Metro board set to make light rail extension choice

by Garth Meyer

A charter bus will leave the Redondo Beach Transit Center at 8:45 a.m. May 23 to take residents to downtown Los Angeles for a meeting of the Metro Board of Directors, who are slated to choose a route that day for a Green Line/C-Line light rail extension to the South Bay.

The options include raised tracks down the median of the Hawthorne Boulevard business district and a right-of-way (ROW) corridor through neighborhoods in Lawndale, North Redondo Beach and Torrance. In Metro meetings in April, staff presented a new, revised option called the “Hybrid ROW,” which would dip the light rail lines into trenches under 170th and 182nd streets. 

Any ROW choice would be built next to existing freight tracks, which carry petroleum products to and from the local refineries. 

A grass-roots effort in Redondo Beach and Lawndale has opposed the right-of-way route, advocating for Hawthorne Boulevard instead. Other Metro choices for the South Bay include the use of high-speed buses or no project at all.

The city councils of Redondo Beach, Lawndale and Hawthorne have formally opposed the ROW route. Torrance voted 3-2 earlier this year to support it.

Redondo Beach Councilman Zein Obagi, Jr., has been involved with the local opposition as the city’s District Four representative. 

“From the recent Metro (subcommittee) meetings, you have no idea what they are thinking,” he said. 

Once a decision is made, pending they choose to build, Metro could seek federal funding.

The Metro board consists of the five L.A. County Supervisors and 10 other officials, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. 

“Nothing is for sure on the 23rd, but everything is indicating that it is going to be the date they will decide the way this is going to go,” Obagi said.

The free charter bus is being paid for by the City of Redondo Beach. ER