Panel backs MTA subway extension under Beverly Hills High

A team of engineering and seismic experts announced Wednesday that a controversial proposal to build the Westside subway extension under Beverly Hills High School is safer than a fault-ridden route beneath Santa Monica Boulevard.

The panel, assembled by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority to analyze two possible alignments through Century City, also concluded that tunneling can be done under the campus and nearby homes without endangering or disrupting the community.

“Tunneling will be safe through potentially gassy areas and the soil is suitable,” said Harvey Parker, a tunneling consultant with 45 years of engineering experience. “There will be little or no impact on buildings, including Beverly Hills High School.”

The findings were immediately criticized by opponents in the affluent city, who want the line to run farther north under Santa Monica Boulevard.

“Metro has opened a veritable Pandora’s Box that potentially impacts many dozens of existing buildings and future projects in the region, including Beverly Hills High School, future station locations for the Westside subway extension as well as currently entitled development projects,” Lisa Korbatov, board president of the Beverly Hills Unified School District, said in a prepared statement.

Beverly Hills residents, city leaders and other officials have fought the alignment under the high school, saying it would create a host of construction — and later operational — problems. Among other things, they say the subway will interfere with the use of the high school as the city’s emergency preparedness center.

If approved by the MTA early next year, the proposed route would pass about 70 feet underneath one building at the high school before it curves under Constellation Boulevard, where a station is planned at Avenue of the Stars.

The campus, which has about 2,200 students, is on Moreno Drive.

The team of experts, backed by an independent review panel, concluded that it would be unsafe to tunnel or build a station along Santa Monica Boulevard, as Beverly Hills officials want, because the active Santa Monica fault zone lies beneath.

If an earthquake occurred, the experts said, the subway tunnel and the station could be heavily damaged.

Team members concluded that the proposed station for Constellation Boulevard was safer because it was south of the Santa Monica fault and there was no evidence of faulting at the location.

The Constellation route would cross the Newport-Inglewood fault to the east, but, they said, it would probably receive minor damage in an earthquake because the line would be perpendicular to the fault, putting only a short part of the tunnel at risk.

The panel’s findings were presented at a meeting of the MTA board’s planning and programming committee, which took no action on the report.

dan.weikel@latimes.com