Archinect - News

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...

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.

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."

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