Our View: Welcome ally for Gold Line - Pasadena Star-News
Our View: Welcome ally for Gold Line
Posted: 04/24/2009 05:48:34 PM PDT
THE foothill extension of the Gold Line just received some unexpected support from westside L.A. County Supervisor and Metro board member Zev Yaroslavsky.
"The Foothill Gold Line is well positioned - better positioned than any other single line right now with the possible exception of the No. 1 priority project of this agency, which is the completion of Phase 2 of Expo (in westside of L.A.) - to move, and move quickly. It's going to happen. I'm going to support it," he said at a recent Metro (formerly MTA) meeting.
The declaration that the Gold Line is ready to go, even more ready than most regional projects (and we would include the Expo Phase II which has not yet completed environmental studies, while Gold Line Foothill has) is a first, especially coming from Yaroslavsky. The westside supervisor, who is part of the powerful L.A. majority on the Metro board that controls all transportation funding for the region, is a welcome ally.
We would add - as we've said many times in this space - that we also support the westside light-rail projects, as well as the extensions of the Gold Line through East Los Angeles and beyond.
But it's worth noting that the economies of scale are different. It costs $120 million a mile to build the Expo Line and will cost $210 million a mile for the Expo Line II. And the westside subway (read: underground) will cost an astronomical $700 million per mile. The Gold Line Foothill Extension's price tag is only $30 million per mile.
These are economies of scale that the Metro board should remember, as should the federal Department of Transportation, when considering how to spend limited federal dollars and spend them relatively quickly.
Right now, the Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority should fund the first leg - up to Azusa and including a new maintenance yard for all Metro rail projects in the vicinity in Irwindale - with the tax money that will be collected starting in July from Measure R, the half-cent sales tax approved by voters last November.
The Gold Line is promised $735 million by Metro, but not until 2017. That is too long for the Valley and Inland Valley commuters cued up on the Foothill (210) Freeway every morning to wait in their cars.
Instead, Metro should include the Gold Line in its long range plans at its May meeting and guarantee funding starting in 2010. This would enable construction to begin in June of that year and at least extend the existing line to Azusa by 2013. The feds could provide the missing match that will take it to Montclair, and we hope, Ontario Airport.
Because it's clear to everyone, even those on the west side, that the Gold Line Foothill extension is ready to go. In fact, as Yaroslavsky said, "it's going to happen." There's more than 2.1 million people here who say that should be sooner, rather than later.
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