Hundreds are expected to cram into Dorsey High School cafeteria at 6 o’clock tonight to discuss what has become ground zero for South L.A. safety activists opposed to the MTA's Expo Line street-level rail crossings next to community schools:
Farmdale Avenue and Exposition Boulevard.
The intersection abuts 1,900-student Dorsey High School, where in a short 15-minute window after school every day over 700 students flood onto narrow sidewalks and chaotically disperse in all directions.
Despite having their first request for a street-level rail crossing rejected and ruled unsafe by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the state's rail safety agency, in a decision rendered in February 2009, MTA has reapplied for an at-grade (street-level) crossing, this time adding a station to the mix.
It is the same proposal that was rejected by the CPUC last year, they just added a station.
The proposal is still unsafe. All of the lobbyists and public relations firms in the world will not change that fact.
Since the decision, MTA has spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on high-powered lobbyists, including a former Enron lobbyist, Sandra McCubbin, and multiple public relations firms, to persuade the CPUC and to attempt to convince the community that the new proposal is safe. One of the public relations firms is expected to bus in paid organizers wearing shirts that say, “We Support Expo.”
Chaos Is a Threat
“A street-level station will only add more confusion to the already crazy Farmdale intersection for Metro rail operators,” said Lester Hollins, a former MTA light rail operator and parent of a Dorsey student. “The only way to make the Dorsey crossing safe is to have the train cross the intersection elevated in the air or underground beneath the street.”
“All we asked for was a train that goes underground or elevated by the school so our kids can navigate this intersection safely, just like the kids will be able to in Culver City, where the train crosses all streets on bridges” said Steve Bagby, the president of the Dorsey High School Alumni Assn. “We're more than happy to talk about an elevated station for Farmdale like MTA is building in Culver City or an underground station like MTA is building for the Subway to the Sea. But anything at street-level is unacceptable, especially with those culturally insensitive holding pens.”
To control the flow of student traffic, MTA has proposed caging in the Dorsey High students while the train passes, in holding pens, which are typically used for cattle or prison inmates, featuring fences as high as eight feet.
Holding pens are for cattle not for our kids.
Mr. Goodmon, coordinator of the Citizens’ Campaign to Fix the Expo Rail Line, may be contacted at dg@fixexpo.org
