Los Angeles County Metro Rail
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The Los Angeles County Metro Rail is the current mass transit rail system operating in Los Angeles. It is run by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and is the descendent of the Pacific Electric Red Car system and Los Angeles Railway Yellow Car lines which operated in the area from the early to middle Twentieth Century. Currently, Metro Rail boasts four lines, 73.1 miles of rail, 62 stations, and approximately 230,000 daily boardings.
Rail lines
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) runs four rail lines throughout Los Angeles County.
- The Red Line (first leg to Westlake/MacArthur Park opened in 1993; to North Hollywood in 2000) is a subway line running between Downtown Los Angeles and Koreatown or North Hollywood. It is the only heavy rail (subway) line in the Metro Rail system.
- The Blue Line (opened in 1990) is a light rail line connecting Downtown Los Angeles to Downtown Long Beach. It is the region's first rail line since the demise of the Pacific Electric Railway's Red Car system in 1961.
- The Green Line (opened in 1995) is a light rail line running between Redondo Beach and Norwalk which operates mostly in the median of the Century Freeway (Interstate 105). It offers access to Los Angeles International Airport via a shuttle bus from the Aviation/I-105 station. It is the regions only above ground light rail line that is completely grade-separated.
- The Gold Line (opened July 26, 2003) is a light rail line that runs between Downtown L.A and Pasadena and runs through Highland Park and South Pasadena.
- Note: While it shares the identification by color as the above rail lines, the 14-mile Orange Line (opened on October 29, 2005) in the San Fernando Valley is a busway, running large articulated buses known as "Metro Liners" on a reserved right-of-way, most of it a former railroad right-of-way.
Los Angeles subway
The Los Angeles Subway is the rapid transit system of the city of Los Angeles, California. As described below, all Los Angeles streetcar lines had been closed down by 1963. With 14 million people in the greater metropolitan area, those cars created one of the most traffic-congested cities. In the 1980s, Los Angeles County decided to build a network of metro and light rail lines. Although the first light rail opened in 1990, the only underground subway - the Red Line - opened in 1993 after seven years of construction. The Red Line runs from downtown Los Angeles westwards to Hollywood and North Hollywood. All of the underground stations boast an interesting design, which makes construction more expensive than elsewhere. Due to the city's proximity to fault lines, tunnels had to be built to resist earthquakes of up to magnitude 7.5.History
Los Angeles once had the world's largest rail transit system, the Pacific Electric Railway's "Red Car," with 1,100 miles (1,770 km) of track and 2,800 scheduled trains each day. Rail lines and streetcars (trolleys) ran up and down most major streets in Los Angeles and its suburbs. In addition to the Pacific Electric, most of the streetcars in the central city and surrounding neighborhoods were operated by Henry Huntington's Los Angeles Railway, later Los Angeles Transit Lines, who ran the "Yellow Cars." The "Red Cars" were mostly interurban trains connecting widely separated cities with each other, with the exception of a few small neighborhood lines in areas like Echo Park and Redlands.
Ridership of the Pacific Electric and Los Angeles Railway peaked in the early 1930s, with another increase during World War II, however, as increasing automobile traffic both drew riders away from the Red Cars and Yellow Cars and caused its lines--which usually operated in mixed traffic and had at-grade street crossings--to slow to a grinding halt. (At one point late in the Red Car's life, average speeds on the busy Santa Monica Boulevard line had fallen below 15 mph.)
Throughout the United States in the 1950s, the emergent middle class poured into automobile-dependent outer-ring suburbs, which were gradually connected to urban centers and to one another by a web of freeways. This process accelerated in the 1950s, when a variety of factors, such as relaxation of automobile loan rules by the Federal Reserve, falling automobile prices, and federal subsidies for freeway construction led to a nearly wholesale switch from transit systems to freeway systems. Most electric rail systems, including the Pacific Electric, either switched to buses or closed down altogether. According to believers in the General Motors streetcar conspiracy, GM and a number of conspiring corporations were responsible for the closure of the rail lines; however, Pacific Electric had in fact begun the transition from streetcars to buses in the mid-1920s due to a variety of factors. In any case, a private company, Metropolitan Coach Lines, purchased and closed most of Pacific Electric's remaining rail lines in 1954 and converted them to buses. The state government would not allow MCL to shutter the most used rail lines, which caused MCL to seek to sell off its rail operations instead.
A public agency, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority, a predecessor to the RTD and the current MTA, took control of all remaining Los Angeles County passenger rail lines in 1958. The agency closed the remaining interurban rail and streetcar lines over the course of the following five years. After almost 90 years of streetcars and electric rail in Los Angeles, the last remaining Red Car line went out of service in 1961 and the last street car lines, remnants of the "Yellow Cars" originally operated by the Los Angeles Railway, followed suit two years later.
After years of debate and a twenty-year flirtation with monorail technology, MTA began construction on several new conventional rail lines in the 1980s. In 1990, rail transit returned to Los Angeles with the Blue line, a light rail line from Downtown Los Angeles to Long Beach, using largely the right-of-way last used by the Pacific Electric in 1961. Plans originally called for subway lines to the San Fernando Valley (via Hollywood), Pasadena, and East Los Angeles, but budget concerns and political opposition (some based on racist fears of racial and ethnic minorities entering affluent white areas) meant that only 18 of the planned 50+ miles of subway were built. Today, there are four rail lines that cover 73.1 miles (118 km) of track. However, several expansion projects are currently in the works as noted below.
Hours of operation
Metro Rail generally operates from 5:00 AM to midnight. However, exact times vary from route to route. See individual route articles for more information.Current projects
- The Eastside Extension is a six-mile extension of the Gold Line to East Los Angeles. It is currently under construction and is scheduled to be completed in late 2009. Due to the narrowness of First Street, a 1.8 mile section of the extension in the working-class minority neighborhood of Boyle Heights will be underground.
- The Expo line (official name: "Mid-City/Exposition Line") is a light rail line in the planning stages from Downtown L.A. to Santa Monica via the Exposition Boulevard corridor in northern South Los Angeles. The first phase (9.6 miles) from the 7th/Figueroa station in downtown to Venice/Robertson in Culver City, will begin construction in 2006. On May 30, 2006, surveying activities began along the line, with construction completion slated for 2010. The project is to be renamed as the Metro Aqua Linehttp://www.mta.net/board/Items/2006/03_March/20060316Item13EMAC.pdf. No funding has yet been identified for the second phase, which aims to bring the line from Culver City to Santa Monica, a short distance from the Pacific Ocean.
Expansion proposals
Official
- Red Line: Los Angeles mayor and MTA chair Antonio Villaraigosa has announced his intention to extend the Red Line's Wilshire leg from its current terminus at Western Avenue to downtown Santa Monica. MTA has not officially announced this project because of the federal ban on tunnel construction in the Miracle Mile District, due to lingering concerns over large pockets of methane gas underneath it. On October 27, 2005, a panel selected by the MTA Board and Congressman Henry Waxman, a vocal opponent of the subway extension, declared that extension of the subway was safe. On December 16, 2005, Waxman introduced H.R. 4571 to the U.S. House to allow subway tunneling under Wilshire Boulevard. This extension, and possibly the current Western Avenue stub, is to be named the Metro Purple Line.
- Blue Line: Initial plans for the Blue Line called for it to travel all the way to Union Station and beyond; the Gold Line was originally known as the "Pasadena Blue Line." A connection between the 7th St/Metro Center to the future Eastside Extension would allow Blue and Expo Line to reach Union Station, Pasadena and Eastside, and vice versa. However, because a county subway construction funds initiative (passed in 1998) bans public funding for extension work, all work has been halted. In September 2005, the MTA board publicly indicated its desire to take up this project again, a call heartily endorsed by the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times.
- Gold Line: Using former Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway trackage and right-of-way in the San Gabriel Valley, The Metro Gold Line Foothill Construction Authority is working to extend the northern branch of the Gold Line eastward, from its current terminus in Pasadena to the city of Montclair in San Bernardino County. As the population density is lower in this portion of the county and projected ridership is lower, other projects have been given a higher priority than this extension. The 24-mile (39 km) Foothill Extension (so named because the route is just to the south of a mountain range) does enjoy popular support from all of the twenty-three cities along its route. The San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments recently obtained federal funding for environmental studies and hopes construction of the first segment to Azusa can begin in as early as 2007 with a possible completion in 2010. The second segment to Montclair is hoped to be completed by 2014. That the extension has been seriously considered at all is due in large part to the advocacy of former Azusa city manager Rick Cole, a vocal smart growth proponent.
With the completion of the Foothill and Eastside extensions by 2014, the Gold Line would become the longest Metro Line, and maybe even the longest light rail line in North America, surpassing the 22-mile (35 km) Blue Line with over 50 miles (80 km) of rail.
- Green Line: The long-delayed reconstruction of Los Angeles International Airport will include a Green Line spur to the new terminal. Los Angeles City Council member Bill Rosendahl has called for this spur to be extended to Marina Del Rey or even Venice along Lincoln Boulevard, citing MTA white papers indicating the feasibility of such an extension. The extension would fix the Green Line's issue of being a route that goes "from nowhere to nowhere."
Citizens
Rail advocates have proposed the following lines:
- The [Yellow Line] is a proposed light-rail line which would run from North Hollywood to Downtown L.A., serving the communities of Burbank, Glendale, Silver Lake, and Echo Park en route. Part of the proposed route, a former Southern Pacific railway alignment along Chandler Boulevard in Burbank, has recently been converted by the City of Burbank to a bicycle path and parkway, thus reducing the likelihood this line would come to fruition. The Yellow Line proposal also advocates use of the former Belmont tunnel built by the Pacific Electric system, not in use since 1955. The land adjacent to the tunnel exit near Second Street and Beverly Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles, long vacant, has recently been sold. An apartment complex will be built on the site, making it much less likely this area could be used for a new rail line.
- The [Silver Line] is another light-rail proposal which would operate from El Monte to Hollywood, passing through the western San Gabriel Valley, Downtown L.A., Echo Park, and Silver Lake along the way. It would use existing rail between El Monte and Union Station in downtown Los Angeles.
- *Update: Foothill Transit has proposed a new rapid bus line running along a similar route with the same name. It would use buses similar in build to the Metro Orange Line.
- The "[Harbor Line]" would serve residents of the Harbor Area, by connecting it to the rest of Los Angeles by linking it to the MTA's existing light rail system. The line would serve as a convenient way for people to visit San Pedro, which is currently undergoing a state of rapid redevelopment (with the Port's Bridge to Breakwater proposal and other condo projects).
See also
- List of rapid transit systems
References
External links
- Official [Metro] website
- Gold Line [Foothill Extension] website
- Official Gold Line [Eastside Extension] website
- History of the [Metro Rail System]
- Citizens For A Harbor Line [link]
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