The light rail has already broken ground at USC on the corner of Flower and Jefferson. The needed expansion of public transportation in Los Angeles will be serving us first.
The $640-million project starts near Seventh Street and Wilshire Boulevard, traveling south along Flower Street and then west along Exposition Boulevard until it reaches Culver City.
Phase 1 of the rail line that will end in Culver City is scheduled for completion in 2010.
But it has a lot of
detractors, including
Expo Communities United and
Save Liemert.
Yet the very reasons that are mentioned
here as negatives - a dozen schools, many parks, and 20,000 – 30,000 youths are within walking distance of the Expo Line tracks and that the line would be next to the mega West Angeles church - are positive in my mind. These people could use the light rail. The kids don't drive and getting some of those church members off the road would do Sunday Crenshaw traffic a helluva a lot of good.
The site also calls the Blue Line the deadliest light rail line in America - with no attribution. And the site doesn't allow comments.
In an April 17, 2007, LA Times article, Abdul Zohbi, the MTA's manager of system safety, said lessons learned from accidents on the Blue Line were incorporated into the design of the Metro Gold Line, which runs from downtown Los Angeles to Pasadena. The 13-mile rail line has had just one fatality, a suicide, and no serious injuries since operations began in 2003.
Zohbi said engineering improvements, enforcement of traffic laws and education of residents and schoolchildren have made both the Blue and Gold lines safer.
To prevent motorists from driving around gates, the Gold Line was built with gates that cover all traffic lanes on both sides of the tracks. Other gates block pedestrians from crossing the tracks when a train is approaching.
The same methods will be used on the Exposition Line. "We are basically sealing off the intersections entirely," said Rick Thorpe, chief executive of the construction authority.
I agree we should
be active and fight to make this better for the community. But we should also support it instead of trying to stop it. Calling for it to be underground is a death knell for the project because of the price. They didn't put the Gold or Blue or Green line underground.
We need to fight for better bus stops like the Chinatown pagoda-style - the
MTA is planning on having one style of architecture for every stop. That, to me, is unacceptable. We should have stops that represents Leimert Park and the Black, Jewish, Asian roots of the area. We should have a ton of landscaping and pedestrian crossings and a bike path.
