Scenes from the Purple Line scoping meeting (Souce: MetroRiderLA)

Scenes from the Purple Line scoping meeting | MetroRiderLA

Scenes from the Purple Line scoping meeting
Contributed by Wad on August 5th, 2009 at 1:31 pm

Photos by Yours Truly. They can be seen on the MetroRiderLA Flickr pool.

Purple Line meeting attendees

The first of five scoping meetings for a Metro Purple Line westward extension kicked off Tuesday night with a small turnout of about 35 people that were mostly supportive in an area that had long been known as the subway’s hornets’ nest.

The meeting was held at the meeting hall of the Wilshire United Methodist Church in Windsor Square, and the reserved crowd could have passed for a church service — save for one speaker.

David Mieger

Of the nearly 3 dozen people who attended, only about a dozen got up to speak their piece for 2 minutes. There was a large delegation of Metro staff, but the talking was mostly by regional representative Jody Litvak and planner David Mieger, above.

Dana Gabbard Jerard Wright "Gary"



Three speakers include, left to right, Southern California Transit’ Advocates’ Dana Gabbard, The Transit Coalition’s Jerard Wright, and a man who identified himself as Gary (affiliation unknown).


The first hour was spent updating where the project stands. This meeting updated some of the alignments that are no longer under consideration. Don’t worry, West Hollywood, you’re still in the game.


Litvak went into detail about the construction methods that will be used for building the subway. Tunneling will be deep-bore, and she says Metro will use a new generation of tunnel-boring machines that helps maintain earth pressure and reduce subsidence. One overhead slide focused specifically on tunneling through the gassy area in Hancock Park that was subject to the federal ban.

Metro obviously has to be careful to avoid the kind of tunneling disasters that plagued the completion of the existing system, but Litvak says there’s no pain-free way of building the subway. Construction is expected to last 4-5 years per MOS. She said if Metro can acquire a property off-street, the worst of the construction is about 9 months — 2-4 months before tunneling and 4-5 months after tunneling but before completion of construction. If Metro cannot and has to take over a street, the painful part is the entire construction process. Wilshire and its intersecting street would have to be periodically closed.

Metro plans quarterly updates of the project. What’s gone:

* In Century City, Metro has ruled out an Avenue of the Stars station. The serpentine approach, in which the line would snake down toward Olympic and have the platform between Santa Monica Boulevard and Constellation Boulevard before returning to Westwood, would have been a mile longer than the straight deviation of the two remaining station possibilities: Santa Monica and Constellation.
* In Westwood, forget about anything onto the campus or inside Westwood Village. The station will either be on Wilshire or portal north of Wilshire where a parking structure currently is. Metro cited the obstacle of the veterans cemetery and not wanting to tunnel beneath it.
* West of I-405 — which Metro says is needed in the third minimum operating segment (MOS) because it forecasts Westwood to not only be L.A.’s busiest subway station, but the one that might become overcrowded — Metro is no longer considering a station at Federal Avenue. It is planning for a VA Hospital station, though a portal has not been identified (as we know, the complexes are set back far from Wilshire). What has been added is a station at Barrington Avenue. A Bundy Drive station has been pushed to MOS 5 — the extension to “the sea”.
* Now for West Hollywood. A Santa Monica/La Cienega station is out, because the platform would be 4-5 blocks to the east, possibly at the West Hollywood City Hall. Metro says there’s more support for a station between La Cienega and San Vicente Boulevard. A Beverly Center/Cedars-Sinai is still in the cards, but the Pink Line complicates a Beverly Hills preference for a La Cienega station. The public wants a junction station at La Cienega, not Beverly Drive. However, this would require the new platform to be pushed between La Cienega and Robertson. Neither Metro nor Beverly Hills care for a Robertson station.

Also, a Wilshire/Crenshaw station is still classified as optional. The community is divided on whether a station should be built here. Opponents say the neighborhood is a poor fit for a subway station and that Wilshire between Wilton Place and La Brea Avenue is a no-man’s land. Proponents point out to the heavy transit usage from Lines 210 and 710 and the collection of office buildings and apartments near Crenshaw, as well as the opening of a new school two blocks away.

The maps have included the Crenshaw Boulevard connection between the Expo Line and the Purple Line in this study. A straight shot up Crenshaw would be bus-only. A route via San Vicente Boulevard to Crackton could be rail or bus and connect at the La Brea or Fairfax stations, or continue via San Vicente (the maps do not show a direct link to the Pink Line).

The next updates will further refine public comment and start finding concepts for station portals. There’s no target date for opening, but Metro will conduct another year of hearings before the Metro board votes on a plan of action sometime in Fall 2010. From there, preliminary engineering work begins and funding agreements are signed.

Finally, here are the planned MOSs:

1. Extension from Western to Fairfax.
2. Extension from Fairfax to Beverly Hills or Century City.
3. Extension from Beverly Hills or Century City to Century City, Westwood and west of I-405.
4. West Hollywood
5. Extension from west of I-405 to Santa Monica.