Archinect - News

Checking in on LA's ‘28 by 28’ transit plan with an eye on the next Summer Olympics

2024-08-09T18:00:00-04:00

New reporting on the transportation infrastructure strategy for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles from the local NBC affiliate has shown glaring gaps that may complicate the promises made previously by then-Mayor Eric Garcetti and other officials.

The report found that ten L.A. Metro projects will not be completed until after 2028. Metro, which received $900 million in funding for the expansion this spring, is still facing a $400 million deficit. Altogether, the projects (which also include freeway improvements around L.A. County) are worth a total of $42.9 billion. The most important of these is the Purple Line extension to the Westside, which has faced numerous cost overruns and construction challenges since work first began in 2014.

LA City Council places Dodger Stadium Gondola project on hold pending further reviews

2024-03-25T11:48:00-04:00

The contested plan to build an aerial gondola tram line from downtown LA to Dodger Stadium has been placed on hold after city council members voted last week to halt the Los Angeles Aerial Rapid Transit (LA ART) for the time being.

Local outlet ABC 7 was first to report on the council’s decision to pause the approvals process “until further studies can be conducted on its potential impacts.”

Opponents of the project had lobbied against its invasiveness and potential for displacement in communities that have been historically marginalized through gentrification. Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who introduced the measure, said: “We owe the public a real analysis of the issues and evidence-based solutions around Dodger Stadium.” The Los Angeles Department of Transportation will now hire a special consultant to conduct the assessments.

(An unrelated assembly bill, meanwhile, is being advanced that would compensate displaced families who fell victim to the construction of Dodger Stadiu...

New Clippers NBA arena tops out in Inglewood

2023-03-13T14:00:00-04:00

According to the company’s website , the new facility is designed to mimic the look and feel of “the elegant form of a basketball net as a ball passes through it.” It will feature five basketball courts, more than any other NBA arena. According to the company’s website , the new facility is designed to mimic the look and feel of “the elegant form of a basketball net as a ball passes through it.” It will feature five basketball courts, more than any other NBA arena.

The AECOM-designed $1.2 billion construction broke ground in September of 2021 and is moving along schedule towards a 2024 completion. Its reported $260 million worth of community benefits are said to be the largest ever associated with an American sports arena project. In total, the arena will have a capacity for 18,000 future Clippers fans while their current abode undergoes a “nine-figure” overhaul courtesy of MEIS and Gensler.

Once construction is finished, the arena, which sits due south of SoFi Stadium, will occupy a 28-acre site that includes a Deer District-like public plaza, shopping areas, training facilities, and a 150-room hotel.

Previously on Archinect: Concrete frame at LA Clippers' new Intuit Dome arena tops out

Los Angeles hopes it will serve as a key cog in their upcoming Metro Crenshaw/LAX line extension. The NBA has more photos of the new construction here.

Dodger Stadium gondola project clears major legal hurdle as challenges remain

2023-01-18T15:40:00-05:00

On Monday, Jan. 9, [Frank] McCourt scored a court victory when Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff sided with proponents. Beckloff rejected a challenge to the unusual relationship between McCourt’s private company and the county’s public mega transit agency, LA Metro, which was struck without competitive bidding.

The former Dodgers owner was behind the leadership team that had been selling the project under the guise of environmental concerns (the scheme does reduce traffic by about 3,000 cars for each of the stadium's 81 home games) after cutting an alleged sweetheart deal with Metro Chief Phil Washington. The court ruling cited the Metro’s Office of Extraordinary Innovation policy on unsolicited proposals as a legally-justified means of circumventing the competitive bids process, which in this matter at least had tremendous civic and democratic consequences that touch on gentrification and other hot-button issues.

The plan is under further scrutiny for its role in McCourt’s apparent desire to create an LA Live-type development where the stadium's parking lots, which he still owns almost half of, currently exist. Meanwhile, a new study from the UCLA Mobility Lab has called into serious question the 5,000 projected hourly ridership figure that Los Angeles Aerial Rapid Transit Technologies (...

LA halts Metro Purple Line construction over worker safety concerns

2022-10-28T17:09:00-04:00

Work on the vast expansion of the Metro Purple Line in Los Angeles has come to an abrupt stop following dozens of worker injuries and safety concerns that officials say have not been addressed. “Metro has ordered its contractor to temporarily suspend all field work on the Purple Line Extension Section 2 Project due to the unacceptable rate of serious worker injuries,” Metro said in a statement. "The safety of those building our county’s transportation projects must always be protected.”

A total of nine serious incidents were recorded this calendar year alone, with several near-misses that could have been “more serious,” according to Metro’s letter to general contractor Tutor Perini. Parts of the project had previously accelerated thanks to Covid-related street closures. According to KTLA, the Metro has issued an order to Tutor Perini to produce a revised safety plan before work on the six-station project can resume.

All aboard for the next phase of Union Station reconstruction in LA

2022-06-02T09:00:00-04:00

The L.A. Metro system’s planned revitalization of Los Angeles Union Station is another step closer to reality following a vote last week that cleared the way for the $2.3 billion megaproject’s further advancement downtown.

Local outlets are reporting that the recent Board of Directors meeting resulted in an approval of a funding agreement between the Metro and California High-Speed Rail Authority which is expected to cover the first phase of development called Link Union Station. The initial project is itself the expanded version of an earlier scheme that would clear a bottleneck at one end of the tracks in addition to providing a new viaduct and railway span over the adjoining 101 Freeway.

Previously on Archinect: L.A.'s Union Station overhaul receives $400 million from California High Speed Rail

A total of $423.3 million will be allocated in the first phase, with another $297.8 million provided for preliminary work. Including the most recent influx of monies from the Rail Authority,...

L.A. ends what was the largest free transit experiment in U.S. history

2022-01-21T13:54:00-05:00

In March 2020, Los Angeles’ public-transit agency, Metro, stopped collecting fares on its buses as a COVID-19 safety precaution. For the next 22 months, Metro waived fares for anyone who wanted to keep riding its buses, anywhere they wanted to go (as long as they wore a mask, of course). And people did keep riding.

A spokesperson from the agency estimates that from April 2020 to December 2021 there were approximately 281 million fare-free rides, reaching about 80 percent of pre-pandemic ridership, making it the largest free-transit experiment in U.S. history. Fare collection, however, restarted last week and now, Metro is using the information gained from the experiment to plan improvements and initiative other free- and reduced-fare programs.

As detailed by Curbed, unlike many other U.S. transit agencies, L.A.’s Metro doesn’t rely as heavily on fares, in which they account for only 6 percent of total revenue. This made the free-transit initiative a lot easier to implement. Proponents of the fareless metro system believe it should be permanent as the majority of riders, who are low income, already qualify for discounted fares through the city’s low-income fare program.

'We all did': The Los Angeles Times' Patt Morrison on who authored the fate of LA's long-lost streetcars

2021-11-03T12:01:00-04:00

Red Cars didn’t just get people from Point A to Point B. They helped to create Point A and Point B. Towns like Burbank and Alhambra grew spectacularly once the Red Car reached them. Other sellers of land wised up and made sure their advertising told prospective buyers how to get there by Red Car; so did merchants and amusements. The system made even the farthest towns and neighborhoods feel connected.

The trolley system was not entirely undone in part by the nefarious hand of some elite corporate entities with decided interests in seeing an alternative to the then-burgeoning interstate highway system destroyed. Movies like Clint Eastwood's Changeling (2008) and (my favorite) Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) do a more-than-adequate job presenting the system as a great democratic uniter of Los Angeles’ proletariat, which is how many people view the defunct system correctly or incorrectly six decades after its operation was shut down.

The city is currently working on an expansion of its modern-day equivalent — the Metro — that will vastly increase access to the city’s Westside via a series of new Purple D line stations that will terminate near the campus of UCLA. The present east-to-west commute is considered to be one of the worst in Los Angeles county. The city is expecting 78,000 daily commuters on the line once construction is completed in 2027.

COVID-19 facilitates accelerated subway construction in Los Angeles

2020-06-24T19:58:00-04:00

After committing to shutting down a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard running through the city of Beverly Hills to speed up subway construction earlier this year, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority has announced that it has completed decking work in the area seven months ahead of schedule.

Map of planned Purple / D Line extensions. Image courtesy of Metro.

Back in April, Metro and local officials hammered out a plan to fully shut down the street in order to take advantage of the drastically reduced traffic activity in the area due to the region's stay-at-home orders following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, the LA Metro had planned to conduct partial closures of the street in question on weekends over a seven month stretch starting in August 2020, but now, three months later, this work has been completed.

Previously on Archinect: "Coronavirus slowdown could push L.A. subway construction six months ahead of schedule." Photo showing subway construction al...

Coronavirus slowdown could push L.A. subway construction six months ahead of schedule

2020-04-02T12:52:00-04:00

A planned Los Angeles County subway extension could see the light of day six months ahead of schedule, as the social and economic shutdown put in place to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus strain prompts authorities to consider consolidating construction activities.

A recent report from Streetsblog indicates that as the volume of pedestrian and vehicle traffic has dropped across the region, authorities in the city of Beverly Hills have worked an agreement with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) that would allow Metro to speed up construction of its forthcoming Purple Line by up to six months.

Map highlighting the section to be closed in red. Image courtesy of City of Beverly Hills.

Though the wealthy enclave has fought tooth and nail to stop or slow down the subway route running below its streets, it now seems that the opportunity to have construction come to fruition at a quicker pace could convince the Beverly Hills City Council to allow f...

LA’s Little Tokyo Metro-owned site due for development

2019-10-22T10:43:00-04:00

At a community meeting last week, four developers pitched plans for a Metro-owned property above the under-construction 1st/Central subway station in Little Tokyo...Though the station site is 1.2 acres, the property only offers a 14,500-square-foot building pad due to the diagonal orientation of the 1st/Central station box.

"Metro released a request for qualifications to prospective developers in August 2018, and received eight responses by January 2019," reports Urbanize. Of those eight, four have moved forward: Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC), who has teamed up with FSY Architects; Centre Urban Real Estate Partners in collaboration with Stantec and Kritzinger & Rao; Kaji & Associates, teaming up with Kengo Kuma & Associates and Gruen Associates; and Innovative Housing Opportunities.

Kaji & Associates' pitch. Designed by Kengo Kuma & Associates. Courtesy of Metro

L.A.'s Union Station overhaul receives $400 million from California High Speed Rail

2019-09-13T19:00:00-04:00

The California High-Speed Rail Authority and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) have reached a funding agreement that will bring $400 million in public funds to the Link Union Station project.

Link US, as the project is widely known, aims to retrofit Los Angeles's Union Station to facilitate the creation of "through-service" regional commuter rail—and in the future, High Speed Rail—routes connecting the station with locations north, south, and east of Los Angeles.

View of the proposed run-through track improvements proposed for the station. Image courtesy of Metro.

Currently, the station's track configuration leaves Union Station as the dead-end of several regional rail systems; When the improvements are completed in coming years, the station will be able to facilitate regional rail travel up and down the California coast while also cutting down on the amount of time trains spend idling at the station. Los Angeles Union Station currently connects r...

Beverly Hills schools want to convince Trump administration to cut funds for L.A. Metro Purple Line extension

2018-10-12T15:11:00-04:00

While the school district had tried repeatedly in court to stop Metro from building the subway underneath the high school’s campus, Korbatov’s “Stop the Purple Threat” campaign takes a different approach: Nab the attention of President Donald Trump and try to convince him to order the withdrawal of federal funding from the Purple Line extension.

School district administrators also helped BHHS students organize a districtwide “walkout” that took place today in protest of the Purple Line extension, whose second phase is already underway. Here are some interesting Twitter updates from LA Times transportation reporter Laura J. Nelson.

BART and LA Metro battle via Twitter haikus

2016-06-29T18:26:00-04:00

Oh, SF BART Twitter account—back at it again with the going rogue. This time, instead of getting real with folks on the platform, they decided to have a little fun with the Los Angeles Metro account, challenging them to a full-on haiku battle on Twitter this past Friday.

The official Twitter account for the BART isn't sycophantic or pandering: when confronted with customer concerns, it answers them with actual facts, even if those facts wouldn't gel with a traditional PR department. Now, however, the BART account has gone one step further and is outright having fun, challenging the LA Metro and New York's MTA to a haiku battle.

While it's safe to say that both the BART and the LA Metro should keep their day jobs, having a playfully-minded transit system is not necessarily a bad thing.

When not writing haikus, here's what else public transit is up to:

With opening of Expo Line to Santa Monica, L.A.'s dream of a "subway to the sea" finally comes true (again)

2016-05-20T20:32:00-04:00

The $1.5-billion second leg of the Expo Line, which opened Friday from Culver City to Santa Monica, adds seven light-rail stations and more than six miles of track to the growing Los Angeles County transit network. [...] In the immediate context of L.A.'s attempts to turn its public-transit network from national punch line to something that increasingly resembles a mature system, 13 new Metro stations in less than three months qualifies as a pretty dramatic upgrade.

The aggressively expanding LA Metro system in recent Archinect news stories:

How LA is changing, one rail line at a time

2016-05-02T13:07:00-04:00

“A good part of any day in Los Angeles,” Joan Didion wrote in 1989, “is spent driving, alone, through streets devoid of meaning to the driver, which is one reason the place exhilarates some people, and floods others with an amorphous unease.” I quote this statement every chance I get; it is among the most trenchant ever written about the place. But all that is changing, or might be, if the promises implied by the Expo Line expansion can be kept.

On May 20, Los Angeles's Metro will open the expansion of its Expo Line, stretching from downtown past its current terminus in Culver City all the way to Santa Monica, blocks from the Pacific Ocean. The dream of "Broadway to the beach" by train in LA will soon become a reality, and stands to be a watershed moment in the city's transit development, as David Ulin reflects in the New York Times:

Regardless of what the Expo Line ultimately does or doesn’t do for traffic, this is, I think, the essence of what it offers: the notion of Los Angeles as a space we occupy together, collective and evolving, where in the act of getting lost, as I discovered on Venice Boulevard, we may also unexpectedly be found.

Related on Archinect:

Will LA's new metro extension bring growth to the city's peripheries?

2016-03-10T20:33:00-05:00

When City Manager Oliver Chi looks across Station Square next to the new Gold Line stop in Monrovia, he doesn't see a dilapidated train depot. He sees a bustling restaurant. Where an empty lot now sits, he sees a five-story apartment complex. That old lumber house? A bustling food hall. Los Angeles County's growing light-rail network plunges deeper than it ever has into suburbia this week with the opening of the Gold Line extension linking Pasadena to Azusa.

Obsessed with infrastructure? Take a look at some related coverage:

Lyft gets cozy with LA transit agencies to share data on Metro connections

2016-02-24T13:20:00-05:00

Metro is negotiating an agreement with Lyft aimed at learning more about ride-share trips that begin and end at key Metro stations [...] The relationship would last at least a year and would give Metro a rare peek at data typically kept private. The deal, one of the first of its kind in the United States, would shed light on the role that ride-sharing plays in ... the so-called "first mile, last mile" gap [...] In exchange for Lyft's data, Metro would advertise the service to its riders

Lyft's recent advertising has also been flaunting its connection with public transit – ads all over the US depict the local city's rail map with branching pink veins, suggesting how Lyft can extend existing public transit infrastructure (even though you're still definitely in a stranger's privately-owned vehicle).

Below is an ad in San Francisco, riffing on Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART):

Check out more pieces on ridesharing and public transit:

So Cal has dumped a lot of money into transit projects, but there's been little pay-off so far

2016-01-27T20:36:00-05:00

For almost a decade, transit ridership has declined across Southern California despite enormous and costly efforts by top transportation officials to entice people out of their cars and onto buses and trains. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the region's largest carrier, lost more than 10% of its boardings from 2006 to 2015, a decline that appears to be accelerating.

"Despite a $9-billion investment in new light rail and subway lines, Metro now has fewer boardings than it did three decades ago, when buses were the county's only transit option."

Related:

L.A. seeks to accelerate infrastructure projects in advance of potential Olympics

2015-09-10T15:10:00-04:00

Citing L.A.'s quest to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, Los Angeles County transportation officials are seeking to fast-track two of Metro's most anticipated rail projects. In letters sent Tuesday and obtained by The Times, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority formally asked to join a Federal Transit Administration pilot program that could accelerate construction on a subway to the Westside and a rail connection to Los Angeles International Airport...

Pending federal approval (and cash – $1 billion, to be precise), Metro hopes to pursue an "extremely aggressive" schedule, completing the Purple Line subway extension as well as the LAX "people-mover" by the potential opening of a 2024 Los Angeles Olympics.

Currently, the Purple Line is scheduled to extend from its current terminus in Koreatown towards the Westside over the course of 16 years, and in three stages. According to the Times, the new plan would mean that all three stages would be worked concurrently: Koreatown to Mid-Wilshire, Mid-Wilshire to Century City, Century City to West LA.

The LAX "people-mover," a much-need and anticipated terminal train, is currently scheduled to start service by 2028. Under the accelerated timeline, that would be moved to 2024 as well. In addition, it would be linked to the currently-planned connection between the Green Line, which runs across the South Bay, and the Expo Line, which cuts across Mid-City.

Alongside the hoped-for $1-billion federa...

Grimshaw + Gruen's L.A. Union Station Master Plan approved for implementation

2014-10-28T13:20:00-04:00

The L.A. Metro Board of Directors officially approved the Los Angeles Union Station Master Plan in downtown L.A. to advance from planning to implementation. For the past two years, Metro has worked with a consultant team led by Grimshaw Architects and Gruen Associates to expand the iconic station, which is registered as a national historical landmark. Since Union Station opened in 1939, ridership continues to approach 110,000 trips per day and is expected to increase up to nearly 197,000 per day by 2040. L.A. Metro purchased the station in 2011.

The master plan development program consists of 3.25 million sq. feet of the Union Station property. The plan includes the preservation of the historic station, renovations to the station's perimeter, and adding new commercial developments like retail, hotel, and housing.

With today's approval, Metro can begin its initial implementation strategy for near-term projects, which includes a programmatic environmental review of the recommended trans...