Metrolink Route’s Neighbors Clamor for Great Wall of Covina

It’s just after dusk in Covina when the forceful whoosh of that day’s last Metrolink train rattles John Ramos’ back yard fence and tickles his plum tree. His Rottweilers, Duke and Dutchess, perk their ears and scamper away.

As the cars hiss into the distance and silence returns, Ramos, 44, sighs with exasperation.

“Time goes by, you might be out here not thinking, and the train will scare you,” he says.

It’s been more than three years since Metrolink traffic came sailing onto new tracks bordering this middle-class San Gabriel Valley subdivision, speeding thousands of purposeful commuters Downtown.

And for all that time--according to several homeowners along adjacent Edna Place--Metrolink has been saying it would build a block wall between them and the trains. Now, the homeowners contend, the transit agency is reneging on the deal, leaving a sting of bureaucratic betrayal that registers about every half-hour, six days a week, 15 hours a day.

Now the homeowners are about to follow the tracks Downtown, searching for their long-forgotten wall and armed with a slew of documents, including the first letter on the subject from Metrolink.

“We are now in the process of removing the old tracks behind your property to install new ones,” a Metrolink official wrote to the five homeowners in late 1991. “Since the work involves installing the new tracks a few feet closer to your property, we would like to build you a new block wall fence at no cost.”

The letter cited no date, but residents later received right-of-entry papers for May 26, 1992. Welcoming the plan, the neighbors say they signed them, shooed their pets indoors and awaited the wall’s arrival. But workers never arrived.

“For about a month, they kept saying, ‘We’ll do it next week,’ ” said Alan Mannino, who says trains occasionally kick rocks into his yard.

“They said they wanted to do this, they said they were coming out and then they said no,” said neighbor Debbie Agee. “(But) we’re a group of neighbors that don’t want to give up.”

Last week, Ramos sent thick packets to Metrolink’s board of directors, which include Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and all Los Angeles County supervisors. In the appeal is a load of residents’ testimonies, Metrolink forms and copious phone logs, telling a protracted tale that’s longer than the outbound express at rush hour.

Although the indicate that they’ll review the residents’ grievances once again, Metrolink officials say chances for a new block wall in Covina are slim. They dispute that the agency ever explicitly promised to build one there--the letter, they point out, said the agency would like to build a wall, but did not promise that it would--and contend that a wall would not mute sound or ensure safety along Edna Place anyway.

“I don’t have a problem with what they’re requesting,” Metrolink Executive Director Richard Stanger said in a recent interview. “But I do have a problem doing something we’re not obligated to do, because it was never the intent.”

After all, Metrolink officials note, residents risked the possibility of frequent disturbances when they moved onto Edna Place years ago.

But homeowners such as Ramos purchased homes abutting the gravel alley long before Metrolink was on the drawing board, at a time when rail traffic consisted of sporadic freights that lumbered down a center track.

Then, in 1991, Metrolink laid inbound and outbound rails along the alley’s outermost edges, nudging frequent commuter trains just feet away from property boundaries. And then the letter came telling about how Metrolink “would like to build” the block walls.

More than three years later, the meaning of that letter is anyone’s guess.