Westside Subway

At a federal court hearing this morning, attorneys for Beverly Hills and Metro clashed, but did not arrive at any conclusive outcome. It appears that Metro will likely need to do some additional environmental review (a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement or SEIS) before proceeding with construction on phase 2 of the Purple Line Subway extension, which is planned to tunnel below the city of Beverly Hills with stations in Beverly Hills and Century City.

Just when the Metro board was on the verge of adopting a policy to incorporate first/last mile, including bike and walk, connections into "the planning, design, and construction of all [Metro] transit projects," Metro staff postponed including first/last mile connections to the second phase of Purple Line subway expansion.

Last week, United States District Judge George Wu issued a ruling [PDF] in Beverly Hills' legal battles against Metro's plans to tunnel the Purple Line subway beneath Beverly Hills High School.

Day one of this year's VerdeXchange conference is over. By the time you read this, the second and final day is already underway; Tuesday will feature discussions on the Los Angeles River, sustainable buildings, the sharing economy, new mobility models for cities, and much more! The full program schedule is here. Streetsblog L.A. is a media sponsor; follow @StreetsblogLA on Twitter for updates throughout the day.

In a ruling filed yesterday, an appeals court denied Beverly Hills' attempt to block Metro from tunneling under their city to extend the Purple Line subway.  The city of Beverly Hills and the Beverly Hills Unified School District (BHUSD) challenged Metro's environmental studies as being inadequate. In 2014, Beverly Hills lost in the initial round of the lawsuit. This week Beverly Hills lost in their efforts to overturn the earlier ruling. The appeal court's verdict takes Metro a few steps closer to moving full speed ahead with subway construction.

Metro's outgoing CEO Art Leahy spoke enthusiastically at last week's Metro board Planning and Programming Committee about potentially extending the Red and Purple Line subways into the Downtown Los Angeles Arts District. The new station or stations would take advantage of existing tracks in Metro's Heavy Rail Maintenance Yard, which extends southeast of Union Station, sandwiched between the Arts District and the Los Angeles River, mostly between First and Fourth streets, but extending all the way from the 101 Freeway to below Sixth Street.

U.S. President Barack Obama released his administration's proposed FY 2015-16 budget which includes $330 million in New Starts funding planned for subways in Los Angeles:

This morning Metro broke ground on its fifth simultaneous rail construction project: the Purple Line Extension. The new phase will extend the subway from downtown to La Cienega Boulevard, with two additional future phases planned to extend the line to Century City and Westwood.

Today is a great day for L.A. County. After decades of stalling, Metro is finally breaking ground on the Westside Subway extension from Wilshire/Western to Westwood.