Second of three parts
Re “Goodman’s Crenshaw Neighbors Pledge to Fundraise and Sue MTA for a Light Rail Subway”
South Los Angeles residents with an interest in the Crenshaw-to-LAX light rail line have two towering motivations for aggressively seeking a one-mile subway for the exposed middle of the route and a station in the bosom of Leimert Park Village.
Pragmatism and prejudice, in that order.
Members of the newly formed community group the Crenshaw Subway Coalition assert that above-ground tracks through the densely populated centerpiece of the rail route will expose pedestrians to dangers, convert traffic into chaos and is certain to damage businesses on both sides of the corridor, as history has proven in all three instances in other commercial neighborhoods.
The Crenshaw group has promised to sue the authoritarian MTA if it does not accede to their wishes — a most unlikely outcome — at the board’s pivotal meeting of Thursday, Sept. 22. They have 30 days thereafter to act.
The MTA board told petitioners two months ago that it’s too darned expensive to build a tunnel in the middle of the route, even though there was plenty of money to build underground in the preceding portion of the line and the following portion of the line underground.
Minority residents have heard that same tune hummed for years — the same way that white neighborhoods, conversely, are not rejected.
South Los Angeles has heard this questionable excuse, and so has East L.A.
Now who would think that just because the East Side is mainly brown and South L.A. is mostly black that skin color was remotely related to this supposedly final verdict.
Coalition leader Damien Goodmon told the second meeting of the Coalition on Monday evening that when underground tracks were sought for a portion of unbuilt Phase II of the Downtown-to-Culver City line, the funding magically was produced.
Crenshaw’s two main adversaries in this evolving civic war are board members Mayor Villaraigosa and Zev Yarsolavsky. Between them, they have fingered ample funding for all of their pet projects — the Westside, mid-town, Downtown and the Valley.
Otherwise, there is no revenue available to go underground, even though the Mayor and Mr. Yaroslavsky have demonstrated for years that federal and state funding is as liquid, as pliable, as movable, as water streaming from a broken faucet.
(To be continued)
