From the San Gabriel Valley Tribune: Our View: Gold Line is shovel ready

Link: Our View: Gold Line is shovel ready - SGVTribune.com

Our View: Gold Line is shovel ready

Posted: 06/10/2009 04:52:44 PM PDT

Once again, the Gold Line Foothill Extension faces a critical vote today to keep it on track toward crucial commuter service for the San Gabriel Valley.

In that vote, we urge the Metro board of directors to put the extension, or at least its phase 1 from East Pasadena to Azusa, into its Long Range Transportation Plan.

The efficient Gold Line staff has lined up public-private partnerships ready to begin the work by next spring. If we can help secure the long-promised financing to do so, the contracts can be let and service can be opened to the Azusa/Glendora stop, including service to Citrus College and Azusa Pacific College, by 2013, not by 2017, as the MTA's current plans are.

That's a huge time difference in reducing the 210 Freeway gridlock in our time.

In order for that to be accomplished, the Metro board should attach funding from the recently passed Measure R.

This is a classically shovel-ready project that can help relieve congestion and create jobs. And those jobs are not just on the tracks. A number of our cities have station-adjacent development projects hanging fire until the rail line is sure to come to town. Once the commitment is there, credit will loosen up and we'll witness a healthy boost of commerce and housing in the region as well.

We love and share the energy of the citizen Gold Liners who go to iwillride.org and post enthusiastic comments such as: "This would be so useful to those of us living in


the east end of L.A. County. My family travels often to Pasadena, and an extension would be immensely useful to us."

Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who serves on the Metro board, recently told the paper, "I have to give credit to the San Gabriel Valley people who kept showing up to meetings to lobby for this."

Supporters can continue to show that enthusiasm by showing up at today's Metro meeting scheduled for 1 p.m. Easy to get to the MTA headquarters, too - just take the Gold Line from Pasadena to those Union Station-adjacent offices.

Recently, Metro's Budget and Finance Committee unanimously approved a motion by Antonovich to add $10 million in Measure R funding to the Foothill Extension's budget for Fiscal Year 2010. Now, we need to keep that momentum going. As Supervisor Gloria Molina asked Metro CEO Art Leahy: "Why would you allocate more money for (projects with) later start dates and less money for those that have earlier start dates?"

Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard, Claremont City Councilman Sam Pedroza and San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership President Cynthia Kurtz have all testified recently in favor of funding the Gold Line.

Bogaard said: "The Foothill Extension is the only rail project in the county ready to go and it can provide an early success story for the new sales tax under Measure R."

The trains are ready to roll, and so are we, if the Metro board does the right thing for streamlining transit in Los Angeles County today.