Finding the Rail Line Bucks to Get LA to LAX in 2010 Moving LA

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Finding the Rail Line Bucks to Get LA to LAX in 2010
Moving LA
By Ken Alpern

Yep, there’s a lot of bad news with respect to our City’s budgetary and operational nightmares—and this website is often where you’ll hear it first—but it’s only fair (and accurate) to talk about the good news when it occurs. This good news is that our Mayor, love him or hate him, is serious about getting a rail connection to LAX. Deputy Mayor Diego Alvarez has left Mayor Villaraigosa's office to become regional transportation coordinator for Los Angeles World Airports, and Mr. Alvarez will be assigned to getting a rail line to LAX as well as getting the Foothill Gold Line to connect to Ontario Airport (both LAX and Ontario Airports are owned and operated by LA World Airports and the City of Los Angeles)--so clearly, the Mayor has this in mind as well.

And so does a host of City, county, state and federal electeds from the Westside and the San Gabriel Valley. Bill Rosendahl, Ted Lieu, Jenny Oropeza, Don Knabe, Jane Harman, Maxine Waters, David Dreier, Adam Schiff, Mike Antonovich and the good folks of South Bay, Eastside, San Gabriel Valley and San Bernardino officials are also in that camp.

In fact, much of the animosity of the South Bay and San Gabriel Valley made for strange bedfellows when the previous battle lines over Measure R funding and federal funding of rail and freeway projects were drawn up before Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas stepped in and raised the bar to include all portions of the county.

Creating and/or enhancing commercial hubs or corridors on Wilshire Blvd., the San Gabriel Valley, Downtown and the LAX region need not be mutually exclusive, and creating multiple hubs takes the overdevelopment heat away from residents in any one given area.

But they need funding—they need EIR’s, and just as Metro funded EIR’s for the Crenshaw Corridor Project, Wilshire Subway, Harbor Subdivision Rail Corridor, Downtown Connector and Eastside Light Rail Extension, the need to find some $5 million to fund the EIR to link the Green Line to LAX is in order at a time when all Measure R funds are tied up in the myriad of road, rail and freeway projects now under way throughout the County.

Manchester Square (at Century/Aviation, just to the east of LAX) might just be one of those future hot spots of commercial real estate and an economic sparkplug to the entire region, where the future Green Line and Crenshaw Line and LAX People Mover trains will all converge to provide one of the most job-creating transit-oriented developments in the nation. $5 million would be a small price to pay to ensure that LAX is a billion dollar income creator for the region like our ports are.

Green Line and Automated LAX People Mover would trains whisk hotel and job-bound commuters along the Century Blvd. Corridor to enhance economic development that rivals current and future venues of the Wilshire Blvd. Corridor and Downtown Los Angeles. Similarly, the Downtown Light Rail Connector, Downtown Streetcar Trolley Network and Wilshire Subway (with an accompanying Busway) are all ways to establish a vibrant City and County of Los Angeles for the 21st Century.

The Green Line to LAX is included in the planned projects funded by Measure R, but it’s in the timeline behind Expo, Crenshaw, Wilshire, Downtown Connector and Foothill Gold Line projects. It’s a relatively small project, but one that is a great addition to the Crenshaw Corridor Project, as that project now revs up, to ensure that Westside inclusion in an airport/rail network, with accompanying Century Corridor hotels and businesses creates the most jobs for the region.

Furthermore—and perhaps most critical about the timing of the Green Line to LAX project—is that it ensures that a comprehensive plan to link the Green Line to Century/Aviation and on to LAX Parking Lot C at the southeast corner of Lincoln and Sepulveda is included with all the other rail links at Century/Aviation (i.e., the Crenshaw Corridor and LAX People Mover lines).

If we build only the Crenshaw Corridor now, then the Green Line and LAX People Mover will have to work around any preexisting plan at Century/Aviation in the years to come. Imagine building your home from scratch…one room at a time instead of building all the bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, etc. in the usual comprehensive manner.

Enter the Green Line Interagency Task Force, to whom I will be forever grateful to Bill Rosendahl and the CD11 office for establishing shortly after Councilmember Rosendahl was elected. Among the list of maps/plans the task force (comprised of representatives and planners from LAWA, Metro, the FAA and LADOT) explored is the one below:




What the final LAX reconstruction looks like after the economic downturn resolves is anyone’s guess, but the above map is as good a rough guess as any. Note how the map includes all three rail lines—three, count ‘em, three, to ensure that Westside, Downtown, and South Bay/Southeast L.A. County access to/from LAX is ensured via the key convergence at Century/Aviation.

With the passage of the Crenshaw Light Rail Line EIR in 2009, however, the time to revisit a plan for the LAX Automated People Mover, Green Line to Sepulveda/Lincoln and other on-hold features of LAX Reconfiguration is needed in 2010, and the time to fund any needed EIR’s is now…unless, of course, you want those LAX-connecting rail lines to be built by 2020, as Measure R anticipates, and not by 2015 or so.

How do we fund the $5 million or so to get that EIR under way now?

Well, it’s not shovel ready but federal funds (including as yet unspent stimulus money) can and should be considered. I don’t like pork barrel projects, but put this in front of the American taxpayer (who’s seeing airport/rail connections being built all over the world), and I suspect it’ll make some sense.

Other federal sources include airport and transportation-related federal, state and local departments. With the Crenshaw Corridor Project funding the FAA-mandated trench along the incoming flight paths east of the runways, the Green Line to LAX Parking Lot C is rather small and virtually entirely on airport property, so the FAA can and should be considered as a source for funding (depending on the legality of the request, and under what circumstances it’s proposed).

This old Transit Coalition map illustrates the airport-related nexus to present to the FAA for consideration of federal assistance on this project:

Airport parking, taxi and even airlines fees can also be considered—yes, air flight costs are up, but $1-5 user fees per ride to specifically create the LAX People Mover and study the Green Line to LAX makes a lot of sense to commuters so long as the funding is transparent and closely supervised. The City Council and Mayor should take advantage of the fact that the City owns and operates LAX and can vote on such user fees.

Furthermore, Citywide parking fees and developer fees (like say, from Playa Vista) would do well to be appropriated to such worthy causes as airport/rail connections that truly have the ability to reduce car traffic to LAX.

This is $5 million, not $5 billion, we’re talking about here. The future funding of the Green Line to LAX is included in Measure R funds, but we need to ask ourselves whether we’re too tied up in other rail projects to build the full airport connection NOW that the Crenshaw Corridor Project just won’t do. It’s within our grasp.

If Rosendahl, Villaraigosa and our other City leaders are willing to assign and empower Diego Alvarez to fund and plan this major project, then they will have a more pleasant, and uplifting endeavor to focus their attention on between budget cuts and union battles…and it’ll give the rest of a bit of hope for our City that the 21st Century will bring happier times for residents, commuters and the economy in the years ahead.

(Ken Alpern is a Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC) and is both co-chair of the MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee and past co-chair of the MVCC Planning Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and also chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at Alpern@MarVista.org.This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)