by Garth Meyer
By unanimous vote today, the Metro board of directors chose the Hawthorne Boulevard route to extend light rail to the South Bay.
A total of 172 people spoke in public comment in Los Angeles, Thursday, January 22. Those against the Hawthorne Boulevard route cited concerns about lost sales tax dollars and disrupted businesses on the commercial corridor. Those in favor of Hawthorne cited quality of life issues on the other proposed route, a railroad right-of-way between neighborhoods in Lawndale and North Redondo Beach.
“There is no moral equivalency,” said Metro Board Director and Inglewood Mayor James Butts. He, fellow Metro Director, 2nd District County Supervisor Holly Mitchell and two other board members put forth a proposed motion days before the meeting in support of the Hawthorne Blvd. route.
Mitchell presented the motion to the crowd today, noting that it would establish a business interruption fund to help businesses along Hawthorne during construction of the light rail’s raised tracks.
Metro Board Director Janice Hahn gave her vote in the end to the Hawthorne route, “with apologies to Torrance.” She asked Mitchell to work with her to assure that if the Metro-owned right-of-way now goes up for sale, the Metro board will have a say in who it would be sold to.
Hahn suggested that, if it indeed is sold, and a freight company buys it, it could “do to this (Lawndale and North Redondo) community exactly what we’re trying to avoid.”
Mitchell assured Hahn she will work with her to draft such a motion for a later meeting.
The South Bay light rail extension would offer a single-seat ride from Torrance to LAX. The earliest Metro projection for when it would be complete is 2036. ER
Wow
LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn was clearly conflicted between doing the right thing for the project and those living along the ROW and the pressure Torrance politicians, and probably a couple car dealers, seemed to be putting on her to vote for their twisted community destroying preference of running 300 trains per 20 hour day along the backyards and bedroom windows of the 1,100 plus homes along the ROW… and the 8 years of construction and the unmitigable resulting contamination from the trenching required for the ROW option which would blow contaminants all across the South Bay… serious toxic substances have been revealed in soil samples analyzed… heavy metals, arsenic, etc… from 100 years of freight rail traffic.
It seems she found herself as a minority of one, and hemmed & hawed for some time, then must have realized she had to vote for the Hawthrone Blvd Elevated Alignment or the whole county would see her as irrationally beholden to Torrance. Sure, she did the right thing in the end, but she also, by her actions and comments, made it clear, she does indeed favor Torrance and would have much preferred to pander to their selfishness than protect the people of the South Bay from a really bad decision Metro made 35 years ago and has stubbornly stuck to beyond reason ever since.
Now the Metro rail extension to Torrance will be running down the same commercial corridor, rich with the kind of destinations that motivate drivers to take the train instead, as the old Red Car system ran, before really bad regional transit decisions were made to lock LA into a car-centric mindset.
Even Metro’s own projections showed the Hawthorne Blvd option would have far more ridership than the ROW, by about 30%… and that’s huge. Frankly, if it’s not about ridership, then what the heck is it about?
And that extra cost? When amortized over the 100 plus years life of the project, it comes out to peanuts… vs the health and safety of hundreds of thousands of local residents in the impacted region. The decision was actually a no-brainer… as evidenced by Chairman Butts calling out Torrance officials as a bunch of disingenuous Chicken Littles spinning “facts” and trying to convince sane people that the sky is falling, plus the fact that the other 12 voting board members had no problem making the clearly moral and correct decision.
You clearly don’t know all the details. The Hawthorne alignment AT THE MINIMUM, will delay the K line extension by 5 years, due to the Caltrans inspections and additional environmental reviews. This will increase the costs of construction, adding to the initial $700 million that could be used for literally anything else (Better bike lanes, more frequent bus service, maybe another station after the Torrance transit center). Reducing 700 million dollars to just a couple dollars over 100 years is laughable. Why don’t we add another billion in cost just because it’s only a couple million over x amount of years. There is zero chance now of anything being open in the next 15-20 years at least and everyone has NIMBYs to thank.
These 300 trains are nowhere near as loud as the freight train, nor as heavy. The concerns given are all overinflated to get the public to sympathize with homeowners who knowingly BOUGHT A HOUSE NEXT TO AN ACTIVE OIL-TRANSPORTATION RAILWAY.
In all honesty I don’t really care, hopefully this awful decision means they eventually cancel this alignment due to delays and ballooning cost and LA metro can focus on connecting areas where people actually care about good, cheap transit.
I have to agree with Mr. Boswell – By the time the questioning of Metro staff was over at the meeting, the time delay was down to 2-3 years caused by permitting delay of the Feds and Caltrans. The legislature can vacate the Caltrans problem with a 1 paragraph bill. Yes, the fed thing is harder.
As far as the argument that they live next to train tracks, so what’s 3 tracks instead of 1 track – that seems like a red herring. 24/7/365 2-track light rail will be noisy and ground vibrating around the clock, where as the oil route is a couple times a day, if that.
This seems like the right outcome.
It sounds like the ROW Easement could be available for purchase.
If that is the case, I would like to see our County Supervisors support the Quality of Life Coalition in creating a connecting linear park on the ROW easement. Of course, we would offer the owners’ fair compensation. There are many conservancies that would partner in the funding, such as “Rails to Trails”, “Trust For Public Lands”, “California Conservancy”, to name a few.
That’s a fantastic idea!
That’s a great solution…one that METRO should seriously consider. Any sale to a commercial entity would obliterate the benefits that will come from choosing the Hawthorne Blvd solution.
This is a BAD decision. Was the Mayor of Hawthorne involved with the vote??
I live in Redondo Beach, I find it bizarre that people would buy a house next to a railroad line and then complain about light rail. I find it offensive that NIMBYs have co-opted the language of racial and social justice–to stop an important piece of public infrastructure–on the grounds that their neighborhood is too fancy for the dirty people that the train will bring.
That said, the above grade Hawthorne Blvd is the only reasonable choice even if it delays the extension by 20 years. And that is because people will not take public transportation unless is the fasted or most convenient mode of transportation.