MTA Can’t Settle on a Color for Train Line

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has built a busway (Orange) and is digging a new rail line (Gold) through the Eastside.

But when it comes to the color designation for the new downtown-to-Culver City light rail line, the MTA board is hopelessly deadlocked.

So for now, it won’t have a color.

Transit agency staffers recommended that the railway be called the “Aqua Line.”

But Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard C. Parks, an MTA board member, wants it marked on maps in a rose-like color.

Neither proposal won a majority of board votes at a meeting Thursday.

So for now, the project will be known only as the “Expo Line,” named for its route along Exposition Boulevard. It will be the only line in the system without a color designation.

MTA board members have tried for months to ignore the impending color challenge.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, an aqua supporter, expressed amazement Thursday about how much time he has devoted to the issue.

Unless there is a resolution, new maps will probably use a broken black line to show where the proposed track will run.

But Yaroslavsky had another idea: the “Invisible Line.”