Beverly Hills

(Editor's note: A full copy of the legal petition can be found here.)

Update at 1 p.m.: As predicted, the Metro Board has voted 7-to-2 to approve the Constellation Station for the Westside Subway with a routing under Beverly Hills High School. More details at The Source.

In advance of tomorrow's hearing at Metro headquarters over the Westside Subway, a group called L.A. on the Move released the above video on YouTube. The video graphically illustrates their concerns. Sometimes a video is so clear that commentary from Streetsblog writers is not necessary.

(Hello Beverly Hills Courier readers!  Confused by allegations that Metro controls editorial decisions here at Streetsblog?  To help clear things up, we've compiled a list of the connections between Streetsblog and Metro right here.)

The first of several major issue scheduled to be addressed by the Metro Board of Directors was the approval of the environmental documents for the Westside Subway.  After the Beverly Hills City Council formerly requested a hearing earlier this week, Metro staff recommended that the Board split approval for the Subway into two parts so that part could be approved today and part could be approved after another hearing was held.  The first part would cover the extension from the current Wilshire/Western stop to Wilshire/La Cienega.  The route approved would be 3.9 miles of the 8.6 mile route that was proposed by Metro staff.

(Update, Dave Sotero, a Metro spokesperson responds to the story via email: The Beverly Hills hearing request was received. The Westside Subway Extension Project is still on the board’s agenda for Thursday. The Board of Directors will discuss the hearing request at that time.) It was a good news/bad news sort of weekend for Metro and backers of the Westside Subway thanks to the Los Angeles Times and the Beverly Hills City Council.

Last week, battle lines were drawn between the City of Beverly Hills, the Beverly Hills Unified School District and Metro over the location and routing of the Westside Subway. While Metro held a series of public meetings to show the results of their environmental studies, the last of the three hearings turned into a sort of rally against the project in Beverly Hills. For those scoring at home, Streetsblog has the highlights from last week.