Westside subway plans move forward
Road Sage
MTA officials say they will continue planning for two lines, along Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards.
In a surprising and ambitious move, local transportation officials said Tuesday that they would pursue planning for two subway lines to the Westside, with one train along Wilshire Boulevard and a shorter leg partially following Santa Monica Boulevard before diving south to meet the Wilshire line.
Of course, the effort is still hypothetical, and Los Angeles still needs the money to build the multibillion-dollar rail line. But officials are showing unusual bravura for a project that looked to be dead a decade ago.
It was in 1998, amid several spending and construction boondoggles on the existing subway, that voters in L.A. County banned the Metropolitan Transportation Authority from using sales tax money for new subway tunneling.
Subway stations: A map that accompanied an article in Wednesday's California section on two possible subway routes on L.A.'s Westside omitted the location of four stations. One of the proposed lines would go along Wilshire Boulevard and another along Santa Monica Boulevard before meeting Wilshire; missing from those routes were stations serving Westwood and Century City; a station at the juncture of La Brea Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard; and another in the vicinity of Santa Monica Boulevard, at either La Cienega Boulevard or San Vicente Boulevard. Also, the station in Crenshaw should have been labeled as an optional station.
That ban remains in effect, but complaints over Westside traffic have continued to pile up, fueling efforts to extend the subway.
Various routes have been discussed over the years, with recent momentum falling on the Wilshire corridor. But MTA officials never formally settled on a route until launching a study a year ago that sought public reaction, and then they began crunching numbers.
"We thought people would say they want a Wilshire line or we want a Santa Monica [Boulevard] line," said Jody Litvak, a spokeswoman for the Metro Westside Extension study. "We were surprised they wanted both."
MTA board members will begin discussing the two lines at a series of public meetings that start tonight in Santa Monica. For more information on the meetings, go to www.metro.net/news_info/.
The combined cost of the two lines would be about $9 billion if built today. But because such projects take years, inflation would probably drive up the final price. The Wilshire line would get priority for funding because it has higher ridership estimates, said David Mieger, project manager for the Westside study.
The reason the other line is being considered is that it would make the entire subway system more versatile by stopping near major job centers such as the Warner Hollywood studios, the Pacific Design Center, the Beverly Center and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. It would miss the Grove shopping development, however, by more than half a mile.
The second line would also chop significant time off a trip to the Westside from the San Fernando Valley. For example, Mieger said a ride from North Hollywood to Westwood could potentially drop from 61 minutes to 28 minutes.
