Subway-to-the... VA Hospital?

According to Metro's latest round of community update meetings, the so-called Subway-to-the-Sea rail extension to Santa Monica is simply "out of the realm of funding feasibility," as is the spur joining Hollywood and Highland to the Wilshire route via Santa Monica Blvd. We knew Villaraigosa's 30-10 initiative was too good to be true. But look at the bright side, thanks to Measure R spending, construction on the subway line could begin as soon as the end of 2011.

Initially, construction of the first phase would terminate at a station in Westwood near Wilshire Blvd. But after suggestions by locals, project planners found that a 1-stop extension beyond the 405 to the Veterans Administration campus would indeed return higher ridership and decrease traffic congestion under the freeway. Beyond the VA however, ridership estimates decrease with every successive station, meaning dwindled fiscal feasibility. While Subway-to-the-Sea certainly has a nice ring to it, there simply isn't enough demand in the Santa Monica area to warrant an expensive underground rail construction, especially considering that the Expo phase 2 light rail extension to Santa Monica is already approved and will be completed far sooner than any phase on the Wilshire route. The UCLA area is home to the city's second largest job center outside of Downtown and will benefit enormously from the traffic relief and increased mobility brought by a more expedient subway extension.

As for the Santa Monica Blvd spur, the connection between Hollywood and Beverly Hills will make sense in the future, but right now that stretch also doesn't support the critical building density that would make a subway line pencil out. But as long as the City of West Hollywood continues its hungry, authoritarian concessions to big name developers, the Santa Monica Blvd corridor may well get its subway.

Battle Over Boundaries of 'Eastside' Wages On

The long-fought battle over the definition of LA's Eastside gained new interest today, thanks to an LA Times article by Esmeralda Bermudez. Residents of neighborhoods like Boyle Heights, just east of Downtown, claim the Eastside has always been defined as the area of the city east of the LA River. The term 'Eastside,' originally used pejoratively by politicians before the 1960s, carries with it a history of racial discrimination and Chicano pride. It was a name thrust on area Latinos by wealthy white Westsiders, and it stuck.

But another group has begun to adopt the name for their own part of the city - an area on the other side of town. New residents in neighborhoods like Silver Lake and Echo Park have picked up the name as a cultural backlash against the pricey real estate and superiority complex of the Westside. These Eastside "pretenders" are young, middle to upper-middle class whites, often hailing from out-of-state, with little knowledge of the city's geography and cultural history. They are the arbiters who have contributed to the gentrification of places like Echo Park, a neighborhood that was for a long time poor and predominantly Mexican-American.

A year ago, a number of activists associated with the blog LAeastside.com, tagged posters all over areas considered to be the Eastside "sham," like one on the bus stop above. (If you look closely, you can identify Intelligentsia - the Silver Lake hipster Mecca - in the background.) Defenders of the east-of-the-river title claim that the usage of the label by outsiders is ignorant and "eliminates us." One victory this group claims is the renaming of the Eastside Art Crawl to the Silver Lake Art Crawl. But many west-of-the-river advocates argue they are not trying to supplant any one's cultural history - they are merely creating an identity for themselves that rejects the white picket fence idyll of West LA.

It is a sticky issue that is not new to a city where boundaries are both ever-present and blurry. It is, like many topics in LA, an issue that is both racial and political at its roots. As a state that was annexed by the US from Mexico, California has a deep history of supplanting and removal, especially of Mexicans. Latino Americans fought hard in the 1960s for equality at schools and in the workplace. Boyle Heights and unincorporated East LA boast a rich history of Mexican-American-ness that is both proud and dark. Silver Lake yuppies would be wise to invent an identification that both celebrates their values and doesn't devalue those of another. But heated political debates aside, look at the pure geography - can something really be considered "east" if it lies significantly west of the city's center?

Mixed Decisions on Expo Lightrail Crossings

California Public Utilities Commissioner Rachelle Chong ruled last week on a pair of controversial street crossings for the Expo light rail, under construction between Downtown and Culver City. Her decision allows for an at-grade crossing to be built at Harvard Boulevard, but rejects the Expo Metro Line Construction Authority's request for the at-grade crossing at Farmdale Avenue. The majority of the line's 38 crossings have been approved, but these last two were met with strong opposition from community members who feared for the safety of the students at local high schools.

'Fix the Expo Rail Line' is the community organization created to protest the seemingly dangerous light rail-street crossings near Dorsey High School (Farmdale Avenue) and the Foshay Learning Center (Harvard Boulevard), in South LA. This decision marks a half-victory for that team, as only one of the two crossings was denied. Grade separation is the act by which the right-of-way for the light rail is either dug below street level into a trench or raised above the street on an elevated rail. Both methods of grade separation are prohibitively expensive, and the Metro construction authority has pleaded that they simply cannot afford the changes, and that they will delay the project indefinitely.

Already included in Metro's plan were two above-grade stations (La Brea and La Cienega) and one short underground passage (corner of Jefferson Blvd. and Flower St.), both implemented because of heavy automobile traffic in those areas. They were built into the initial construction budget and planned for. While it is encouraging to learn that the voice of the community is not mute in this project, the delay of the already too-late rail line to the Westside will be unpleasant to builders, financiers, riders, and neighbors. The slow-moving light rail trains will arguably pose little additional threat to the existing dangers of high-speed local boulevards Exposition and Jefferson. And while protesters have made it clear they want to "fix" the line, rather than oppose its implementation, the transit linkage of Downtown with West LA will be a net gain for residents of those nearby areas. All you have to do is look at the traffic on the 10 anytime between 6 am and 9 pm to understand the desperate urgency of this project.