Refined Alignment for Regional Connector
Metro has made some new refinements to the proposed alignment for the Regional Connector project through Little Tokyo. The aim is to bring down costs and lessen construction impacts in the area.
The proposed change would essentially eliminate the sharp curves the light rail alignment was going to use to meet up with the Metro Gold Line at 1st and Alameda. Metro staff will brief the Little Tokyo Business Improvement District on Thursday. On Wednesday, Metro presented the changes to the Little Tokyo Community Council Transit Committee in order to receive feedback.
Metro’s project team says the refined route would avoid a storm drain on 2nd Street, avoid the Office Depot property and most of the businesses businesses facing Central Avenue. The refinements would also mean the elimination of having cut and cover construction along 2nd Street within the Little Tokyo community. These were key concerns raised by the Little Tokyo stakeholders during the draft environmental study process.
So far, Little Tokyo stakeholders have given the proposed changes a warm reception. The agency will still have to do cut and cover around the station box, but that work will be confined to the north side of the Office Depot block, adjacent to 1st Street and Central Avenue.
Metro project planners say the refinement would bring down the project cost. During this phase of the project, the team is looking to “value engineer” the project (i.e., evaluate engineering methods that lower construction costs) as much as possible to keep the project within budget.
The project team plans to follow up these meetings with a station design workshop where planners will start designing key Little Tokyo station elements, including station entrances and design features.
The next community update meetings are planned in late February/early March, when Metro will show additional progress on engineering.
Great. Metro does even more for Little Toyko.
All, at the expense of the Financial District, of course…
Sigh…
A couple of thoughts:
1) Transit experts know that tunneling under Japanese Village Plaza will be safe, but NIMBYs don’t. Metro will have to do a lot of explaining to avoid the situation in Century City/ Beverly Hills.
2) Why is the south end of the Office Depot block more important than the north end? In other words, are we doing this to save Office Depot, but eliminating historic (former) Atomic Cafe?
3) What will this mean for developing the block formerly known as the Mangrove? Some of us still hope there will be a Nikkei Center (currently in hibernation, but something ought to go there).
I like this plan much better for the Little Tokyo area. Much less disruption.
This new alignment will actually make a sharper curve at First/Alameda, for the track coming down from Union Station. This means that either (a) the project will need more land to be taken from the Mangrove Site, to accommodate the curve, or (b) the trains will have to travel much slower through this sharper curve. Is this not true?
While I’m happy for any changes that will have less impact on the community and lower costs, I’d like to know about any tradeoffs involved as well.
James, I don’t think too much explaining to NIMBYs will be needed. I don’t think there will be too many NIMBYs becuase I think the residents and mall will prefer this much better than the terrible disruption, noise and dirt from a cut and cover alternative down 2nd.
@JRider
How is a modification to the project that will save money, at the “expense” of the Financial District?
If they can find more savings like this at the “expense” of the Financial District we might just get that 5th street station.
@James
I think we’ve seen a lot less crazy NIMBY-ism out of Little Tokyo than other regions. The original plan to run all the trains from four different branches across Alameda at-grade was crazy, and they were right to oppose it.
At this point – the discussion of a 5th/Flower station is finished. It won’t happen. Let’s turn our focus to expanding 7th street/Metro Center station with new portals on 6th stret; to give greater convenience to the northern section of the Financial District. It could be one of the greatest stations ever built!
@ds:
The whole grade-separated Little Tokyo junction concept was a bait-and-switch.
I love the concept of the Regional Connector project but the way Metro has handled this has not been okay. They offered improvements to the project in the form of an upgrade from the at-grade 1st/Alameda junction to an underground 1st/Alameda. Sounds good.
But later they turn around and say that suddenly there’s no money left for a Financial District station.
This particular tweak is more of Metro bending over backwards to please Little Tokyo but at the same time forcing the Financial District to pony up money for Metro to even CONSIDER building the Financial District station.
*END RANT*
There are some NIMBYs in Little Tokyo.
For example, S.K. Uyeda Department Store is on First Street, but they always opposed the tunneling on Second Street, with or without the at-grade option.
Of course, TBM is a better option than cut-and-cover. I hadn’t noticed that change earlier.
@JRider
It never made sense to run the regional connector at grade across Alameda. A single accident at that intersection would end up shutting down the Gold, Blue, and Expo lines.
Running that many trains at grade is operationally very difficult, even if there are no accidents. Flower St is going to be a mess when the Expo line opens and shares the Blue line track.