3 L.A. County Rail Projects Move Ahead

Rail projects across Los Angeles County moved forward Thursday as officials approved a new light rail from downtown to Culver City, released a report stating that expanding the Red Line subway through the Fairfax district would be safe and took the first step toward digging tunnels for the extension of the Gold Line light rail into East Los Angeles.

“It’s the coronation of the modern era of rail in Los Angeles,” said Bart Reed, executive director of the Transit Coalition, a rider advocacy group. “It’s a milestone for the county that all these pieces are coming together.”

Construction crews maneuvered a crane over a hole 60 feet deep at Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights and lowered the giant engine of a 2-million-pound boring machine. After their parts are assembled in a few weeks, two 344-foot-long boring machines are to begin carving out a pair of 1.7-mile tunnels for the Gold Line extension.

The tunneling project will be a symbolic victory for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, whose last underground construction effort was plagued by problems. When the MTA tunneled under Hollywood for the Red Line subway in the 1990s, the digging caused the ground to buckle and subside -- damaging buildings, spawning lawsuits and fomenting political opposition to underground rail.

But MTA officials say new tunneling techniques can now minimize such disturbances. Moving through earth at the rate of about 2 inches per minute, the German-built machines can simultaneously reinforce tunnel walls as they carve out a hole 21 feet in diameter, they said.

The machines will scoop out enough earth for a mound roughly the size of a football field that is 15 stories tall, the MTA said.

“We’re going to have the safest tunnel built,” said Los Angeles Mayor and MTA Chairman Antonio Villaraigosa at a news conference at the site. “This is a dream come true for many of us.”

With other MTA officials and a gaggle of reporters in tow, the mayor donned a hard hat, slipped a fluorescent orange vest over his suit and pulled on size 9 steel-toed construction boots to descend into Mariachi Plaza’s future underground station, one of eight stops planned for the six-mile light rail. Other segments of the $899-million line are to be at ground level or elevated.

The Red Line report released Thursday was the work of a panel of five engineering and safety experts, who unanimously concluded that it would be safe to build a subway underneath Wilshire Boulevard.

The panel was convened to help allay concerns about -- and thus improve funding efforts for -- extending the subway into the Westside. In 1985, a methane gas explosion at a Ross Dress For Less store in the Fairfax district made residents fear that tunneling a subway through the neighborhood would be unsafe. The next year, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) sponsored a law barring the use of federal funds on subway construction in the area.

In a 2002 interview, Waxman said he would consider rescinding that law if someone could show him that tunneling would be safe. Waxman and the American Public Transportation Assn. appointed the members of the safety panel.

The report noted advances in tunneling, saying, “Since 1985, technology has improved.” It said safe new burrowing techniques have been used in Los Angeles sewer projects as well as tunnels in Taiwan, Manila, Hong Kong, Cairo and Washington, D.C. “It is, indeed, possible to both safely tunnel and safely operate a subway along the Wilshire Boulevard corridor,” the report concluded.

The technology used for digging a Red Line extension would be different from that for the Gold Line, officials said. The subway digging would be a so-called closed-face system that would prevent underground workers from being exposed to any gases that might be toxic. The machines would drop soil into a bentonite slurry, a liquid that would hydraulically support the tunnel as soil fragments were transported to the surface.

The MTA board also approved an environmental report on the Mid-City/Exposition light rail, clearing the way for construction to begin next year on the $640-million project. The 9 1/2 -mile line is scheduled to open in 2010. It is to share two stations with the Blue Line, run mostly south of the 10 Freeway and end in Culver City.

A few people at the board meeting expressed reservations about the MTA report.

“They need to address all the safety issues completely,” said Glenn Striegler, environmental assessment coordinator for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Thirteen schools will be near the future line, including five campuses within 50 feet of it, he said.

Clint Simmons, a spokesman for the Baldwin Neighborhood Homeowners Assn., said his group believes that the line will create noise, back up traffic and make the ground vibrate.

Some critics said rail projects were too costly.

The MTA is “raiding bus funds to fund rail projects,” said Manuel Criollo, a spokesman for the Bus Riders Union. “We live in an area of 2,000 square miles. The bus is the only system that can flexibly move people throughout the county.”

But other transit advocates, representatives of business groups and local officials said rail in the traffic-choked Westside was long overdue.

“This will be a great project for Los Angeles and the region,” said Victor Franco Jr., senior vice president of government affairs for the Central City Assn.