MTA Weighs Alternatives to Subway

Stymied in further subway construction, consultants to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority outlined a broad list of alternatives Friday, including recommendations for light-rail extensions from downtown Los Angeles to the Eastside and Santa Monica and a dedicated busway to Warner Center in the San Fernando Valley.

Among the proposals were several not likely to survive, including one to construct an elevated rail line down Wilshire Boulevard.

Only a few of the 21 scenarios will make it past the first cut, which will come Feb. 24, when the MTA board winnows the list of mass transit projects down to a handful of proposals for more serious financial and environmental impact studies.

Even then, significant questions remain about whether the MTA can secure funding for what would be major capital projects that could tie up some of the area’s most congested city streets for months, if not years, during construction.

“We will only move ahead with projects when we know we have enough money to construct and operate them,” said MTA chief Julian Burke during an afternoon hearing on the proposed transit projects.

The MTA currently has its hands full finding money to meet the requirements of a 1996 consent decree requiring the agency to add buses to reduce overcrowding on its busiest lines. The agency must also finance a major Blue Line extension from downtown to Pasadena, which has already been approved.

One hope, Burke said, is that Gov. Gray Davis may accelerate state spending on transportation projects.

“While we cannot be absolutely certain today what the financial capacity of the MTA is, we will be working with staff and the consultants over the next several months to determine how much money is available to build the adopted projects,” Burke said.

Massive cost overruns and safety problems plagued construction of the Metro Red Line subway, which will stop at North Hollywood. The MTA ruled out extending the subway in January 1998. A broad blueprint approved by the MTA in 1994 had called for additional subway lines to the Eastside and Westside, using existing Red Line and Blue Line trains as links.

With plans for a longer subway scrapped, the MTA put consultants to work nine months ago with orders to come up with bus and light-rail alternatives for the Eastside, Mid-City/Wilshire Corridor and Valley.

What they came up with was a broad list of possible projects, and several recommendations.

Burke cautioned that the proposals are only preliminary and that “a great deal more work needs to be dome to refine the consultants’ recommendations so that broadly supported, locally preferred alternatives can be adopted.” Burke said he would announce his own set of recommendations at the board’s meeting later this month.

Proposals for the Eastside ranged from dedicated busways down city streets to a light-rail extension running down Whittier Boulevard through Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles out to the intersection of Whittier and Norwalk boulevards in Whittier.

Residents on the Eastside, disappointed at coming close to getting a subway, still favor a subway, but some have touted a light-rail line that would run underground through Boyle Heights as an alternative. The Eastside consultants recommended a light-rail extension instead of a busway.

Los Angeles City Councilman Nick Pacheco said he favors that approach because a busway would take up two lanes of street traffic.

Pacheco said residents of the Eastside felt “a strong sense of abandonment” when the MTA scuttled plans for an Eastside subway, but thought a light-rail line that would go below Boyle Heights “would accomplish everything we need to accomplish.”

Pacheco said Boyle Heights is too densely populated for a mass transit line running down city streets, saying “pedestrian safety should be uppermost” in the minds of MTA board members.

Of the proposals to serve the Westside, the two most likely appeared to be a busway running down Wilshire Boulevard or a light-rail line on a former railroad right of way running along Exposition Boulevard to Santa Monica.

Both projects would be highly controversial. The dedicated busway would run through Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, the Exposition line through densely populated Los Angeles neighborhoods, past several high schools and into Culver City and Santa Monica.

One city official from Culver City called the proposed Exposition line “a recipe for disaster.”

The consultants said an elevated rail line down Wilshire would completely alter the boulevard’s historic character and said there was “strong opposition” among local residents and business leaders.

The Valley proposals dealt primarily with choices between light rail and a rapid transit busway from North Hollywood to Warner Center in Woodland Hills. The lines would run down a Southern Pacific right of way beginning at Chandler Boulevard and going west along a route closely paralleling Victory Boulevard. The consultants recommended the busway, saying it is a less expensive alternative and would allow commuters to go from Warner Center to downtown Los Angeles in less than an hour.