County OKs 6-Mile Eastside Subway Route

Taking a significant step toward bringing the county’s ambitious rail program into East Los Angeles, county transportation officials on Wednesday selected a six-mile route and seven station locations for the Red Line subway extension to the predominantly Latino community.

The new East Los Angeles route, part of the subway’s final segment, is scheduled to open in 2000. The route will run between Union Station and a station at Whittier and Atlantic boulevards.

The planned stations include Little Tokyo at Santa Fe Avenue and 4th Street, the Mariachi Plaza at 1st Street and Boyle Avenue, Brooklyn Avenue and Soto Street, 1st and Lorena Avenue, Whittier Boulevard and Rowan Avenue, Whittier Boulevard and Arizona Avenue, and Whittier and Atlantic boulevards.

“Naturally, we are elated to get it--this gives us a chance to be linked to the rest of the rail system and makes the Eastside part of the future,” said Frank Villalobos, president of Barrio Planners Inc.

Aurora Castillo, spokeswoman for Mothers of East Los Angeles, noted that her neighborhood was burdened with seven freeways. “We’ve gotten our share of the pollution and noise from the freeways, and it’s about time we should get the benefits of some of the transportation system,” she said.

In January, transit officials unveiled the first segment of what is designed to be a $5.4-billion, 21.7-mile subway. The line currently runs between Union Station and MacArthur Park. The next segment, a 6.7-mile leg, runs through the Mid-Wilshire district and is scheduled to open in two stages, in 1996 and 1998.

The selection of the East Los Angeles route is part of the Red Line’s third segment, which is expected to cost $2.4 billion. The 11.6-mile segment includes three branches that will lead to North Hollywood, Los Angeles’ Eastside and the Mid-City area.

In 1991, at the prompting of then-U.S. Rep. Edward R. Roybal and Rep. Julian C. Dixon, transit officials agreed that the subway routes should serve more residents in the Latino and black communities. On Wednesday, after 18 months of study and public meetings, the East Los Angeles route was selected from three possible routes. The line will detour around Evergreen Cemetery, a concession to residents’ concerns about tunneling under the cemetery.

“We are in an area that seems like it has been forgotten by the county and by the city,” said James Wenger, president of the Whittier Boulevard Merchants Assn. “This shows that the county is thinking about us when they put the subway here. It’s an earth-shattering development.”

In an unrelated development, the county transportation agency failed to reach decisions on its first budget by its Wednesday deadline, putting off painful choices requiring the juggling of big-ticket rail projects and diminished funds.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority--created to cut spending and streamline bureaucracy--missed the deadline for approving its proposed $3.4-billion budget because the newly appointed board could not agree how to spend its money and compensate for a $258-million shortfall.

Board members instead adopted a special one-month budget that allows bus and rail services to continue at their current levels.

“We are going to have to make some difficult decisions,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, the MTA chairman. “The solutions are not going to be easy, and it’s going to take creativity.”

Although the agency is widely viewed as the biggest checkbook in town, it has been hit by a sharp drop in sales tax revenue and by what some board members say was poor planning by the now-defunct agencies that preceded MTA.