point era they presented an actual slide show to officials, neighborhood associations, business groups and anyone else who might potentially influence the decision makers. By no means was winning the purchase of the alignment a slam dunk. You’ll note there was a gentleman speaking at the 1990 meeting against the purchase on behalf of what then called itself the Coalition Against Residential Rail, the precursor to what is now a coalition of Westside neighborhood groups known as Neighbors for Smart Rail.

The following year the advocates, re-named the Exposition Rail Committee, were at work continuing to answer the claims of the NIMBYs. In 1992, a Preliminary Planning Study was done of the right-of-way followed two years later by a refining Final Draft Phase I Summary Report.

The late 90s were a time of great upheaval at Metro. The consent decree between the agency and the Bus Riders Union which required certain bus level of service standards turned out to be far more expensive to implement than the Board believed when they consented to the decree. The Red Line extension west was stymied by a myriad of natural and man-made forces: Methane along Wilshire, hydrogen sulfite under the alternative routing to Pico/San Vicente, passage of Proposition A in 1998, and certain budget realities. The Eastside Subway Project was converted to light rail and still managed to keep its federal funding. Westside transportation needs in this period underwent numerous studies that took into account the emerging interest in Bus Rapid Transit. Its hard to believe, but there was once serious talk of having BRT along Exposition.

In 2000, Clarke and other concerned advocates formed Friends 4 Expo Transit to promote light rail on the Exposition right-of-way. After a lot of old fashioned grassroots organizing the light rail proponents prevailed in their quest to get Metro to support light rail on the corridor. On June 28, 2001 the Metro Board picked light rail as the Locally Preferred Alternative (agenda item #49B) for the Exposition Corridor from downtown Los Angeles to Venice/Robertson. Read more…