Hopes for Urban Revival Ride on L.A.-Pasadena Line

Twenty-three years after voters endorsed it, a passenger railway connecting downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena was set to open early this morning, a landmark moment for a region whose leaders hope smooth-running light rail can help break the cult of the automobile.

The Gold Line will carry riders on a nearly 14-mile trip through some of the region’s historic neighborhoods, including Chinatown, Lincoln Heights and Highland Park. It will also carry the high expectations of urban planners, who see it revitalizing stagnant communities, spawning new housing and creating a public demand for more trains that might beget even more improvements.

The railway is “a potential turning point,” said architect and urban expert Thom Mayne, co-author of “L.A. Now,” an examination of key issues facing the metropolis. “You go to the great cities around the world, Paris and New York and London, and you see the freedom of movement and the opportunity that people have because of their transportation systems. This is a step in the right direction.”

What the Gold Line is not expected to do, at least not without further expansion of the transit system, is significantly reduce traffic congestion.

With a fleet of sleek white-and-orange light rail trains poised to start handling an expected 30,000 boardings each weekday, officials estimate about 8,000 fewer cars will be on the roads.

But the county expects to add nearly 4 million residents over the next two decades, and transit experts say the Gold Line will take just enough drivers off the freeways to keep traffic flowing from Los Angeles to Pasadena at current speeds for several years. After that, gridlock is likely unless other solutions are found.

“We aren’t going to put an end to congestion. There’s no way; we’re growing too fast,” said county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, riding a Gold Line train after a ceremonial ribbon-cutting Friday. “But we are going to show Angelenos we can give them what they want: transportation that is fast, dependable and secure. And that we can build it quickly and get the job done right.... I’d say we’ve done a good job.”

The county’s light rail and subway network is spreading, with links from Pasadena to places as far-flung as Long Beach, North Hollywood, MacArthur Park and Redondo Beach. The Gold Line will bring to 73 the number of rail miles run by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, all on railways built over the last 13 years.

There’s little talk of building subways in Los Angeles anymore, mostly because underground construction is so expensive, as much as $300 million a mile. Instead, the focus is on light rail -- electric trains that typically have shorter routes and carry fewer people than Amtrak or suburb-to-city commuter trains -- and on bus-only lanes.

Transit officials have long had a love of light rail. It can be built for less than half the cost of subways. And if it is designed right and run at peak efficiency, experts say, it can carry more passengers on faster, cheaper trips than buses.

But building light rail is still costly and difficult. The Gold Line was no exception. After voters first approved a sales tax increase in 1980 to begin paying for it and other transit projects, the MTA started construction in the mid-1990s on top of a defunct rail right of way. In 1998, with money drying up, the agency sent its contractors home. State lawmakers created a construction authority to finish the job.

Through it all, critics have derided the railway, which will cost taxpayers more than $850 million, as a waste of money.

End to end, the Gold Line takes riders on a 36-minute, 13-stop ride that is significantly different from the MTA’s other light railways. While the Blue Line passes mostly depressed neighborhoods and industrial areas, and the Green Line runs down the middle of a freeway, the Gold Line snakes through several vibrant communities, offering views of the San Gabriel Mountains, downtown Los Angeles, interesting old homes and plenty of greenery.

The railway runs between Union Station downtown and a stop at the eastern edge of Pasadena, sending a fleet of 49-ton Siemens trains on a continual loop through that route. As an opening weekend promotion, passengers can ride free today and Sunday.

From downtown Los Angeles, riders will board the Gold Line at Union Station’s train platform No. 2. They’ll swoop north to Chinatown, rising on an elevated concrete platform and stopping, 30 feet above the ground, at the route’s showpiece station. Reminiscent of a green-tiled pagoda floating in the clouds, the Chinatown station features artwork and design touches inspired by the I Ching, the classic Chinese text known as the “Book of Changes.”

The train then crosses the Los Angeles River, stopping in Lincoln Heights and Mount Washington before easing into Highland Park, a working-class neighborhood with high hopes that the trains will bring it new luster.

Here, the train passes through a potentially hazardous spot: a mile-long stretch of track down the middle of Marmion Way, a narrow street of single-family homes primarily, many with small children who recently have been seen playing tag on the tracks.

The line leaves Highland Park and rumbles into South Pasadena, reaching speeds approaching 55 mph, slowing as it closes in on the station at Mission Street, in a cozy neighborhood with cafes, restaurants, a jewelry shop and a yoga studio.

South Pasadena is a well-off community of 25,000 that for decades has fought the planned construction of a freeway. Now, anticipating the disruption caused by light rail, some residents grouse about the train’s horns and the 85-decibel bells attached to intersection crossing gates. State regulators could rule on the matter next week, possibly forcing quieter trains and slower speeds. Finally, the train heads into Pasadena, where it stops six times.

Transit planners believe the Gold Line will get a big boost from the fact that this city’s commercial core -- pushed by booming Old Pasadena -- has become one of the most vibrant urban shopping districts in Southern California.

Two stops there are notable. One is beneath the 374-unit Holly Street apartment complex. The other, the Del Mar Station, will be surrounded by a complex of apartment buildings, shops and eateries expected to be finished next year.

Urban planners say complexes like the one at this station will draw imitators and could help retool neighborhoods along the line, making them denser, more vibrant and likelier to draw people onto the train and closer to Los Angeles’ core.

“We see the line as a springboard, a way to bring about real, day-to-day change to these neighborhoods, a way to help local communities that have struggled for too long,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Ed Reyes.

Leaders of cities all along the line say they are mindful of lessons learned from the Green and Blue lines. Development has failed to take off around stations on those routes, partly because city officials did not push hard enough for new investment, experts believe.

Reyes, who grew up in Lincoln Park, hopes to reverse the trend. He has been a leader in city efforts to rezone neighborhoods along the line as a step to attracting private developers to parcels scattered throughout Chinatown, Lincoln Heights and Highland Park.

All three neighborhoods, though full of historic charm, are also struggling with blight. The goal, Reyes said, is to turn these areas around, creating communities with a mix of well-designed affordable housing, new businesses and plenty of room for art galleries, bookstores, cafes and art studios.

Developer Interest

Developers are already on their way.

“We basically targeted Lincoln Heights, just because of the Gold Line,” said Ryan Lehman, director of Livable Places, a Los Angeles nonprofit development company. His firm is in escrow to buy a 131,000-square-foot industrial building that it plans to turn into loft condominiums with 105 units and a ground-floor cafe.

Reyes said another way to lure new investment and riders is to lavish money on amenities. Los Angeles has spent nearly $10 million on new sidewalks, streets, trees, lamps, distinctive orange-and-white crosswalks and other improvements along the line.” This has been so helpful for the community; you would not believe it,” said Trinidad Ortega, owner of Panaderia Delicia, a Highland Park bakery. “The people here are going to use the train a lot. But also, people in the community feel like so much has changed. They have made everything nice and in good shape, all of the streets leading to the train. And we maybe feel that more is coming.”

Rick Thorpe, chief executive of the Gold Line construction authority, agrees. “There’s a lot of promise with this line,” he said. “It penetrates the heart of a lot of neighborhoods, and they are going to see great benefit.”

Thorpe, who built light rail lines in San Diego and Salt Lake City, predicted that the Gold Line would help persuade Los Angeles to make more investments in transit. “These lines just feed on themselves,” he said. “I’ve seen how it happens.”

The MTA wants to break ground next year on a six-mile extension of the Gold Line shooting underneath Boyle Heights to East Los Angeles. In the San Gabriel Valley, local officials are seeking federal and state assistance to pay for an extension of the Gold Line to Claremont.

In South and West Los Angeles, there are high hopes for the Expo Line, the MTA’s proposed railway from downtown to Santa Monica. Those three projects would cost about $3 billion. Some transit advocates envision putting trolleys everywhere from Torrance to Silver Lake and across the San Fernando Valley to Ventura County.

Funding is in doubt for all of the lines, and lawmakers, struggling with the state budget crisis, are considering asking voters to tax themselves for more rail. Meantime, some advocates of the Expo Line and the Gold Line extension to Claremont, worried the MTA would botch the job, want to create new construction authorities modeled on Thorpe’s.

The Gold Line builder is getting high marks for its work. Thorpe took over a stalled project in 2000 and finished within a month of the deadline. He brought the project in for roughly the target budget of $740 million, although the MTA spent an additional $130 million to buy rail cars, test the line and pay for add-ons needed to make the trains run efficiently.

Still, there were problems. Thorpe started construction before getting clearances from state rail regulators. Last year, those regulators considered forcing major changes in the line’s design that would likely have delayed the project for years. Regulators eventually approved the line as is.

In the 1990s, the MTA promised that the route would be able to have three cars running at six- to seven-minute intervals. MTA officials now say the line does not have enough electrical power to do that. To add trains and frequency, necessary to meet ridership targets, the MTA would probably have to spend much more than planned.

Officials also say the Gold Line’s maintenance facility is too small. The agency might have to spend at least $30 million to build an additional facility.

Critics have argued for years that trains are far too costly in a far-flung region with a sleepy downtown. A first-class bus system, they say, makes far more sense in Los Angeles, because it could carry more people to more places without requiring billions of dollars to do it.

Critics Favor Buses

The most forceful criticism comes from the Bus Riders Union, whose lawsuit over conditions on the transit system led the MTA into a federal consent decree mandating improved bus service.

The riders union says money spent on the railway should be used to buy hundreds more buses serving the vast majority of the county’s transit customers: poor, inner-city riders.

“It’s an unmitigated civil rights disaster,” said Manual Criollo, a Bus Riders Union organizer.

Yet in the communities along the Gold Line, residents tend to scoff at the viewpoint of critics. To many of these people, arguments over buses and trains make no sense. They want more of everything. And besides, they say, this week is a time to celebrate.

Victor Malvaez, a 73-year-old retired truck driver in Highland Park, said the Gold Line would be a huge benefit to him. He rides the bus to Chinatown three times a week to see his doctor. The trip takes 40 minutes, and the bus frequently gets stuck in traffic. The Gold Line will cut his ride to about 12 minutes.

“And it will be just like the trains in Mexico City!” he said, sitting outside La Palapa, a corner store selling juices and fruit shakes.

Octavio Salas, a longtime Highland Park resident standing under a brown awning at his soon-to-open Metro Cafe, just feet from the station there, echoed those thoughts.

“It’s almost too much to believe, that this is going to go into our neighborhood,” Salas said. “People are going to use this thing like crazy. And those people are going to get off and walk down the street and stop by my shop. That’s what I’m hoping. I’ll be there to sell them their coffee.

“Chai lattes, in Highland Park ... can you believe this?” he said, smiling. “The people who come off the train are going to love it.”