Light Rail

There was a time when Inglewood's Market Street hummed with activity — department stores, bustling movie houses and a steady stream of pedestrians. Now the department stores are largely gone, the movie theaters have closed and vendors fight for business on a street that's grown tired. But architect and artist Chris Mercier sees something far livelier — water from Centinela Springs flowing alongside the sidewalks, rooftops farms and aeronautic-looking windmills that would add an offbeat and colorful touch to the city's main artery.

Traffic crawled at an infuriating pace Monday morning on the 10 Freeway. But at a groundbreaking ceremony for the last leg of the Expo light-rail line to Santa Monica, dozens of Southland officials proclaimed a different future. "People get stuck coming into this area in the morning to go to work ... and get stuck going home when they leave," L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said at the ceremony in the beach city. The Expo Line is "not going to solve the traffic problems of the Westside, but it's going to give people an alternative to being stuck with the problems on the Westside.

Local legislators want to exempt officials of a San Gabriel Valley light-rail project from conflict-of-interest laws after a complaint was lodged last month with the state attorney general. Assemblywoman Norma J. Torres (D-Chino) and five colleagues have proposed a bill that would help five board members and two alternates of the Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority who have been accused of holding incompatible offices. State law forbids public officials from serving on multiple boards, commissions, city councils and other governing bodies with interests that are likely to clash.

On Thursday, the 13-member Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board will vote on two issues of significant concern to the people of South Los Angeles: whether the new Crenshaw-to-LAX light-rail line will include a station in Leimert Park Village, and whether it will go underground along a congested stretch along the Park Mesa Heights stretch of Crenshaw Boulevard. The planned rail project will run about 8.5 miles along Crenshaw Boulevard, from the planned Expo Line on the north to the Green Line on the south.

At first glance, office buildings in the rustic complex on the edge of Culver City look decidedly down-market. The mismatched assortment of corrugated steel, wood and concrete structures on La Cienega Boulevard were thrown up haphazardly after World War II. But inside it's a different story. The complex today, known as Blackwelder, is home to upscale firms in creative fields such as movie production and fashion, and the renovated interiors tend to be rich in design with walnut stairs, European-style kitchens and 3-D theaters.

When I was a kid, I had a map with a dotted line for the Beverly Hills Freeway. It was going to run just south of my East Hollywood neighborhood, plowing through the Fairfax district on its way to the sea, bulldozing a mansion or two along the way. It was never built, of course. Another dotted line on that same map marked the Century Freeway, Interstate 105, which was built. Caltrans cut a gaping no-man's land through South L.A. and Lynwood years before construction began, and so fostered crime and urban decay.

Leimert Park Village has long been a soul of African American life and culture in South Los Angeles. Jazz and blues regularly spill into the street, and shoppers browse the titles at one of the last remaining black-centric bookstores. Community activists meet in Leimert Park Village and residents sometimes hold memorial vigils there. But to dismay of some in South L.A., a new light rail line set to run through the heart of L.A.'s black community does not include a stop at the historic district.

Jaffa Road has witnessed empires come and go, watched camel caravans give way to stagecoaches and automobiles, seen pilgrims and pioneers, businessmen and bombers. Now change is coming once again to the iconic Jerusalem route. Supplemented by a network of designated buses and pedestrian malls, a new light-rail train along the city's main thoroughfare will "revolutionize transportation and the city too," said Nadav Meroz, acting director of the Jerusalem Transportation Master Plan.

If you drive through Cheviot Hills and Rancho Park and see the orange-and-black signs peppering front lawns, you might get the impression that these neighborhoods solidly oppose the coming of the Expo light-rail line. "Kids and Trains Don't Mix," they shout, and "Don't Let the Train Block the Road. " But the reality is quite different. Every weekend for the last couple of months, a group of us have been walking door to door, talking to our neighbors about the Expo Line that will soon connect our community to downtown Los Angeles, Santa Monica and points in between.