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ChineseScenes from the Crenshaw Corridor meeting
All photos of the event are by Yours Truly and are available in the MetroRiderLA Flickr Pool.
The turnout at Wilshire United Methodist Church was quite robust for the first in a series of Metro scoping meetings for the Crenshaw Corridor rapid transit project. Only the bus rapid transit project would serve this area, yet many of the 50 to 60 people who appeared were in support of the shorter, more expensive light rail option.
Same time next Wednesday (October 7), Metro will return to the church for the Wilshire Bus Lane hearings.
You really don’t get to see how bad some zoom photos turn out until large size. I had to reduce to 300 pixels this photo of Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who will have either bus or rail project serve within his district. Ridley-Thomas paid an unexpected visit to the meeting to reiterate his support for the light rail option, and to tout the construction jobs that would be created by the project. When asked after his speech, he was still formulating the formula for local hiring through Metro and the county board, and no specific number is set yet. He did say that the Metro board is set to vote on a preferred mode December 10.
Earlier in the meeting, a field representative for Ridley-Thomas had been in attendance, as had been a staffer for California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass. A few neighborhood council representatives were also in attendance.
Roderick Diaz provided the brief introductory remarks to the meeting. He is the project manager for the Crenshaw Corridor. Click his name for his e-mail address or send mail to:
Roderick Diaz, project manager
Metro, One Gateway Plaza, Mail Stop 99-22-3
Los Angeles, Ca. 90012
Comments are due by Monday, October 26 at 5 p.m.
Out of the 50-60 people attending, about a dozen spoke their two minutes — with nearly every public speaker in favor of the light rail option. Attending the meeting Wednesday were Damien Goodmon of Fix Expo, left, Jerard Wright, a Westside/Central Sector Governance Council member, and Daniel Walker, a Westchester resident and co-founder of Friends of the Green Line.
And in order to make the Crenshaw Corridor a reality, a lot of trees have to sacrifice themselves for the common good. Just the drafts, as seen in the binder on the left, are about 4 inches thick. That looks to be at least a full ream (500 pages) of paper. At right is the blueprints for possible station sites, both BRT and rail, along Crenshaw. It shows where exactly the station would be placed and what modifications to the street would need to happen. There are about 70 drawings in that tabloid-sheet-size blueprint book.
Fortunately, Metro put a lot of the planning documents on a CD-ROM. I am going to post these to read here once I process the documents and find a storage site for them. You can also pick up a CD-ROM at any of the other upcoming meetings.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
One of the most interesting (and welcome) aspects of the LRT option that wasn’t clear before is they are looking at extending the current Green Line north from Aviation station to the Century Blvd station (where the LAX people mover will interface)creating two Green line routes from Norwalk: Norwalk to Redondo and Norwalk to Century Blvd. The Crenshaw line would continue from Century Blvd (bypassing Aviation station as I recall) and continuing south the Redondo.
I’m assuming with the second Green Line route north they are setting the stage for a future extension somewhere along the Westside (Sepulveda? Lincoln?)
It was also interesting to observe that the Crenshaw presentation had many more displays and handouts then I’ve seen at the Westside Subway presentations.