LOS ANGELES — LA Metro’s $350 million modernization of its oldest light rail line is on schedule despite an exceptionally rainy winter, project director Tim Lindholm tells Trains News Wire. “If we hadn’t had the weather that we’ve had, which has been a challenge, we’d probably be ahead of schedule,” he says.
Nearly 30 years of wear has taken its toll on the Blue Line. It opened in 1990 and connects downtown Los Angeles with Long Beach, mostly using a former Pacific Electric Railway right-of-way that last saw trains in 1961. Now, a top-to-bottom overhaul is underway.
The work is being done in two segments, allowing half the line to operate while the other is closed. The south end, from the Willowbrook/Rosa Parks station to Long Beach, shut down Jan. 26, 2019, and is due to reopen in late May. Then the line from downtown’s 7th Street/Metro Center station to Willowbrook will close through September. Bus shuttles accommodate riders during the closures.
Metro considered keeping the line open with work on nights and weekend, but that would have taken longer. Lindholm says the agency decided to “just rip the Band-Aid off and get all this work done, and get it done quick, and get the line open instead of three years of inconveniencing the passengers.”
The renovation includes trackwork, the overhead catenary system, station improvements, and added interlockings.
Four new crossovers and a new siding track are being installed, supplementing five existing crossovers. That will allow trains to bypass incidents, mechanical failures, or maintenance closures more easily, helping to minimizing delays.
Other notable work is at the Washington-Flower junction, where the Expo Line from Santa Monica joins the Blue Line; in the street running in Long Beach, and at Washington Boulevard in LA. At the junction, a diamond and turnouts are being replaced and the alignment adjusted “by inches,” says project manager James Wei, to address excessive wear. That work will also entail closing a portion of the Expo Line for about 45 days.
In Long Beach, the street-running track and rail booting — an electrical barrier applied to track embedded in the roadway — is being replaced after poor drainage and salt air near the ocean led to rail corrosion. Rail will also be replaced on a tight southbound curve at Washington Boulevard.
The catenary work will include replacement of everything but the poles from the Washington station, just south of the 110 freeway, to the Willow station in Long Beach. North and south of those points, the contact wire will be renewed.
The main Blue Line yard gets modernized, adding train detection and upgrading a system where the train operator manually requests a route to one where the tower clears routes through the yard.
All stations are receiving fresh paint along with new branding, signage, and landscaping. Interactive digital maps will help passengers find their way. “We’re giving it a new life,” says Lindholm.
The crown jewel will be a brighter, bigger, more inviting Willowbrook/Rosa Parks station, the fourth-busiest station on the Metro system, serving both the Blue Line and Green Line. There, the Blue Line runs under Interstate 105, which carries the Green Line along its median and keeps the lower platforms in its shadow. As part of the reconstruction, Blue Line platforms are being extended to open them up to daylight. The mezzanine connecting passengers to the two lines is being expanded, with better elevators, escalators, and stairs.
On the west side of the station, bus bays and a pedestrian promenade will link the light rail facility to the community. “Right next to that is where we’re building a new public plaza, customer service center, security center, and a bike hub,” explains Lindholm. The mezzanine and platform work will be completed while the line is closed, but it will take an additional nine months to complete the adjacent construction.
Passengers will see more of the new Kinkisharyo P3010 cars, which began entering service on the Blue Line in 2017. They will eventually replace most of the original Nippon Sharyo P865 vehicles, which have racked up more than a million miles.
One goal is to shorten total end-to-end travel time by 10 minutes. Metro says it has already shaved off two minutes by modifying operations at the busy 7th Street/Metro Center station. Long Beach has installed traffic signal priority for street-running trains, but that hasn’t yet been tested. Metro would also like Los Angeles to establish signal priority downtown, which alone could save up to five minutes.
Ridership on the Blue Line plummeted in recent years, declining nearly 30 percent from 2013 to 2018. Asked if the hope is that the upgrades will bring riders back, Lindholm replied, “Absolutely.”
But they’ll have to learn not to call it the Blue Line. With Metro running out of colors as it expands its rail system, the agency is converting to alphabetical designations. The Blue Line will become the A Line.
The renovation is one of 11 rail projects under Metro’s plan to prepare for the 2028 Olympics. Events will be held at the Long Beach convention center and multiple venues in downtown LA. “We hope to be the transportation agency that brings everybody from one venue to another, seamless and fast,” says spokesman Jose Ubaldo. “We want them to feel they are traveling one of the best transit systems in the world.”
Re the comment about buses substituting for trains, after the Northridge earthquake collapsed the I-5 to SR-14 highway interchange, trains replaced SR-14 until a bypass could be built. The Metrolink commuter rail line that paralleled the highway was almost ready to go into service, and temporary platforms were constructed to provide stations at short notice. Commuter rail cars and locomotives from other jurisdictions were leased/borrowed (mostly from Seattle and Toronto) to handle the replacement service for the freeway. Once the highway was reopened the ridership dropped, but the line is still a very active commuter path.
Sounds like they’re doing a great job and a fine transit line will come of it. But this does go to show that transit comes at a cost. Transit doesn’t run on pixie dust, no more than anything else does.
As this article shows, the highway system is a grid, is a matrix. In a pinch there’s always a place to substitute a bus. In contrast it doesn’t take much to shut down a rail “line”, which is “linear”, short term on long term. We all hear of buses pinch-hitting for rail, short term or long term. Rail substituting for highway is rare. There have been scattered cases of trains being added when a parallel freeway is being reconstructed, quietly dropped and forgotten when found to be expensive and not well patronized.
One time my wife and I were out to add “mileage” to our log, a la E. M. Frimbo. The line (Metra Milwaukee North to Fox Lake) was under maintenance and we ended up on a bus.
While on the subject, my favorite example of a light rail line, MBTA’s Green Line D-Riverside train in Boston, Brookline and Newton, built on the cheap in the 1950’s. How we wish a few billion would fall from the sky to turn it into a real transit line. Don’t think it will happen.
I find it somewhat sardonic that a goodly percentage of Metro trackage is on old Pacific Electric rights-of-way. I don’t think anything would have totally eliminated the poison gas factory that was Los Angeles in the 1950’s and 1960’s, but keeping the Red Cars running might have helped.
And so, a lifetime later, here we are. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
The above comments are general in nature and do not form the basis for an attorney/client relationship. They do not constitute legal advice. I am not your attorney. Find your own damn lawyer.
Sounds like a good job. And no complaints about the cost. $350million for 20-24 miles of track.
Sounds like they are doing it right.