A battle is looming in the depths below downtown Los Angeles as transportation planners try to find a way to smooth out the commute for thousands who take rail into the city center each day.
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is studying how to link the three major rail corridors that go into the city center: the Blue Line, the Gold Line and the upcoming Exposition Line.
The idea is to create a rail thoroughfare so that passengers can travel seamlessly from Pasadena to Long Beach -- and eventually from Culver City to East L.A.
There is widespread agreement that linking the rail lines would help commuters, who must switch trains at least once to get through downtown. But some downtown residents worry that part of the rail connection would be above ground, potentially clogging already crowded streets."It would be a pox for the neighborhood," said Eric Richardson, a member of the Downtown Neighborhood Council and the editor of www.blogdowntown.com.
Richardson and others want a commitment from the MTA that all rail connections would be underground, which could hike the price of the project.
At two public meetings this week, the MTA is to unveil potential routes through downtown that would fill in the 1.6-mile gap between Union Station and the 7th Street/Metro Center station. Dolores Roybal Saltarelli, transportation planning manager for the MTA, said the routes and potential stops were being determined in large part by input from public meetings held last year.
This "would enable us to allow people to travel all over, depending on the operation, without a transfer. They wouldn't need to use the Red Line, for example, to go from Gold to Blue, the way it is done now."
The MTA's plan is being greeted with praise by commuters tired of transferring to two or three train systems daily.
For Craig Thompson of Altadena, creating a seamless transition through downtown would be "beautiful." Thompson, 50, takes the Gold Line -- and then the Red Line and the Blue Line -- to attend evening classes at L.A. Trade Tech College on West Washington Boulevard.
If the MTA gets its way, he said, "I'd be able to go straight from the Gold Line to the Blue Line, and then a few stops and boom! Right in front of school."
For Tracy Mason, a paralegal, the changes can't happen fast enough. Mason, a Monrovia resident, takes the Gold Line to Union Station every day, then changes to the Red Line to get to her downtown job.
