Green Light on the Eastside

For 20 years, plans for a light-rail line through one of the county’s densest, most transit-dependent neighborhoods have crawled as slowly as rush-hour commuters on Interstate 5. But after a cliffhanger week, local leaders are now days away from the green light they need to rev up the bulldozers.

The six-mile Gold Line rail extension would run from Union Station to Atlantic Boulevard in East Los Angeles at the edge of Monterey Park. Every day, tens of thousands of area residents board buses that lumber along congested Cesar Chavez Avenue to jobs many miles and often several bus transfers away.

Already seven times denser than the county as a whole, this poor Boyle Heights/City Terrace neighborhood is likely to be 30% denser by 2020. With the freeways that ring Boyle Heights often at a standstill and buses packed, a rail link to Union Station will speed riders to Pasadena, Long Beach and Hollywood on existing subway and rail lines.

Despite the clear need, it took Metropolitan Transportation Authority planners two decades to get all the details worked out because they first envisioned this portion of the Gold Line as a subway. When Red Line cost overruns killed political support for more subways, staffers had to redesign a mostly street-level rail line. The Boyle Heights line will go underground for 1.7 miles but remain at grade for the rest of the route.

The MTA has bids in hand and builders ready to start. All that’s needed to release the $491 million that Congress earlier promised is Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta’s signature by Wednesday. State and local money makes up the rest of the $898.8 million in funding.

But earlier this month, Rep. Ernest J. Istook Jr. (R-Okla.), who heads the powerful House appropriations transportation subcommittee, threatened to hold up the project for fear it would jeopardize highway projects that he favored in other states. Because the construction bids the MTA has in hand expire Wednesday, Istook’s action could have caused a delay that would have increased the project’s costs substantially. But on Wednesday he relented, letting construction begin by late fall.

Credit for the turnaround goes to bipartisan members of California’s congressional delegation who rowed together. Credit goes as well to dogged MTA leaders, city and county politicians and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. Those same leaders now will have to monitor the construction process as closely as they have the twists and turns in Washington to prevent snafus or cost overruns that could delay the rail line’s 2009 opening.

Istook is due to visit Boyle Heights today. After the usual teeth-grinding freeway ride from LAX, he’ll meet with grateful -- and much relieved -- local leaders and Boyle Heights residents who’ve waited while rail lines in other parts of town opened. Their turn is finally at hand.