LA's Crenshaw Line Breaks Ground

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LA's 8.5 mile Crenshaw Line officially broke ground yesterday - 1/21/14 - with a big ceremony for nonparticipants.

From this article at LA Curbed:

Pre-construction activities—like moving utilities—have been going on for a year and a half, but today marks the first day of big-time construction on the 8.5-mile Crenshaw Line light rail, which will run through Inglewood, Leimert Park, and Hyde Park. There was an official ceremony—with bigwigs like Mayor Garcetti, Senator Barbara Boxer, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx—this morning at the Expo Line's Crenshaw station, where the Crenshaw Line will terminate, likely in an underground station below the current stop. Protesters from the Crenshaw Subway Coalition showed up before the groundbreaking, airing their disapproval at a stretch of the line that will travel on street-level through Park Mesa Heights. The group's other big wish, a station in the heart of Leimert Park, was granted last year (many others besides the CSC pushed for the stop too). The $2-billion rail line—costly because much of it is elevated or underground and supposed to open in just five years, somehow—will connect to LAX, likely via a people mover near or at the future Century/Aviation station, though that's not yet confirmed. Besides allowing a connection to the airport and boosting ridership on the intersecting Expo and Green Lines, the Crenshaw Line is likely the only opportunity for West Hollywood to get rail.

Less clear is how it will actually connect to LAX (the airport), as this article from LA Daily News talks about.
 
Read the linked article and I'm kinda hardhearted that the airlines aren't more gong ho on building a link to the terminals. If they don't care about the pax getting to and from the airport, they could at least care about their own employees.
 
LA Metro is going great guns on urban rail construction. Stuff is getting built much faster than it does in most of the country. They're currently building the second half of the Expo Line, the Foothills Gold Line extension, and doing preliminary construction on the next section of the Purple Line *and* the Crenshaw Line *and* the Downtown Connector.

Meanwhile, LAWA (who runs the airport) seems to have been rather uninterested in having any rail service, and has proposed plans for an airport peoplemover which involve demolishing entire neighborhoods to avoid demolishing parking lots, and which don't integrate with the Crenshaw line.

I'm glad to read in the LA Daily News article that the LAWA commissioners are finally starting to get serious about providing rail to the airport. They seem to be frustrated by the unpleasant and offputting experience of arriving or departing from LAX -- and this frustration is relatively new, as far as I can tell.
 
Well, remember...a lot of this is the result of multiple years of work. Measure R passed in 2008, after all...so for all of the projects to be really hitting 5-6 years later is pretty normal...and that is a very sad thing to say.
 
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