OP-ED: Metro’s Expo Line plan will hurt businesses and neighborhoods in L.A.’s South-Central and Westside. (Source: )Los Angeles Business Journal Online

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Heavy Impact of Light Rail

OP-ED: Metro’s Expo Line plan will hurt businesses and neighborhoods in L.A.’s South-Central and Westside.

By MARK RIDLEY-THOMAS

A light-rail line, when built carefully to fit its surroundings, can create a corridor for high-value commercial and residential development.

But a train rumbling through busy intersections in front of shops, homes and schools can also condemn a community to permanent second-class status.

The Expo Line, now being constructed to eventually run from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica, is already alarming residents and business owners in both South-Central and the Westside.

That’s because the light-rail line’s planning methods call for trains to run at street level through busy intersections, including the neighborhoods surrounding Dorsey High School and the Westside Pavilion shopping mall.

Metro’s Grade Crossing Policy dictates whether a train crosses an intersection at street level, is elevated above the crossing or put underground.

Adopted in 2003, the policy favors car traffic volume in decision-making: Train tracks are slated to be built above or below streets at the intersections that move the most cars, since these are most likely to see traffic snarled by the trains.

Coincidentally, the intersections with the most car traffic – and those set to get grade-separated crossings – tend also to be in more well-off neighborhoods. Those areas tend to have vibrant commercial centers, which in turn generate car traffic.

In the low-income neighborhoods in which apartment dwellers will look straight out their front windows to see speeding trains, and where retail stores already lead a fragile existence, the rail line could become a development death sentence.

Land values can quickly be dragged down by a poorly executed rail line. If trains take up lanes previously used by cars, the area’s traffic-handling ability is reduced. When that happens, developers must downsize any new building projects to fit that lower capacity.

When running trains make it difficult for cars to drive in and out of store parking lots, or to easily make turns, a rail line can be disastrous for retailers.