LA Times: MTA offers plans to smooth rail ties through downtown

[marmar]

MTA offers plans to smooth rail ties through downtown
By Cara Mia DiMassa, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 25, 2008


A battle is looming in the depths below downtown Los Angeles as transportation planners try to find a way to smooth out the commute for thousands who take rail into the city center each day.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is studying how to link the three major rail corridors that go into the city center: the Blue Line, the Gold Line and the upcoming Exposition Line.

The idea is to create a rail thoroughfare so that passengers can travel seamlessly from Pasadena to Long Beach -- and eventually from Culver City to East L.A.

There is widespread agreement that linking the rail lines would help commuters, who must switch trains at least once to get through downtown. But some downtown residents worry that part of the rail connection would be above ground, potentially clogging already crowded streets."It would be a pox for the neighborhood," said Eric Richardson, a member of the Downtown Neighborhood Council and the editor of www.blogdowntown.com.

Richardson and others want a commitment from the MTA that all rail connections would be underground, which could hike the price of the project.

At two public meetings this week, the MTA is to unveil potential routes through downtown that would fill in the 1.6-mile gap between Union Station and the 7th Street/Metro Center station. Dolores Roybal Saltarelli, transportation planning manager for the MTA, said the routes and potential stops were being determined in large part by input from public meetings held last year.

This "would enable us to allow people to travel all over, depending on the operation, without a transfer. They wouldn't need to use the Red Line, for example, to go from Gold to Blue, the way it is done now."

The MTA's plan is being greeted with praise by commuters tired of transferring to two or three train systems daily. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-underground25feb25,1,7417268.story?ctrack=2&cset=true

[nxylas]

1. Didn't think LA *had* a city center

I've never been there, but I'd always heard it was "(however many) suburbs in search of a city".

[kestrel91316]

2. We DO have a downtown! We also have a number of other centers

of commerce, complete with skyscrapers. Warner Center in the west San Fernando Valley, the Westside/Century City, Beautiful Downtown Burbank, Van Nuys Civic Center, Long Beach, LAX......but they are WAAAYYYYYY spread apart.

Here's downtown as seen from the University of Spoiled Children:



And get this: City Hall and the courts are downtown, but if you want to go to any COUNTY offices, they are clear to hell-and-gone in DOWNEY and other points southeast, which is utterly moronic. They may as well be in Arizona.