Karolyn Kiisel said the high-pitched screeches of the Gold Line train are so grating that she has stopped barbecuing in her backyard, installed a $5,000 fence to block the noise and turns up the radio when she's working at home.
The whine, she says, interrupts her day and night. "I'm so sleep-deprived," said the 52-year-old South Pasadena resident. "It's kind of like a big truck going by."
Despite steps taken by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to dampen the sound, Kiisel and at least a few dozen other South Pasadena residents are fed up. Some of them are planning to file suit against the MTA, the separate authority that built the light-rail line and the contractors.
Residents who have fought the extension of the Long Beach Freeway through their town see the Gold Line as another front in the war to guard their "Mayberry" way of life. The line threatens to ruin South Pasadena's quiet atmosphere, said David Margrave, a city councilman who owns a plumbing business near the line and who promised while he was campaigning to press the MTA to reduce the noise level.
"We don't want to be L.A.," he said. "We don't want to be Pasadena. We hate the idea of Alhambra."
The $859-million Gold Line light rail from Union Station to Pasadena opened a year ago and runs along a right of way that was last used by Amtrak in 1994. Along some parts of the route, thick concrete walls box in the train. Along others, though, a wire fence and a few trees are all that separate the tracks from residential streets.
The train's rumbling interrupts the suburban sounds of chirping birds and barking dogs all day, except between 2 and 4 a.m. Even in off-peak hours, the bells clang at intersections about every 10 minutes, followed by the train's whipping sound and high-pitched squeal. A South Pasadena citizens group, the Pasadena Avenue-Monterey Road Committee, started complaining about the potential noise and vibrations to the state Public Utilities Commission in 2002, even before the line opened.
In June, officials at the MTA and the Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority, which built the line and plans to extend it to Montclair, agreed to some remedies for the noise, such as adding more 6-foot-high concrete walls to block sound and finding softer bells for the crossings.
The South Pasadena City Council narrowly approved the agreement. But the citizens group and other residents weren't satisfied and hired a lawyer.
