Building the Pasadena Light-Rail Line

There’s a new parade in Pasadena, though it doesn’t involve floats or flowers, equestrian units or marching bands.

On New Year’s Day, a new regional transit agency was born with a simple goal: to make good on the old promise to build a light-rail line between downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena.

And even before lawmakers finished work on the state law that created the Pasadena Metro Blue Line Construction Authority, a parade of lobbyists and contractors, engineering firms and construction companies had set their sights on winning a piece of the revived rail project.

Pasadena City Manager Cynthia Kurtz was amazed at the turnout when she spoke at a transportation forum last fall. “People kept giving me cards,” she recalled. “They were all contractors. The entire Southern California contractor crowd showed up.”

As the construction authority begins work this week, much more than hundreds of millions of dollars in future contracts is at stake. The future of rail construction in the nation’s second-largest metropolitan area may be riding on the new agency’s success or failure.

The Pasadena authority’s creation was a product of the Legislature’s frustration with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s inability to complete its rail projects on time and within budget.

“We are rescuing the project from the MTA,” said Pasadena Councilman Paul Little, who will represent that city on the new agency’s board of directors. “It is a real opportunity to show how large-scale transportation projects can be done.”

But first, the agency faces a major challenge. Legislators gave the authority only 90 days to complete a detailed financial plan showing how the 13.6-mile rail line can be designed and built with the money available, something the MTA was incapable of doing.

Last January, the MTA--faced with serious financial problems--halted work on the Pasadena line, as well as on subway extensions to Los Angeles’ Eastside and Mid-City areas.

To persuade state and local officials that the Pasadena project is fully funded, the new authority must either slash the MTA’s $814-million budget for the rail line by $200 million or find additional sources of money to pay for it.

San Gabriel Valley officials, who dominate the new agency’s board, are optimistic that using a design-build approach to control risk can cut more than $100 million from the project’s cost. Under that approach, which also is being employed on the Alameda Corridor, a single contractor agrees to design and build a project for a set price.

The Pasadena authority also hopes that parking revenues, joint development at rail stations, fiber-optic cable rights and other sources of revenue can be tapped to supplement state and local tax money.

South Pasadena Councilman David Saeta, who was named to the new agency’s board, believes ways will be found to close the financial gap. “We have a charter to get the thing done and we will,” he said.

Before work on the Pasadena line stopped, the MTA had spent more than $235 million on design and initial construction of the project. The old Santa Fe railroad right of way had already been purchased using the county’s transit sales tax. Environmental impact reports are done and most neighborhood issues have been resolved.

L.A. Officials Remain Involved

Although the major work rebuilding bridges across the Los Angeles River and the Pasadena Freeway is finished, construction of the entire rail line is only 11% complete.

To keep a grip on future costs, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, acting under his authority as MTA chairman, named architect William Dahl to the new agency’s board. Dahl was a member of the Los Angeles Airport Commission until he and commission President Daniel Garcia resigned in a shake-up of that panel last May.

Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Hernandez, the city’s representative on the new agency, said the project should move forward quickly. “Most of the hurdles in gaining community support have already been met,” he said. “What lies ahead now are the potential benefits of the line, not the obstacles.”

During a well-attended meeting at the South Pasadena Library before Thanksgiving, Hernandez served notice that Los Angeles will be involved in every stage of the project.

The councilman made clear to the gathering of residents, politicians, transit officials, lobbyists and contractors that the project is not just the Pasadena line, but the Los Angeles-to-Pasadena line.

Hernandez said the light-rail project with its 12 stations will encourage economic development and benefit all the communities along the winding route from Union Station through Chinatown, Lincoln Heights, Highland Park, South Pasadena and Pasadena.

For years, Pasadena officials have relied on the rail line as a cornerstone in the city’s transportation and land use plans. Major office and commercial developments are planned around the rail line, which would enter the city near the Arroyo Parkway and run in a subsurface trench through Old Pasadena before turning east and entering the median of the Foothill Freeway.

Supporters of the line say it will give transit dependent bus riders a direct link to jobs, schools and health care. And they say the rail line will provide commuters with an alternative to the West’s oldest freeway--the narrow, twisting and increasingly crowded Pasadena Freeway.

“There is no way you can put buses or more cars on the Pasadena Freeway,” Little said. “Light rail is the only thing that can handle the amount of traffic that goes back and forth between downtown L.A. and Pasadena.”

South Pasadena officials also hope that establishing the light-rail line will ease pressure to drive the Long Beach Freeway through that city’s neighborhoods.

But the Bus Riders Union is lobbying against the Pasadena rail line, arguing that the money would be better spent if the MTA used it to improve bus service and comply with a federal court order to reduce overcrowding on its buses.

Anticipating just such a challenge from bus riders’ advocates, Pasadena commissioned a recent study that seeks to justify the rail project and dismiss construction of a busway as an unrealistic alternative.

The Pasadena rail project was conceived almost two decades ago and was included in a mass transit program sold to Los Angeles County voters in 1980. Light-rail trains are the modern equivalent of old-time streetcars. The electric trains, powered by overhead wires, can run along city streets or a separate right of way. Light rail is less costly than the most expensive form of mass transit--heavy rail subway projects.

The Pasadena Blue Line originally was envisioned as an extension of the Metro Blue Line, which operates between Long Beach and downtown Los Angeles. But the two lines will not meet. Passengers on the Pasadena line would have to transfer at Union Station and take the Metro Rail subway across downtown to connect with the Long Beach line.

Some Foresee Extending the Route

Rail opponents argue that the Pasadena line’s ridership will not be great enough to justify the investment or to relieve traffic congestion.

But rail advocates see the line as only the beginning of a route that one day may extend as far as Claremont along the Foothill Freeway and on railroad rights of way already owned by the MTA.

Claremont City Councilman Algird Leiga hopes that will happen. Leiga will serve on the new agency’s five-member board in his role as president of the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments.

“The major job we have is to complete the project on budget and on schedule. If we do that, a lot of other things open up,” Leiga said. “We could be a model for how to do things right.”

For that to happen, the new agency will have to avoid the pitfalls that have befallen the MTA’s rail program, ranging from runaway cost increases to construction debacles, safety problems to outright corruption.

The state law creating the authority requires adoption of a code of conduct within 60 days to guard against conflicts of interest in contract decisions. All contracts must be awarded based on price and competitive bids.

The law prohibits board members from participating in any decision involving an individual or company that has given more than $250 in campaign contributions to the official during the previous two years.

Board members and staff cannot accept gifts worth $10 or more from contractors, potential contractors or their subcontractors.

Despite these restrictions, lobbying is already underway.

Little said he is optimistic that the agency can avoid the political infighting that leads MTA board members to “scratch and bite” for transit projects in their districts.

“Everybody on the construction authority board is fully invested in completion of this project,” he said.

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Same Route, New Authority

The arrival of the new year brings a new transit agency with the simple goal: to build the long-promised 13.6-mile light-rail line from downtown Los Angeles to Pasadena. State Lawmakers created the Pasadena Metro Blue Line Construction Authority out os sheer frustration with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s troubled history building rail projects. Below is the line’s planned route, with white dots marking the stations.