VIEW PARK : MTA Offers Look at Rail Proposals

A transportation corridor through Southwest Los Angeles would improve economic and housing conditions throughout the community, representatives of the newly formed Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority told a neighborhood group last week.

About 100 members of Crenshaw Neighbors Inc. reacted favorably for the most part to the MTA’s proposed Crenshaw-Prairie Transit Corridor, one of 10 projects under consideration for construction over a 30-year period.

“This is the future,” said Ted Lumpkin, president of the Crenshaw Neighbors. “The community has gotten over the hump with the Red and Blue lines. This ties everything together.”

As proposed, the project would establish a light rail, aerial rail or subway along Crenshaw Boulevard from Pico Boulevard on the north to Florence Avenue on the south, and Western Avenue on the east to La Cienega Boulevard on the west. About 1.1 million residents live in the 96-square-mile area.

“Along with the transit, jobs and housing opportunities would also be created,” said Dale Royal, MTA’s project manager of the corridor project. “If we can get the community behind it, we have an excellent chance of being funded.”

The project’s preliminary planning committee, which has been meeting with the community since January, will report its findings to the MTA board in June, which in turn will recommend the order in which the projects will be built. Board recommendations will be based on criteria such as traffic, population and employment density, projected ridership and cost-effectiveness.

Royal said that, if approved, construction on the Crenshaw-Prairie Corridor project could begin by 1998. Other projects under consideration include light rails along Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood and the extension of the planned Green Line north to Westchester and south to Torrance.