light rail

The UC Berkeley Faculty Club meeting room was packed on Tuesday evening with people who came to hear Ethan Elkind talk about his book, Railtown: The Fight for the Los Angeles Metro Rail and the Future of the City.

Earlier today, AEG announced the completion of the first draft of environmental documents for Farmers Field, the proposed football stadium for Downtown Los Angeles.  The document, available on City Planning's website, is a mammoth 10,000 pages and the ceremonial handing over of the documents to the city at today's event involved 13 overflowing three ring binders.

The Crenshaw Subway community group is kicking its planning for a legal challenge to the Crenshaw Line in to high gear, announcing an "emergency meeting" tonight to brief their members on their preparations.  Originally, the meeting was scheduled because of Metro's plans to certify the environmental documents at their August 4th Board Meeting, despite the fact that the documents have not been made available for public review.  However, I just received word that Metro will delay the vote on the documents until their September 22nd meeting or later.  Plans to vote on Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas' motion on the community benefits package remain on the table for next month's early board meeting.

The Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority is co-sponsoring workshops with the cities in the 12.6-mile corridor between Azusa and Montclair along which the Authority hopes to extend the Gold Line. The subject of the meetings are proposed station sites in Glendora, San Dimas, La Verne, Pomona, Claremont and Montclair. The meetings begin this coming Monday.

The never-ending debate over whether or not to “complete” SR-710 so that it connects with the 210 provides a  great opportunity to create a sustainable option for the 710 Tunnel.  Instead of a tunnel designed to move trucks and cars, we need to create a light rail alternative that connects the region’s biggest job centers with the poorest, transit dependent communities.  Yes, let’s build a light rail alternative between Long Beach and Pasadena!

A proposal by County Supervisor and Metro Board Member Mark Ridley-Thomas could create major changes in how Metro decides which grade-crossings are designed at-grade and which will have grade separation.  Ridley-Thomas represents the communities fighting for a grade-separated Expo Line in South L.A. and much of the area that will be covered by a rail line for the Crenshaw Line.  The proposal would greatly increase the power of neighborhoods in deciding the design of grade-crossings in their community.  Some rail advocates worry that the motion would effectively derail the Measure R light rail projects.

Yesterday, the New York Times published a piece on the coming Expo Line and what it's going to mean for development in South L.A. and West L.A.  In truth, you should find time to read the entire article, but here's a quick summary in the mean time.

Starting last night and continuing tomorrow, Metro began a series of outreach meetings for the "scoping" of the potential Green Line Extension to Torrance. Before we get into the details of the study, let's put down some basics on the project. No, this is not a competing project with the Green Line extension to LAX. Yes, this is a Measure R and "30/10" project, with $272 million in Measure R dollars already set aside for the project.