Is the Expo Line Making the Grade? Moving LA (Source: CityWatch)

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Is the Expo Line Making the Grade?
Moving LA
By Ken Alpern

It’s no secret that the 10 Freeway between the Westside and Downtown LA is one of the most congested, if not THE most congested, freeways in the nation. It’s also no secret that the major north-south surface streets are some of the most congested streets in the nation as well … due to poor planning and overdensification of the Westside.

Enter the Expo Line, a light rail line that will shadow the 10 Freeway from Downtown to the beach, access the majority of its adjacent pedestrian destinations, and thereby add the commuter capacity of the 10 Freeway corridor by the equivalent of 2-4 extra freeway lanes.






Map reflects Expo Board's 4/2/09 preferred alignment (from the Friends4Expo Transit website at http://www.friends4expo.org/ )

Although it’s always foolish to proclaim that mass transit initiatives such as the Expo Line or Wilshire Subway will reduce automobile traffic (only planning for decreased density can do that), it’s safe to say that if these initiatives are designed and built correctly that commuters will have more transportation alternatives.

With respect to the Expo Line or any other major initiative, I’ve always felt it vital to approach transportation with a balanced approach that:

1) Doesn’t make one side “eat it” at the expense of the other—it’s neither smart nor moral to make motorists suffer unnecessarily to convenience transit users, or vice versa. Whether it’s the old car vs. rail, rail vs. bus, car vs. pedestrian/bicyclist arguments, transportation options are as mutually exclusive of each other as is food to water.

2) Recognizes that the best answer to a problem often lies with the lesser of all evils—so when there are neither good nor easy options, the answer is often unpleasant (even downright lousy) yet the best available alternative.

The first, Mid-City phase of the Expo Line is on its way to being built from Downtown to Culver City over the next two years--despite engineering, contractor and legal challenges. The second, Westside phase of the Expo Line will be designed and built over the next 5-6 years, and arguably the greatest conundrum that Expo Line and community planners will confront will be that of grade separations in West Los Angeles.

In short, “at-grade” crossings of rail with surface streets are the equivalent of traffic signals (in fact, an at-grade crossing IS somewhat of a traffic signal with respect to its traffic-slowing aspects).

“Grade-separated” means either shutting down a street to allow the rail to cross unimpeded (such as at Farmdale Ave. near Dorsey High School), digging a trench (such as the Jefferson undercrossing by USC) or elevating the rail (such as at La Brea, La Cienega or Venice Blvds.).

The five most disputed grade separations in West L.A. are (from west to east) at Centinela, Barrington, Sepulveda, Westwood and Overland., and the controversies swirling about their potential grade separation can be tied into three major groupings: Traffic, Neighborhood Preservation and Land Use.

1) Traffic:

This issue is, and will always be, to many commuters the end-all and be-all of the whole grade crossing debate and is the sole subject for part one of this and numerous other future CityWatch articles.

A grade-separated train means a faster and accident-free arrangement for the trains, and smoother traffic for the cars—a win-win for all parties involved, right?

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple because the visual, sound and financial impacts of grade-separation aren’t always that benign. While I will normally favor spending extra for first-rate transportation projects (I despise it when we “cheap out” on transportation projects), our reality must be premised on the limited availability of transportation dollars.

Well, the recently-announced scorecard from the Expo Authority goes like this: The Expo Line will be signed off by the LADOT to be elevated/grade-separated at Centinela, at ground-level (at-grade) at Barrington, either a cheaper at-grade/ground-level or more costly elevated/grade-separated configuration at Sepulveda, at ground-level/at-grade at Westwood and at-grade/ground level at Overland.

I need to caution Westsiders that are new to light rail of two caveats:

1) Considering that the Expo Line is NOT already trenched at Palms Park (that “trench” through the park is actually dug through a hill at the same level as where it intersects Overland), and that the trench needed to connect the Green Line past the LAX runways might require up to $385 million, it is almost a certainty that there will be NO trenching of the rail line under Overland for a $100 million or more price tag.

The Expo Line is a light rail, not a subway (and I need to emphasize I’ve pushed for such an Overland trench for more years than probably anyone reading this), and any trench needed to get below the storm drain by Overland is much deeper and more costly than most folks realize.

2) Any grade separations will therefore likely be elevated rail bridges—which are not cute little bridges raised on skinny telephone poles. They’re imposing freeway off ramp-like structures necessary to handle earthquakes, and I recommend anyone go to the elevated Aviation/Imperial Green Line station to really get a grip as to what that means for single-family home neighborhoods like Rancho Park or Cheviot Hills.

Furthermore, the ability to reduce noise when a rail crossing is at-grade is much greater than elevated rail—depress/cover the tracks a bit with a dirt berm and you’ve got the majority of the sound reduced…yet the gates, lights and quacking train horns (even if they are less than the booming horns of old) have their own impacts.

Perhaps another way to look at this paradigm is to mentally replace the words “at-grade” with “stoplight”, and “elevated rail bridge” with “freeway off ramp”.

It’s my prediction that the powers that be will find the extra money for the Sepulveda Blvd. elevated rail crossing, that both Barrington and Westwood will remain at-grade, but it’s a thorny and impossible-to-answer conundrum at Overland…and it’s gonna be a legal battle for years to come.

Unfortunately, a really nasty and distracting canard has been the much-ballyhooed Environmental Justice/Legal Precedent nonsense that’s been thrown out there by a few agenda-driven folks who have proclaimed that the situation between Expo-adjacent Dorsey High School and Expo-adjacent Overland Ave. Elementary School is exactly the same and requires identical treatment.

This sad and contrived paradigm ignores the facts that:

1) Dorsey High School is, well, a high school, and Overland is an elementary school (and don’t get me started on racist proclamations I’ve heard that black and brown Dorsey High School students can’t figure out how to avoid moving trains), but there are even elementary schools throughout the nation already adjacent to rail lines

2) Dorsey High School actually has a greater pedestrian problem than Overland because its front entrance borders right on the tracks, while almost every Overland Ave. Elementary School student accesses that school via adjacent residential streets such as Ashby since traffic-heavy Overland is an intimidating way for both children and adults to approach that school

3) Dorsey-adjacent Farmdale is a dinky little street that’s more akin to quiet Military Ave., while Overland is a much wider and busier street than Farmdale ever will be (in fact, it’s rather similar to Venice or other streets that will be grade-separated)…it’s always been about the traffic!

4) There are virtually no precedents in the first phase of the line to widening Mid-City streets (as proposed for Sepulveda, Westwood and Overland) in order to have each lane carry fewer cars and thereby fall below the Metro grade-separation threshold, so it’s a real tough debate as to whether this can pass legal muster with the local and state powers that be

5) The Exposition Right of Way is much, much, MUCH wider at Overland and provides considerably greater opportunities for grade-separation than the narrow land strip by Dorsey

I hope that each street and school the Expo Line passes will be evaluated appropriately and with fairness…and not sink into a twisted and perverted Environmental Justice battle that is a violation of the very intent of Environmental Justice—which is to treat all neighborhoods equitably and to compare identical situations only when, in fact, the layout of the land is identical, and which between Overland and Farmdale streets it is most certainly NOT.

The second part of this article (which is, I’m afraid, a necessarily long one) will address what might even be greater issues to contend with as the grade separation controversy builds—that include Neighborhood Preservation and Land Use—and will address the following questions (which don’t always have easy or consensus-building answers):

1) What’s best for Overland Ave. Elementary Schools students and for local residents: do safety/traffic issues always favor grade-separation, or does the greater noise/visual impact of what would be the equivalent of a freeway overpass adjacent to Overland Ave. Elementary School necessitate a quieter at-grade crossing as the lesser of two evils?

(I again caution anyone reading this that it’s neither smart nor moral to make any group of commuters or residents “eat it” at the expense of any other groups, and the legal and time-delays blowbacks could hurt the timeframe or even existence of the line if appropriate financial, legal and engineering mitigations aren’t sufficiently pursued)

2) Is it financially, legally or physically possible to depress Overland Ave. (with perhaps a very slight rail bridge) in order to keep car and rail traffic safe and swift without the greater noise/visual/financial impacts of the elevated or trenched rail alternatives next to the school?

3) Why the heck are we building a proposed parking structure and directing car traffic to the wide Right of Way next to the Exposition/Westwood station in a single-family neighborhood instead of focusing car traffic to the nearby, freeway-adjacent Exposition/Sepulveda station that is a much better parking alternative…especially when we have big parking structures along Westwood at Westside Pavilion Mall?

4) Why is the Authority abandoning the principles of the Expo Greenway and Expo Bikeway on the Right of Way between Sepulveda and Overland by paving over so much of that land for the aforementioned parking structure (instead of the park/bikeway design that most Expo friends and foes alike favor), thereby choosing about the worst land-use options possible?

5) How can the single-family housing tracts adjacent to the Expo Line be preserved with the existing and adjacent layout of the Expo Line by creating both a “regional station” with lots of parking at Sepulveda and a “neighborhood station” at Westwood that is limited to bus, car drop-off, bicycle and pedestrian access?

6) Finally, might Overland Ave. Elementary students and neighbors someday see an accessible park on the Right of Way that will make the Expo Line the best thing ever to come to the region (see below)?

http://www.expogreenway.org/





(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 that of Mr. Alpern.