Dorsey High School is the focal point of an increasingly heated fight between transit officials determined to build a light-rail line from downtown Los Angeles to the Westside, and Crenshaw District residents who fear that fast-moving trains will threaten the safety of students crossing the tracks.
The first leg of the rail line, scheduled to open in 2010, will run near the 2,000-student high school where at 3:08 p.m. most weekdays, chaos reigns.
After school, hundreds of students flood across the intersection of Exposition Boulevard and Farmdale Avenue, walking home or awaiting pickup. Ice cream trucks beckon. Cars wait six-deep in all directions, sometimes blocking traffic when they pull up to and away from the curb. Students walk or run past the scene or loiter under the mature pepper trees in the boulevard's grassy median -- an old railroad right-of-way that soon will become the path for trains carrying commuters between downtown L.A. and Culver City.
Critics insist that running trains at 35 mph across the intersection is unsafe. To avoid potential collisions between trains, students and motorists, they want the tracks built above or below ground, but not at street level. To do anything less, in their view, is environmental racism.
"This project is unfair to this community and the students who live here," said Beverly Manuel, Dorsey's dean of students, as she helped police the mass exodus Thursday. "If this were anyplace else, changing this design would not be an issue."
Opponents of the design note that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board last month approved spending an extra $23.3 million to add a station at USC/Exposition Park and to pay for safety improvements at several points along the Expo Line route.
But transit officials say they only have the money to pay for a street-level crossing at Dorsey. To elevate the rail line across the intersection would cost at least an extra $25 million, further straining the Expo Line project's $663.3-million budget.
Richard Thorpe, chief executive of the Exposition Metro Line Construction Authority, said the intersection will be much safer than it is now with the installation of traffic lights, wider sidewalks, warning lights, bells and barriers to prevent people and cars from crossing the twin tracks when a train is approaching.
Thorpe points to an excellent safety record on MTA's Gold Line, which runs near schools between downtown L.A. and Pasadena.
