Category: Public Transit

In a surprising and ambitious move, local transportation officials said Tuesday that they would pursue planning for two subway lines to the Westside, with one train along Wilshire Boulevard and a shorter leg partially following Santa Monica Boulevard before diving south to meet the Wilshire line.

Of course, the effort is still hypothetical, and Los Angeles still needs the money to build the multibillion-dollar rail line. But officials are showing unusual bravura for a project that looked to be dead a decade ago.

It was in 1998, amid several spending and construction boondoggles on the existing subway, that voters in L.A. County banned the Metropolitan Transportation Authority from using sales tax money for new subway tunneling.

That ban remains in effect, but complaints over Westside traffic have continued to pile up, fueling efforts to extend the subway.

Various routes have been discussed over the years, with recent momentum falling on the Wilshire corridor. But MTA officials never formally settled on a route until launching a study a year ago that sought public reaction, and then they began crunching numbers.

“We thought people would say they want a Wilshire line or we want a Santa Monica [Boulevard] line,” said Jody Litvak, a spokeswoman for the Metro Westside Extension study. “We were surprised they wanted both.”

But experts say the biggest culprit in rush-hour traffic snags is a boom in Westside commercial development that has lured and created jobs.

Job growth has transformed the area into the region’s premiere commercial hub, second only to downtown Los Angeles in the number of jobs. Each day, workers pour into office buildings lining busy corridors such as Wilshire Boulevard, the burgeoning towers of Century City and the rows of Santa Monica office parks that have become a mecca for media companies such as Yahoo! and MTV.

One problem: Primarily because housing is so expensive, only about 30% of these workers actually live on the Westside, according to a Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority study. That leaves more than 300,000 people a day commuting to the area.

So many workers drive to Santa Monica from other parts of the region that the city’s population nearly doubles during the day, to 150,000 from 87,000 at night. Beverly Hills’ population more than triples, said David Mieger, director of Westside planning for the MTA.

Over the years, dreams have come and gone of a coastal L.A. served by commuter ferries, much like those in Seattle, San Francisco and New York. Today, no agency is actively pursuing the idea, but some wonder if its time has come.

With gas more than $3 a gallon and coastal traffic in gridlock, could cities lining Santa Monica Bay be ripe for fleets of water shuttles?

Could the WaterBus add a loop to Santa Monica Pier and back? Could a larger version carry commuters from, say, San Pedro and Redondo Beach to the Westside?

In 2001, the last time projects were ranked, the MTA board of directors gave the Expo Line a high priority.

Construction is scheduled to begin soon on the first part of the line — from downtown Los Angeles to Culver City.

The next proposed segment, from Culver City to Santa Monica, is in the long-range plan but has not yet been funded. It is expected to cost $750 million to build.

The Gold Line extension did not make it into the MTA’s 2001 long-range plan. A preliminary draft of the agency’s 2006 priorities shows other, more costly, projects — such as Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s proposed subway to the sea — ranking higher.

Because ridership on the Gold Line’s 14-mile route between Union Station near downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena turned out to be lower than expected, a further extension of the line was placed somewhere in the middle of this year’s preliminary long-range plan.