Metro Gold Line

It would be tough to overstate the level of cynicism that exists in certain corners of the Los Angeles establishment about the future of mass transit in Southern California. For many power brokers and longtime observers of the political scene, disparaging the chances of the region ever putting together a comprehensive transit system is some combination of rhetorical tic and parlor game. In fact, the progress we've already made on a subway and light-rail network -- full of delays and misjudgments as it has been -- is remaking the physical and psychological terrain of Los Angeles in some profound ways.

Los Angeles City Councilman Ed Reyes and two other elected officials have resigned from the board of the Gold Line light-rail project in the wake of a conflict-of-interest complaint sent to the state attorney general. In addition to Reyes, two alternates — Monrovia Mayor Mary Ann Lutz and South Pasadena Councilman Michael Cacciotti — have stepped down from the Metro Gold Line Foothill Construction Authority that oversees the San Gabriel Valley project. Reyes, who has denied any impropriety, left the board last month along with Lutz.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will begin express service today between Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles to reduce traffic congestion. The Metro Gold Line Express Service will reduce rush-hour commutes from 34 minutes to 29. The new service will stop at five of 13 Metro Gold Line stations: Union Station, Highland Park, Mission, Del Mar and Sierra Madre Villa. Six trains will run every half-hour in both directions during the morning and afternoon rush-hour periods.

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.

A car struck a Metro Gold Line train at an intersection in Highland Park late Sunday, but no one was seriously injured, police said. The accident occurred about 8:50 p.m. near the Gold Line's Highland Park Station, at Avenue 57 and Marmion Way. Officer Mike Lopez, a police spokesman, said the driver of the car suffered scrapes and bruises and was treated at the scene. No one on the train was hurt.

Trains on the Metro Gold Line were running late Saturday after an overhead bracket broke in a train just south of the Mission Station as it was headed to Los Angeles. Service was disrupted for 45 minutes to an hour shortly after the 4:20 p.m. incident, according to Rick Jager, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. By 8:30, trains were running about 10 to 15 minutes late in both directions. Officials were not certain when service would return to normal.

Karolyn Kiisel said the high-pitched screeches of the Gold Line train are so grating that she has stopped barbecuing in her backyard, installed a $5,000 fence to block the noise and turns up the radio when she's working at home. The whine, she says, interrupts her day and night. "I'm so sleep-deprived," said the 52-year-old South Pasadena resident. "It's kind of like a big truck going by."

Mail: Service today will not be affected. On Saturday, there will be no mail delivery, and post offices will be closed. Schools: Public schools will be closed both days. Public transportation: Today, Metrolink's Antelope Valley and San Bernardino lines will operate on their Saturday schedules and all other lines will be shut down. MTA buses and Metro Rail trains will run today on their regular schedules, and all rides are free from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. On Saturday, Metrolink trains will run on a special schedule; information: (800)

For people thinking about attending the Rose Parade but feeling daunted by the driving and parking hassles, the MTA offers an alternative. To encourage early parade-goers to leave their cars at home, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to keep the Gold Line as well as the rest of its rail network open all night Wednesday. Several Metro Gold Line stations in Pasadena are within easy walking distance of the parade route, including the Memorial Park Station at 125 E. Holly St., which is two blocks away.

Little Ramona High School has long prided itself on being an oasis of calm for teenage girls. For more than 50 years, the alternative school has been a haven for pregnant teenagers, wards of the court and others in danger of dropping out. Rows of infants sleep in cribs inside the school's child-care center. The courtyard blooms with zinnias and daffodils planted by students, and girls clutching notebooks stroll past bird feeders suspended from trees.

An unsavory chapter of local history was closed Saturday with the dedication of a memorial wall and meditation garden to honor the Chinese laborers and others whose forgotten graves were excavated during construction of the Metro Gold Line's Eastside extension. The somber ceremony included a traditional Chinese blessing and multifaith prayers for the recently reinterred remains of people who had been buried in a potter's field adjacent to Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights. After years of sometimes tense negotiations involving the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Los Angeles County, the remains were moved to a burial site in the cemetery near an existing Chinese shrine.

Irvin R. Lai, a revered Chinese American community leader in Los Angeles best known for his efforts to save the roast duck in Chinatown and to ensure the proper handling of burial remains exposed during the Metro Gold Line extension, has died. He was 83. Lai was surrounded by his family when he died July 16 at Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Medical Center from complications of pneumonia, said his daughter Kathleen Lih. Born in 1927 on a farm outside Locke, the historic Chinese settlement in the Sacramento River delta, Lai was a third-generation Chinese American who moved to Los Angeles in his teens, served in the U.S. military during World War II and the Korean War, went to college on the GI Bill and eventually worked in the family's restaurant, refrigeration and construction businesses.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority board on Thursday approved $690 million in funding for the extension of the Gold Line in the San Gabriel Valley, marking a significant step forward for the project. The money would go toward extending the light rail line 11.3 miles from its current terminus at Sierra Madre Villa Avenue in Pasadena to Azusa. The board's approval means the project is on track to break ground in June and begin service in 2014. The extension is one of several major rail projects being planned for L.A. County in the next few years, including an extension of the Expo Line into Santa Monica, a new line down Crenshaw Boulevard into the South Bay and an extension of the Eastside portion of the Gold Line.

Heather Bleemers had never spent much time on Los Angeles' Eastside, despite being an urban planning graduate student at USC. But on Sunday, Bleemers ventured from her usual stamping grounds. She and about 50 others toured the area's Nativity scenes, known as nacimientos, taking advantage of the new Gold Line extension. Unlike previous tours by car or bike, this year's event depended entirely on public transportation. "We live in Silver Lake and . . . don't go outside that area much," said Bleemers, who took the tour with her husband.

It would be tough to overstate the level of cynicism that exists in certain corners of the Los Angeles establishment about the future of mass transit in Southern California. For many power brokers and longtime observers of the political scene, disparaging the chances of the region ever putting together a comprehensive transit system is some combination of rhetorical tic and parlor game. In fact, the progress we've already made on a subway and light-rail network -- full of delays and misjudgments as it has been -- is remaking the physical and psychological terrain of Los Angeles in some profound ways.

When Armando Ybarra was a teenager in the early 1950s, he used to take an old hulking streetcar to school and work on the Eastside. The fare was about 10 cents, and when the trolleys were too crowded, he would simply grab ahold of something and ride on the outside of the car. "People were very friendly, very sociable, and you'd feel comfortable," Ybarra, now 70, said, remembering how the streetcar operator would ring a bell and call out...

Oh! you railway station Oh! you Pullman train! Here's my reservation For my destination Far beyond the western plain. * It's odd that Pasadena, with its majestic snowcapped mountains, lavish mansions and fragrant gardens, would have an official song whose opening lines extol its train station.

Construction is pushing ahead on the eastern extension of the Metro Gold Line, bringing months -- if not years -- of traffic snarls on the Eastside including the closure this weekend of the 101 Freeway though a portion of downtown Los Angeles. Southbound lanes of the freeway will be affected throughout the weekend, and shut completely Sunday morning, as workers build a 1,500-foot bridge for the rail line above traffic.

With a new rail line set to open on the Eastside next month, one of the project's most vocal and enthusiastic backers has few good things to say about it. L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina calls the Eastside Gold Line extension "substandard" and potentially dangerous and says she worries that children leaving school are in danger of being hit by oncoming trains. "I don't know that it's safe. They're telling me that it's safe. . . . Everything has been an excuse. Everything," Molina said.

It was to be a little aesthetic touch added to the Eastside extension of the Gold Line as it neared completion. But no one imagined what gremlins would be unleashed when workers added a layer of paint to the concrete at "cross-over" points where the light-rail trains could switch tracks. The coloring agent was made of iron oxide. And at intersections like 1st and Clarence streets in Boyle Heights it caused the painted concrete to conduct an electrical circuit that basically told a lie. "It was sending out a false signal that the train was there," said Dennis Mori, the Gold Line Eastside extension's project manager.