Going to Great Lengths to Avoid Half-Mile Walk

In Los Angeles, a half-mile walk may sometimes seem too far.

That’s one reason officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority say they are studying whether to build a $10-million-plus train station in El Segundo about half a mile between two other stations on the lightly used Green Line.

Elsewhere along the 20-mile route from Norwalk to El Segundo, stations have been built about a mile apart. But this stop, projected to add 450 riders a day, would be 2,100 feet from the Aviation Boulevard station and 2,900 feet from the Mariposa Avenue station.

Some officials say the proposed station underscores the lengths to which planners must occasionally go to attract riders in a city where residents are famous for driving a block to buy a loaf of bread.

“It’s being built for the future,” said Shane McLoud, transportation deputy to county supervisor and MTA board member Deane Dana, who has pushed for the station construction.

Some MTA officials question privately whether the new station is needed. They note that it would be as close to other stations as some of those along the subway in densely populated downtown Los Angeles. But they will only speak off the record, explaining that politics may play the critical role in determining if construction proceeds.

To them, the proposal appears to be an example of the sometimes perplexing decisions at the MTA, like the ones that led to construction of a rail line that stops just short of the airport and plans for a subway that will bypass busy Wilshire Boulevard to run under Wilton Place.

The proposed station has drawn the attention of county supervisor and MTA board member Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who complained that she cannot get money to relieve crowding on the much more heavily used Los Angeles-to-Long Beach Blue Line trolley, which runs through her district.

Still, the MTA decided to spend up to $300,000 to prepare environmental, preliminary engineering and cost studies, even though it is considering delaying other projects already underway because of a shortage of funds.

What would be called the Del Norte station has been pushed by the El Segundo Employers Assn. and other businesses, including Kilroy Industries, which has offered to provide the land next to its office complex for the site.

Area businesses have offered to match the $300,000 and help pay construction costs for the stop, which would be built near where the elevated trolley leaves the middle of the Century Freeway and heads south away from Los Angeles International Airport. “This gives us an opportunity to work with private enterprise and help share the costs,” said Jim Cragin, a Gardena councilman and MTA board member.

Proponents say it is shortsighted to just think in terms of small, immediate benefits in ridership.

“It’s a project that’s going to attract economic development,” Dana aide McLoud said.

Hugh Greenup, senior vice president of development and marketing for Kilroy Industries, called the proposal “the best opportunity” that the MTA has had to “use transit to spur development, which in turn, builds ridership.”

The station was proposed in the mid-1980s when El Segundo businesses lobbied transit officials to build the Green Line. But it was decided to build stations at Aviation and Mariposa.

The El Segundo Employers Assn. and other businesses in the area renewed their campaign for the Del Norte station in 1992.

Those advocating the idea say the existing stops are too far apart to serve employees at cargo terminals, office buildings and aerospace plants south of the airport.

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In addition, the walk from businesses to the Aviation station is “pedestrian-hostile” since the area is isolated and dark because of the overhead freeway, said Don Camph, executive director of El Segundo Employers Assn. “It’s no man’s land,” Camph said.

Jeffrey Zupan, senior fellow at the New York-based Regional Plan Assn. who has studied commuting habits, said that a half-mile is on the edge of what people normally will walk.

“People are willing to walk much farther if the walk goes through an attractive area,” he said.

Although Zupan did not offer an opinion on whether the new station is needed, he said that transit officials need to consider such questions as: How much is that worth to society? Planners must consider whether the station is less costly than such things as adding a lane to freeways.

“A bigger issue,” he said, “is should they be using the $10 million toward extending the [line] to the airport?” Airport officials are studying ways to extend the Green Line closer to LAX.

Some workers who now take the Green Line said they would welcome the new stop.

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John Jennison, a Hughes Aircraft Co. engineer from Long Beach who takes the Blue Line and Green Line to work, said that he has no trouble getting off at the Aviation Boulevard station and riding a bus the rest of the way to work or getting off at the Mariposa Avenue station and walking 10 minutes to work.

But he said he would look forward to the new stop. “Then it would be about a two- or three-minute walk.”

“I have talked to other people, and they would ride the Green Line if there was a closer station,” he said. Some workers, he said, don’t feel safe walking far or waiting for a bus at night.