Key vote on subway project later this month

I hesitate to call anything "key" on a project that is currently scheduled to take the next 23 years to complete, but there is a significant vote scheduled for Jan. 22 concerning the subway extension project to Westwood.

Specifically, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board will consider whether to launch work on a draft environmental impact report. Such reports are, of course, a prerequisite to any construction to take place.

The board will be voting on three items:

1) Whether to approve a recently completed MTA study that recommends two routes for the subway, giving first priority to a line following Wilshire Boulevard and second priority to a line that would run from Hollywood to Beverly Hills mostly along Santa Monica Boulevard. (You can read that study by clicking here.)

2) Whether to approve a $17.2-million contract with Parsons Brinckerhoff, an engineering firm, to do the draft environmental report for the subway.

3) Whether to approve a $1.79-million contract for the Robert Group to do community outreach on the subway project.

The matter will first be discussed in the MTA board's planning committee on Wednesday. The committee will then move the item to the full board, likely with a recommendation for or against. The contracts will need seven of 13 votes for approval from the full board.

It appears likely that the seven votes are there -- but it's also best not to assume anything, given that the MTA board is inhabited mostly by politicians, some of whom spoke out against the subway during the Measure R campaign. If it's close, the potential swing vote could come from County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, the board's newest member.

Ridley-Thomas was heavily backed by labor during his supervisorial campaign (which he won over fellow MTA board member Bernard C. Parks), and labor is very much in favor of the subway project because of the jobs it may create.

Also, last Wednesday, Ridley-Thomas hired Dan Rosenfeld as his planning deputy. Rosenfeld is co-founder of Urban Partners, a development firm that specializes in infill and transit-oriented developments -- including the residences above the Wilshire-Vermont subway stop. Rosenfeld also backed Measure R, the sales tax hike that is providing as much as $4.1 billion for the subway extension.

So, will Ridley-Thomas vote for the subway?

"The 'Subway to the Sea' is a worthy vision," he told me this afternoon. "My commitment to the people of this county -- particularly those transit-dependent -- is to deliver practical results."

In other words, he digs the subway. But what about the fact that the MTA is now saying it wants to delay building the Crenshaw light rail or busway project by more than a decade. That runs through the heart of South L.A., and when Ridley-Thomas learned of the potential delay this week, he wasn't happy.

So, I asked him, why not hold his subway vote hostage in exchange for a promise to build Crenshaw quicker? I told him that's how I would play it if I were a politician.

"I think it's important to think about this huge infrastructure, this massive public works undertaking with a full sense of equity," Ridley-Thomas said. "I'm not one to broadcast my strategy."

--Steve Hymon

Photo: A man with a guitar entertains people waiting for the Red Line subway at the Hollywood and Highland station. Credit: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Paul]

When's the second route scheduled to be finished? The year 3047?

[Dan W.]

Here's hoping that petty parochialism is set aside for five minutes to approve both legs of the subway.

[writer]

Let us hope that the Subway to The Sea will be built quickly so as to convey the Yellow Submarine busker—pictured at right, above—back to Santa Monica.
He'd be diesel meat were he to play that Beatles stuff on 14th Street, let alone Brooklyn.
(Sorry, I just had to comment with respect to the fact that said busker was featured in the photo. I have had to hear him for well over a decade now—often on my way to the "new" EMI on 26th Str.—and I just can't take it any longer!)