Metro Green Line

The Green Line trolley, connecting Norwalk and Redondo Beach, is the third leg of a countywide rail system. The line opens Saturday, and is free to the public this weekend. Commuter runs will begin Monday at a two-week introductory cost of 25 cents. Most of the 20-mile route runs down the middle of the Century Freeway (I-105). Facts and Figures * Where it goes: Between Norwalk and Redondo Beach. * Where it doesn't go: Stops a few miles short of LAX. * Overall cost: About $950 million.

Transit police will be stripped from all West Valley bus lines and transferred to the new Metro Green Line route in the South Bay within the next three weeks, a transit official said. Because of budget cuts, MTA Police Chief Sharon K. Papa said she has no choice but to reassign the nine West Valley officers, who are needed less urgently there than elsewhere.

Not all Metro Lines are created equal, explains Jesus Ruiz. Ruiz, who is training to become a Metro Green Line operator, can tick off the reasons for leaving his job operating Blue and Red line rail cars after five years. On the street-level Blue Line, Ruiz said, trains collide with wayward cars and pedestrians all too often. And on the underground Red Line, "The tunnel gets to you," he said. "It's all cement."

TRAIN A COMIN': Los Angeles County officials stood idly by while bottles were smashed against train No. 160 on the Metro Green Line. But it was all in good fun. The breakaway bottles, a facsimile of real champagne bottles, were part of a christening ceremony for Green Line trains held Monday at the Marine Avenue station in Hawthorne. The Green Line, expected to open this summer, is a 20-mile, aboveground rail system that will zip people from Norwalk to El Segundo in about 35 minutes.

Area mayors and City Council members on Monday named 15 rail cars after cities and communities along the Metro Green Line route, which is scheduled to be operational this summer. Cities and communities adopting Green Line cars were Redondo Beach, El Segundo, Hawthorne, Inglewood, Gardena, Lynwood, Paramount, Downey, South Gate, Bellflower, Norwalk, Watts, Westchester, Willowbrook and Athens.

Catherine Smitha and her teen-age boys were at the head of the long line Friday for the first public ride on the Green Line, and they made the rest of the St. Patrick's Day crowd, well, green with envy. The Manhattan Beach woman and her sons Joseph and Timothy (the latter wore a T-shirt depicting an old Red Car) were among the thousands of train buffs and others who turned out in Norwalk for a preview of the county's newest rail line, scheduled to open this summer.

For more than a decade now, leaders in Los Angeles government have been pitching the city's fledgling Metro Rail subway system as the chance for Angelenos to commute sensibly at last. So it may be: Despite delays and cost over-runs, the system's Red Line Downtown and the Blue Line to Long Beach are running and tidy, and the Green Line from Norwalk, southeast of Downtown, to El Segundo is scheduled to begin running next May.

Thank you for featuring the Metro Green Line Light Rail project in the Los Angeles Times South Bay edition of Oct. 8, 1993. I was pleased to read the transportation article by Gordon Dillow during Rideshare Week; however, The Times missed a great opportunity to provide information and to educate its readers about the importance of having alternative modes of transportation within the region. The article could have highlighted the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's work in the region to provide these alternatives that will eventually help improve the general quality of life in the region.

"Metro Is Coming Your Way!" announces the green and white sign near the intersection of El Segundo Boulevard and Nash Street in El Segundo. But what the sign does not say is that, compared to predictions of almost a decade ago, the Metro Green Line commuter railway is not coming your way very quickly, or very cheaply. When it finally opens in 1995--according to current projections--the Green Line will have cost almost three times more than once expected.