LA Metro is going to consider an Actual Good Option for a major future rail line
For the last year or so, one of the big questions for transit in Los Angeles, where I live, is: how should we send a train along the "Sepulveda transit corridor" under the Santa Monica mountains into the valley?
LA Metro has funded the construction of such a rail line using Measure M, the big tax bill that's funding our current rail build-out. Over the next 10-15 years, we'll see them drill some kind of tunnel under the mountains - and underneath the wealthy communities you can find in those mountains - to connect the D and E rail lines, in west LA, with the G line, a major BRT line in the San Fernando Valley. This rail line will parallel the dreaded 405 freeway. (Beginning in 2016, I organized my entire life - job, housing, commute - around the goal of never driving on the 405.)
There's been a huge battle in local politics over what form the "Sepulveda corridor," as this future rail connection has been called, should actually take. The only reasonable option would be heavy rail - ideally an automated heavy rail system. Automated heavy rail could move a massive amount of people and would be a generational change to the way transit works in the city. The volume of people it could move, the speed at which it could move them... these things would simply change what's possible when it comes to car-free living in LA.
However, some local organizations started supporting a fucking monorail instead. I don't know the history of this fight well enough to summarize the monorail stuff off the top of my head, but LA is lucky to have Nick Andert, a documentarian and youtuber who makes several very detailed videos about LA transit planning every year. Here's a good section of a recent video about the Sepulveda corridor, which gets into the various options Metro had to choose between - and why the monorail options would have been so painfully, frustratingly bad for the city. Namely: the ridership would have been insanely low.
To some extent, the monorail options were spoiler options supported by the rich people who live above the project area. When we built the D line through Beverly Hills, the rich locals freaked the fuck out about the idea of a tunnel going under their city; the rich people living around the STC are now freaking out about the idea of visible trains or train stations anywhere near their communities. (Some of them, including the actual freak who invented Ticketmaster, Fred Rosen, have been trying to stop the project for years.)
The benefit of the monorail to communities like this would have actually been the lower ridership. These are the kinds of people who are scared of transit because they think homeless people will ride trains into their towns. They're also terrified of the California state laws that allow taller buildings to be constructed in the areas close to train stations.
The cheapest good option would have actually been "Alt 4," a heavy rail subway with above-ground, elevated sections in the SFV; unfortunately, NIMBYs and anti-rail activists in the valley strongly objected to the idea of above-ground, visible trains. "Alt 5" was the heavy rail option with fully underground routing (which makes construction more expensive).
Last week, we learned that the monorails are no longer being considered!!! by Metro, and that at their next meeting they will move to certify a heavy rail plan. The fight isn't over yet - this vote needs to work out for heavy rail, and then they need to finish figuring out financing and other preparatory reports - but we're almost there, and Metro advancing heavy rail is huge.
They've picked Alt 5 to move forward with a vote on, instead of Alt 4. I'm assuming that's because they want to avoid even more legal battles around elevated rail in the valley. I think that's a shame - there's nothing wrong with elevated heavy rail, I think it actually looks great, it makes the city look sci fi and shit, and it's more fiscally responsible. You're not gonna die from hearing a train, and that train is going to take potentially tens of thousands of cars out of your community - and those cars are actually the biggest sources of urban noise. But Alt 5 is still fantastic. Heavy rail is the real win here and we're lucky to be looking at a future that probably includes it.
And even better... they picked a route with a stop at UCLA!!!
Some of the proposed routes actually skipped UCLA - which is a massive, massive jobs center in addition to its role as a major university. So many people need to go there!! Alt 1, a monorail option, would have skipped the UCLA stop entirely and connected to the university via a bus or a people-mover of some kind. Weak shit. But the option they're advancing is gonna have a real UCLA stop!!
They still gotta finalize the vote at their late January meeting. And even if that works out, the train won't be running in a way that I can use until over a decade from now. But these are the fights that matter in this city. Can we normalize transit for more communities? Can we help to shift the temperature in the city - and the country at large - when it comes to massive infrastructure buildouts? Capital is fake shit, but infrastructure is real wealth. Transit makes life cheaper and easier and healthier for regular people. Getting it built is the gift we give to future generations. I believe that if you have a child, one of the greatest gifts you could possibly give them would be to build them a future where they get to ride the goddamn train to work.
Anyway, the STC is going to shape the future of LA in some pretty crazy ways. So many babies are gonna grow up to ride it. I'm gonna ride it when I'm retired, I hope. It's gonna be great. Building trains like this is the way we prove we're a society. Rich guys who want a low-ridership monorail because they're terrified of unhoused people are parasitic scum, and we kicked their asses this time. Go fuck yourself, Sherman Oaks! I hope Fred Rosen has a fun time scooping the poop out of his pants over this!!