The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) will host a community update meeting at Westwood Presbyterian Church on Sept. 10 to further discuss the Westside Extension Transit Corridor Study.
The Study is Metro’s response to a need for better public transportation in West Los Angeles, and it seeks to extend rail alignments, according to the Westside Extension Transit Corridor Web site.
The Westside Corridor is the 38-square-mile area encompassing Santa Monica, Westwood and Culver City. It extends north to Vermont Avenue and east to Exposition Park and the University of Southern California.
Three rounds of community meetings have already been held in the last two years. The Westwood meeting is part of a series of five new meetings being held in all major areas in Los Angeles, including Westwood, in September.
“Based on the analysis and public input that is received at these community meetings, Metro has been able to identify alternatives to be recommended for further study,” said Dave Sotero, the senior public information officer for Metro.
The alternatives currently under study include the addition of Metro alignments along Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards, Sotero said.
And a stop is intended to serve Westwood, he said.
“That’s going to be quite a busy station,” Sotero said. “Westwood has the third-busiest rail station behind Union Station and the seventh Metro station, at the connection of the red line and blue rail.”
Paul Ong, a UCLA professor of urban planning, said Metro improvements are long overdue in West Los Angeles.
“There are very few corridors where I think an extension would work, but I think the Wilshire corridor is one of them,” Ong said.
Improved public transportation around UCLA would be convenient for the UCLA community, Ong said.
This round of meetings will present to the public the refined set of alternatives that will be recommended for further study, according to a Metro statement.
“We’re going to the Metro board of directors this fall, probably October-November time frame, and they will decide whether we should move forward,” Sotero said.
The Board ““ which is consisted of all five county supervisors, the major and several major appointees ““ will be presented the Alternatives Analysis Report and may then authorize a full environmental review of the alternatives, he said.
The Board must decide if the worth of improving transportation in the Westside Corridor exceeds potential public disruption.
“There’s no question there would be short-term disruptions,” Ong said. “There is some risk, and there are questions of how it would disrupt the population. Those things are very real.”
The meetings are organized to raise issues such as this and to include the public in the Board’s decisions.
“The public is able to say “˜this is the alignment we would like to see and this is where we should stop it,'” he said.
“Metro wants to find the greatest public good that will be served by this transit process.”