Metro Gold Line

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."

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.

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.

For 18 months, small chunks of concrete have been falling from the Metro Gold Line's elevated station in Chinatown and crashing onto the sidewalk several yards below. No one has been hit by the debris, but transit officials acknowledge the potential danger to pedestrians near the station. Black webbing has been hung under the Gold Line bridge from Union Station to Chinatown to catch falling rubble (it's also provided a nesting place for pigeons).

TRAVELING by subway in Los Angeles involves a kind of magical thinking. To get the most out of the city's Metro Rail system, you need an open mind but also blind optimism. It's not simply that Angeleno life has been literally mapped out around cars and that commuting by subway in these parts is viewed as an alternative lifestyle decision even more radical than driving a Prius.

A 140-unit luxury apartment project has been completed near the Gold Line rail stop at Lake Avenue in Pasadena, one of several residential complexes being built or planned in the city. The $32-million Pasadena Gateway Villas at Hudson Avenue and Locust Street is a four-story Mediterranean and Spanish Revival-style complex in two wings separated by a 9,600-square-foot courtyard.

For the second time in 10 days, a motorist was injured in a collision with a Gold Line train after crashing through lowered fiberglass crossing gates along the route between Los Angeles and Pasadena, raising anew the issue of safety along commuter lines running through heavily populated areas.

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.

For seven long years, I commuted from the Westside to downtown Los Angeles, serving time in that gulag of concrete, the Santa Monica Freeway. Then last summer I moved to Pasadena. The Gold Line had just debuted, and I believed riding light rail might be a nice alternative to driving to work. I would read the paper, sip coffee and gleefully thumb my nose at people stuck in traffic.

A giant boring machine, nicknamed Lola, pushed through the dirt beneath Boyle Heights on Thursday, marking the completion of a subway tunnel that will eventually connect downtown to East Los Angeles. "This is a huge breakthrough, literally and figuratively, for this community," said Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who grew up near the Boyle Heights construction site at 1st and Lorena streets. The twin 1.