According to a timetable set by transportation officials overseeing Measure R, one of the most significant projects to speed travel on Los Angeles' Westside -- the "Subway to the Sea" -- is set to go very, very slowly.
The proposed rail line doesn't figure to pass engineering and environmental muster until 2013, just in time to see its biggest booster, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, leave office if elected to a second term. And it won't even reach Westwood until 2032, at which point Villaraigosa would be 78.
On Tuesday, a spokesman for the mayor said that was unacceptable and noted that Measure R "allows us to seek federal support and advance the timeline.
"We have for the first time an administration in Washington that intends to invest in public transportation," said Villaraigosa press secretary Matt Szabo. "When the mayor was running for office, the Subway to the Sea was mocked as a pipe dream. Now the question is not if it's going to be built, but when it's completed."
The timeline, issued last week, is part of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority's long-range plan that probably will be considered for approval by the agency's board of directors later this month.
The board, currently chaired by Villaraigosa, has the power to alter the plan if it doesn't like it, although members typically don't offer wholesale changes to such reports.
Many of the construction dates have been known in general, but this blueprint is the most detailed to date.
Measure R is expected to raise $40 billion over its 30-year life span. But the list of highway and transit work that local officials promised to build is long, meaning that proceeds of the tax must be spread around the county.
That poses difficulty for the subway project, which is slated to get at least $4.1 billion but is expected to cost more than $6 billion, at least half of which officials hope to secure from the federal government.
The project is already the most expensive on the Measure R list and the largest beneficiary of the sales tax -- and the reason politicians in other parts of the county worry that it will become a black hole consuming time and money.
"If we want to see something in our lifetime, let's look at other alternatives," said Tony Bell, a spokesman for Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who also serves on the MTA board and would be 92 in 2032. "We don't have to have this tunnel vision."
