Parents and students marched Jefferson Park Saturday to ask authorities to make the Expo Line safer as it passes through our crowded neighborhoods.

While the MTA has found funds to raise or lower the train elsewhere, the Expo line will be at grade through South Los Angeles down the middle of Exposition Boulevard, passing two large high schools and five other campuses. And the fight has put Leimert Park's own Damien Goodmon at the center of the storm and on the front page of CityBeat.

Goodmon points out that more than 85 people killed along Blue Line, which runs between Long Beach and downtown Los Angeles. At least 20 were suicides. So that's about 3 a year on the 20-year-old line.

There hasn't been any accidental deaths along the Gold Line since it opened five years ago, according to a Sept. LA Times story. The Gold Line, downtown to Pasadena, is also at grade but has significantly improved technology over the Blue Line.

According to KCBS: "The Metropolitan Transportation Agency says safety lessons have been learned since the Blue Line was built, and point to fences and improved traffic gates along the Gold Line through crowded Highland Park and Pasadena, which has suffered one fatality."

Today - MONDAY - The state Public Utilities Commission starts a public hearing on the issue with a decision expected in November.

The $640 million project that will link the Convention Center to Culver City. The only grade separations along the route will be at the University of Southern California, where USC is chipping in for an underpass at the complicated intersection of Exposition Boulevard and Figueroa and Flower streets.

Goodmon has called the discrepancies "environmental racism".

Since February the MTA has been looking at alternatives to the street-level railroad crossing at Farmdale right by Dorsey.