Last Thursday, , the MTA Board voted to increase the Expo Line budget by $54 million for a Culver City overpass, increasing the project budget to $862 million dollars for the 8.5-mile light rail line from Downtown Los Angeles to Culver City.
Of the $54 million, $4 million came from the City of Culver City while the remaining $50 million came from state Prop. 1B, the $19 billion transportation bond that was passed by voters in November of 2006.
Some $218 million of the bond has gone toward the increase in the Expo Line budget, which was just $640 million six months ago.
Prop. 1B is the same resource we have been requesting MTA go after for grade separations in South L.A. since the day the bond was passed.
Yet they keep telling us there’s no money.
“They found the money for the Figueroa underpass at USC, and they found the money for overpasses in Culver City,” said Carol Tucker of the Baldwin Neighborhood Homeowners. “They find the money for everything and everywhere except South L.A. Have they no shame?”
The vocal and growing Fix Expo Campaign is concerned about the safety and environmental impacts of the light rail line design as it passes through South L.A., primarily at street level.
They claim that the street-level design is unsafe and as evidence point to the MTA’s Blue Line which, at 91 deaths and 802 accidents to date, is the deadliest light rail line in the country.
The close proximity of several schools to the rail line, namely Dorsey High School and Foshay Learning Center, has prompted action from School Board member Marguerite LaMotte, LAUSD Parent Collaborative and UTLA all requesting grade separation at all or some intersections.
No child will have to walk across and no car will have to drive across the Expo Line tracks in Culver City.
Yet South L.A. is being told we have to accept these safety risks.
Child advocate and West Adams Neighborhood Council member Clint Simmons said, “Instead of insulting our intelligence by telling us they can't find the money to build underpasses in South L.A., MTA should admit that killing black and brown kids, and ruining South L.A. school environments and communities is a part of doing business.”
They are spending more money in the one mile from La Cienega to Robertson than they are in the four miles from Vermont to La Brea.
The group claims that placing the bulk of the safety hazards and disproportionate environmental impacts in majority-minority South L.A. community is "textbook environmental racism and against the law."
We’re going to court.
Our group has signed an agreement with the international law firm of Sonnenschein, Nath and Rosenthal, LLP. The group’s legal strategy will be headed by firm partners Ivor Samson, a recipient of the prestigious 2007 California Lawyer of the Year award, and Christopher Prince, who when he was at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, was instrumental in the landmark environmental justice case Labor/Community Strategy Center vs. MTA, which resulted in a 10-year consent decree.
“This firm is huge, these guys are winners, and they know how the MTA operates,” said Ms. Tucker. “It speaks to the level of injustice that they've agreed to represent us pro bono.”
Damien Goodmon is the Coordinator of the South L.A. community group the Citizens' Campaign to Fix the Expo Rail Line. He may be contacted at FixExpo.org