As Trump attacks California auto emissions standards, counties stay on track with electric train and mass transit projects
On the same day Donald Trump was elected the 45th president, voters in Los Angeles County approved a half-cent sales tax that establishes a permanent revenue source for boots-on-the-ground strategies that will reduce smog and global warming emissions by getting motorists out of their cars and into electric-powered light-rail trains, subways and buses.
Today, as Trump attempts to reverse a half-century air pollution rule allowing California and 12 other states to set tougher automobile tailpipe standards for reducing carbon-based emissions that both foul the air and contribute to climate change, L.A. County and others are fighting back using local and state funding for mass transit as an antidote to any weakening of the state’s environmental laws.
While the state attorney general and the Air Resources Board have drawn up legal briefs for fighting the White House in court, a practical front on the pollution wars is being fought by engineers and construction workers boring tunnels for new subways and laying miles of steel track across Southern California.
Building mass transit
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is currently overseeing or constructing four rail lines – two extensions and two new lines — with the goal of getting cars off the freeways and turning Southern Californians into New York-esque subway and rail riders.
The $120 billion L.A. County Measure M, and previous transportation tax measures, are funding these ongoing projects:
- The new 8.5-mile Crenshaw Line that will connect to a people mover at LAX.
- A 1.9-mile Regional Connector subway hooking up the Blue, Expo, Red and Purple lines so travelers can bypass Union Station.
- A 9-mile Purple Line subway extension between downtown L.A and Westwood.
- A 12.3-mile extension of the Gold Line light-rail from the Azusa/Glendora border to Montclair.
In San Bernardino County, a 9-mile train between the San Bernardino Transit Center and the University of Redlands would establish passenger service on an old freight train right-of-way. Construction is scheduled to start next year and be completed in 2021.
And in Orange County, plans are underway to begin construction of the OC Streetcar project from Santa Ana to Garden Grove.
The hope is that commuters can find a train or busway to work centers in Pasadena, El Segundo, Santa Monica, Santa Ana, Anaheim, Riverside, San Bernardino and Los Angeles.
Removing cars = less smog, global warming
Michael Cacciotti, a governing board member with the South Coast Air Quality Management District and a councilman in South Pasadena who rides the Gold Line daily, says air quality’s tremendous improvement from the early 1980s is due to California’s stricter tailpipe controls, which Trump wants to take away.
But it is also due more recently to the addition of subway and light-rail trains, including the Red Line from Downtown L.A to Hollywood 25 years ago, the Blue Line from Los Angeles to Long Beach 28 years ago and the Gold Line from East Los Angeles to Azusa 15 years ago.
Cacciotti said of the Gold Line, which started taking passengers to and from Los Angeles and Pasadena in 2003:
“That’s 55,000 people a day and it is taking those people’s cars off the highways, removing hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, and that doesn’t include diesel particulates. There are significant amounts of emissions taken out of the air.”
The Azusa/Glendora to Montclair extension could reduce 146,700 car miles a day starting in 2027 when it opens, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over the life of the project, according to estimates from Metro.
If the train adds 19,000 daily riders on Day 1 as predicted, it would be a significant contribution to the goal of reducing the state’s climate-changing greenhouse-gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.
Changing Inland drivers into train riders
In a few weeks, the Foothill Gold Line Construction Authority in Monrovia will receive four bids for the longest train extension in L.A. Metro history.
This is the first time a light-rail passenger train will connect with the Inland Empire, i.e. the Montclair Transit Center, a hub where the heavy-rail commuter train Metrolink and several bus agencies provide service.
Adding a Gold Line stop into Pasadena and Los Angeles will pull San Bernardino County commuters off the 10, 60 and 210 freeways, according to Habib Balian, CEO of the Authority.
“There’s connectivity to the San Gabriel Valley from the Inland Empire,” Balian said in an interview Thursday, Aug. 23. “The farther east you go the better off it is for everyone on the 10 and 210 freeways.”
John Fasana, Duarte mayor and long-time L.A. Metro board member, said his concern about Trump’s deregulation strategy is that it could cause backsliding on California’s air quality gains.
New, non-carbon mass transit options will stop any backsliding by reducing gridlock and air pollution.
“It’s not just the Gold Line (extension),” he said on Thursday. “It’s having more electric trains and more electric cars on the road: All are very important.
“We think this is critical to the environment and air quality.”
Finally, a train reaching through car-centric, suburban enclaves including Glendora, La Verne, San Dimas, Pomona, Claremont and Montclair may change driving habits, said Claremont City Councilman Sam Pedroza, who sits on the Construction Authority board.
“If more people utilize this choice, you’ll see differences in traffic patterns,” he said during an interview Thursday. “Plus, these new transit options bring in new development that were not practical before,” he said, referring to condos, townhomes and apartments situated near the light-rail stations.
“This brings whole new opportunities and different ways of living to the suburbs,” he said.
Next big train project
On Sept. 12, the $1.5 billion line will be placed in the hands of one of four contractors: AECOM | Stacy and Witbeck JV; Herzog Rados Lane, a Joint Venture; Kiewit-Parsons, a Joint Venture; and San Gabriel Valley Transit Partners (STP), a Joint Venture of Fluor and Ames.
In October or November, one will be awarded the design-build contract costing about $600 million. A third contract — for parking area — will be awarded in 2022.
Design work will continue through 2019 with construction starting in 2020 and completion of the line in early 2026, Balian said.