Red Line Expected to Open Early and Under Budget, Officials Say

By redeploying desk-bound engineers into the field to swiftly resolve construction snafus, county transit officials said Monday that they will be able to open the Metro Red Line subway next March, three months earlier than planned.

The announcement itself, however, ran a little late. A shiny new stainless steel subway car used to demonstrate the system’s readiness was briefly stranded in the MacArthur Park station when it tripped a circuit breaker and shut down power to the electric third rail.

Coming after a similar achievement last fall, the latest three-month savings means that the Union Station-to-MacArthur Park line is six months ahead of a schedule adopted by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission when it took control of the project in 1990. The line also is scheduled to come in within its revised budget of $1.45 billion.

When the Southern California Rapid Transit District started construction on the Red Line in 1986, it said the first segment would open in April, 1992, and cost $1.25 billion. The RTD was replaced by the LACTC in June, 1990, when the project was running behind schedule and over budget.

Los Angeles officials timed their upbeat update to coincide with Monday’s start of a major American Public Transit Assn. rapid-transit conference that has attracted more than 600 North American mass-transit officials to Los Angeles.

“There are those who say that people in L.A. won’t get out of their cars. I’m one to say that’s not true,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre.

“We’re going to change the false impression that people in L.A. won’t use mass transit by providing attractive alternatives to driving alone on congested streets and freeways,” he said.

Alatorre, who announced the new start-up date, sits on the boards of directors for both the LACTC, which is building the subway system, and the RTD, which will operate it. Those agencies are scheduled to merge shortly after the Red Line opens.

“Not only are we providing congestion relief and reducing air pollution,” added LACTC Executive Director Neil Peterson, “but we are creating local jobs as we build this system.”

Peterson said construction of the Red Line subway, now in its second phase under Wilshire Boulevard west of MacArthur Park and north on Vermont toward Hollywood, creates 31,900 jobs a year, mostly in the construction trades. He said that the elevated Green Line between Norwalk and El Segundo creates 19,000 jobs.

Transit association Chairman Lou Parsons said that, despite the brief circuit-breaker glitch, he considers Los Angeles to be the current world leader in transportation design.

“The whole world is watching what you’re doing here in L.A.,” said Parsons, chairman of the Government of Ontario’s GO Transit system in Toronto, Canada. “Los Angeles really is the living transportation laboratory. Your 30-year, $183-billion plan is a model for the rest of North America.”

Almost lost amid the schedule hubbub was the unveiling of the Red Line’s spacious stainless steel cars, designed and made in Italy with mostly U.S. components.

Test trains borrowed from Miami have been used to train RTD operators in Red Line tunnels under downtown since March, but the actual Red Line cars have been tied up by manufacturing delays and debugging of the brake, propulsion and suspension systems.

The moving up of opening day for the first 4.4-mile Red Line segment indicates that these problems are under control.

News of the expedited opening of the first Red Line segment comes as the start of service on the second leg, between MacArthur Park and Hollywood, is being postponed. The LACTC’s Rail Construction Corp. subsidiary recently voted to delay service on that segment by nine months, to mid-1999, because of redesigning of the stations along the route.

Rail Construction Corp. President Ed McSpedon said Monday that he intends to make up at least some of that lost time by studying problems encountered on the first segment and learning how to fix them faster or avoid them.