If the MTA provides the additional money to the Expo Line, Snoble acknowledged, it will come at the expense of future rail projects the agency is considering. The MTA board could take up the issue at its meeting late this month.
The public disclosure of the cost increases comes at a critical time for the Expo project. The construction authority cannot lay tracks across intersections along the route without approval from the California Public Utilities Commission.
The PUC has scheduled back-to-back hearings next week on whether the design of the line is safe, particularly where it would pass Dorsey High School.
Community activists say the trains cannot be operated safely at street level through the intersection of Exposition Boulevard and Farmdale Avenue, where students would have to cross the tracks. Expo authority officials have insisted at community meetings and in legal papers filed with the PUC that running the trains by the school at street level is safe. They are expected to defend that position at a PUC hearing Tuesday in Culver City.
Bowing to mounting community concern, the Expo board voted Thursday to ask Thorpe to come back next month with an analysis of the cost of building a pedestrian crossing over the tracks, constructing a pedestrian tunnel under them or elevating them as they pass Dorsey. The new price tag does not include the cost of any of those options. Current plans call for the line to begin rising just west of Dorsey to reach an elevated station at La Brea Avenue.
Opponents of the present design for the Farmdale/Exposition intersection got a boost Thursday when Los Angeles school board member Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte introduced a motion opposing "any at-grade design of the Expo Light Rail Line along streets in close proximity to school sites."
The school district's safety committee took no stand on the motion, which is expected to go before the full board at its next meeting, Nov. 13.
Although the epicenter of the dispute is the crossing near Dorsey, the line would also pass within 100 feet of four other schools.
Until recent weeks, the Expo authority assumed L.A. Unified would go along with its plans. For the most part, mid-level school safety managers had presumed that street-level train crossings were inevitable. They had focused instead on working out smaller measures to enhance safety.
LaMotte said she wasn't aware of the potential risk until she attended a public meeting last month at Dorsey.
She reassured Expo Line critics Thursday: "I can talk pretty strongly and pretty loudly and you have my support. And I don't intend to back off."
jeffrey.rabin@latimes.com
howard.blume@latimes.com
