Key Vote Nears on Eastside Rail Line

Residents on the Eastside of Los Angeles have long craved a commuter rail line to connect them with downtown. They are likely to clear a major hurdle today when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is expected to approve a crucial environmental study for the project.

After nearly a decade of struggle, engineers have designed a route to satisfy MTA board members’ concerns. Nearly half a billion dollars have been set aside. And key political leaders have been brought into the fold.

Yet years of longing and significant support have not eliminated a determined and vocal opposition that is again raising its voice against the project. The critics distrust the MTA and say the planned five-year construction will shutter businesses, force families to flee and threaten two major neighborhood institutions--an indoor sales mart known as El Mercado and a high school for troubled teenage girls.

The critics know they are fighting massive support for the rail line, which would link the Eastside to downtown, where a connection will extend to Pasadena. But they say they will never give up the fight, whether it means filing lawsuits or even physically blocking construction of the tracks.

If that happens, they may be joined by members of the Bus Riders Union. The advocacy group is renewing its oft-repeated complaint: MTA rail projects siphon off money that should be spent to buy buses and relieve severe overcrowding for bus riders.

The 13-member board will vote today on an environmental study that lays out the design and path of the $760-million Eastside line, along with the location of nine new stations.

If approved, the plan would be forwarded to Washington, where the Federal Transit Administration has for years designated $495 million for construction of the railway. State money will cover the remaining cost.

The agency, which hopes to break ground next year, is proceeding with a sense of urgency. MTA officials fear that delays may cost them federal and state funding pledges--meaning that the Eastside might never get its railway.

The 5-inch-thick environmental plan is a slight revision of a blueprint submitted to the board last year. Worried at the time about the location of some train stations, board members told MTA planners to make alterations. They spent the last several months fine-tuning the route, with input from Eastside residents and politicians.

As proposed, the railway will be an extension of the 13-mile-long Pasadena Gold Line, due for completion in summer 2003. That would mean riders boarding in Pasadena could loop through downtown and, without transferring, end up in some of Los Angeles’ oldest, predominantly Latino neighborhoods. Along the way the “Eastside extension” would pass through Little Tokyo, cross the Los Angeles River and continue to Boyle Heights, before ending in unincorporated East Los Angeles.

The train would travel for just over a mile underneath Boyle Heights, to keep commuter trains off the narrow, dense streets.

The countywide transit agency sees the Eastside line as crucial to its plans to spread light rail throughout the region. The neighborhoods east of downtown are among the region’s poorest and their residents rely heavily on public transportation.

Passengers on the new train could speed through the eastern extension in 17 minutes, significantly faster than buses that require multiple transfers and often get caught in traffic.

Judging by scores of interviews conducted on the streets of Boyle Heights recently, the plan appears to be heartily endorsed by most residents. “We feel like a very strong solution was come up with and like people in the community were very involved,” said longtime Boyle Heights resident Nadine Diaz.

But at recent community meetings, MTA planners tried to spell out their plans, only to be shouted down by critics. “As more and more people hear about the new plan, there’s a growing sense of anger on the streets,” said Arturo Chayra, who has started a petition drive against the project.

Much of the anger springs from a general distrust of all things MTA. Those feelings were fueled by promises made a decade ago, when the agency told residents it would build a subway to the area.

Families were relocated and businesses torn down to make way for the construction. But as the agency struggled with cost overruns and construction mishaps on other projects, MTA board member and Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky sponsored a winning ballot measure that essentially scrapped the Eastside subway.

Scores of empty, bulldozed acres pockmark Boyle Heights today.

“They can come up with all the fancy plans that they want,” said resident Ernestina Montellano. “I don’t believe a word they say. Why should I? They’ve never lived up to their words in the past.”

Some of the most contentious wrangling on the proposal involves the neighborhood in Boyle Heights where the tracks would one day emerge from a 1.3-mile-long tunnel. A neighborhood of small homes and low-slung businesses lies alongside the three-story El Mercado: a bustling shopping center of dozens of small businesses that sell everything from sugary churros to videotapes to votive candles.

Though extremely popular, especially with new immigrants from Mexico, the 34-year-old market is dilapidated and attracts an unsavory, unsafe crowd, some say.

In positioning the rail line near El Mercado, the MTA has embedded itself in the heated neighborhood debate about the market.

The MTA’s plan moves a rail station two blocks from the market. The original proposal, to put the train station next to El Mercado, was deemed unsafe by planners. They said that there would not be enough room for firetrucks to maneuver and that visibility would be poor for drivers.

But moving the station two blocks away does not sit well with El Mercado owner Pedro Rosado. He complains that riders won’t walk the two blocks to his business and that the route blocks access to parking at the rear of the market.

Among Rosado’s influential community backers is Los Angeles City Councilman Nick Pacheco. But on the streets of Boyle Heights, many people say they couldn’t care less about the details; they just long for “el tren.”

“I just hope the MTA does not listen to that man,” said Vicky Macias, the owner of a mini-mall across the street from El Mercado. “The rail line is only going to make things better for business here. We’ve waited long enough for something big to come here.”

Proponents have a powerful ally in Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, who sits on the MTA board. Molina’s support of the project virtually ensures that the board will approve the study, say those who follow the agency’s politics closely.

But, like every attempt to bring rail service to Los Angeles, solutions tend to beget problems. The safety-driven decision to move away from El Mercado pushes the rail station next to Ramona High School.

The small Los Angeles Unified School District campus serves about 150 troubled girls, many of them young mothers whose toddlers attend day care at the school.

School district officials worry that the rail line would be a distraction and safety hazard because it could send trains rumbling within 40 yards of classrooms. They want the school moved if the rail line goes in--at a cost of just over $20 million.

MTA officials say they have struggled too long to let the school issue derail their plans.

They say they will either keep Ramona High where it is and remodel the school, to make the buildings taller and more compact, or they will rebuild the school a few blocks away at the site of an abandoned supermarket.

“After all this time,” promised Molina, “we are finally going to build something.”