Foothill Gold Line releases letter on funding negotiations

The Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension Construction Authority is an independent agency that was set up to build the next phase of the light rail line from Pasadena to Azusa.

The Authority last week released a letter to Metro about ongoing negotiations for a funding transfer agreement with the agency. The agreement allows Metro to transfer Measure R money to the Authority for construction of the light rail line.

The letter from Authority CEO Habib Balian to Metro Board Chairman Ara Najarian is after the jump (you can also view the letter by clicking here). Keep in mind this is part of an ongoing negotiation and the letter represents Balian’s point of view.

Balian has said publicly that he wants to break ground on the project next June and have it open to riders in 2013. In October, the Metro Board agreed to begin operating the line in 2013 should the Construction Authority come up with a financing plan to build it by then (such a plan will likely involve getting a loan from a contractor then repaying it with Measure R money). The Measure R funding alone is scheduled to have the line complete by 2017.
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Eastside Gold Line Extension dedicated and ready for its public debut

The Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension arrives at the East L.A. Civic Center on Saturday

Metro dedicated the opening of its first rail line since 2003 on Saturday morning, as a long list of elected officials and invited guests celebrated the opening of the Eastside Gold Line Extension between Los Angeles Union Station and East Los Angeles.

The Eastside hadn’t seen rail service since the days of the streetcar. A variety of transit projects have been talked about for decades for the Eastside and for a time in the 1990s a subway was planned to reach the area. Lack of funding, divisive local politics and other issues intervened until finally the Gold Line was recast as light rail.

“It has taken generations to build the Eastside Gold Line,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, who also is a member of the Metro Board of Directors. “It took so long that a lot of the people involved in the struggle, including the Congressman, have passed on.”

Molina was referring to Rep. Edward R. Roybal, who grew up in Boyle Heights and later served on both the Los Angeles City Council and became a mainstay in Congress. He was widely acknowledged as a driving force behind the line and, as a result, the Eastside Gold Line was named after him. Roybal died in 2005; his daughter Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard now represents the area in Congress and attended Saturday’s ceremony.

“My most heartfelt thanks goes to you,” Roybal-Allard said, referring to Eastside community members who fought for the line and served as liaisons between the Eastside and Metro before and during construction. “Reaching today’s milestone of restoring rail service is largely because of you.”

The dedication ceremony was closed to the public; the public debut is scheduled for Sunday with the first train leaving Union Station for the Eastside at 3:40 a.m. All rides on the Gold Line are free on Sunday. Large crowds are expected, particularly because of some the festivities scheduled on the Eastside, including concerts at Mariachi Plaza and the East L.A. Civic Center, along with a food fair at the Little Tokyo/Arts District stop. Regular service — requiring passengers to pay fares — begins early Monday.

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Transportation headlines, Thursday, Nov. 12

A few of the headlines hoovered up by the Metro library that caught my eye this morning:

The Wilson Quarterly has a good article about bullet trains and the lack of them in the United States. An excerpt:

This gap only widens in the rest of Amtrak’s 22,000-mile nationwide network. Outside of the Northeast Corridor, there are only four routes where Amtrak trains can run faster than 79 m.p.h.:  Los Angeles-San Diego, New York City-Albany, Philadelphia-Harrisburg, and a 100-mile segment in Michigan.

Elsewhere, trains are restricted to 79 m.p.h. because locomotives and track are not equipped with signal systems that prevent collisions. After accounting for speed-restricted curves, snail-like crawls through junctions, stops for opposing trains, and other obstacles thrown in their path, Amtrak trains average no better than 50 m.p.h. between terminals—and much less if unscheduled delays are counted.

The result is that train service is slower today than it was in the 1940s, when “streamliners” touted for their speed—such as the Super Chief, 20th Century Limited, Denver Zephyr, and Hiawatha—routinely topped 90 to 100 m.p.h. between station stops. While the rest of the world has advanced, America’s passenger rail has stalled, if not reversed direction.

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Metro officials prepare to seek federal money for subway and connector projects

We launched the Source quickly last month in time to report on the October meeting of the Board of Directors. But I wanted to circle back and try to better explain something that happened at the September meeting — when the Board voted to seek federal funds for both the Westside extension of the subway to Westwood and the downtown regional connector light rail.

The news of the day is that Metro officials are now hoping to secure that federal money by late summer 2011 and, on a more immediate note, are preparing to immediately seek millions of dollars in President Obama’s next budget to help pay for preliminary engineering of the projects. The best way I can summarize what this means: the political game involving the projects has now largely shifted from Los Angeles County to Washington D.C.

Both projects are getting money from the Measure R sales tax increase approved by voters last year. Getting that money was essentially the first half of the funding game. But that money — $4.1 billion for the subway and $160 million for the connector — doesn’t flow to the subway or connector all at once. That’s why Metro officials hope to secure federal money to add to the Measure R money, giving them enough to open the first phase of the subway to Fairfax and the connector in 2019. The federal money request is the second half of the funding game.

The Federal Transit Administration (the FTA) runs a program called “New Starts” to help transit agencies pay for big new rail and busway projects. New Starts provided for about $490 million of the $898 million cost of the Gold Line Eastside Extension line that is opening later this month. But once the Gold Line is complete, Metro doesn’t have any other projects in the New Starts funding pipeline.

Agency staff at last month’s meeting pointed out to the Board that the result is that Los Angeles County isn’t getting its fair share of federal dollars — that’s the message the above graphic tries to convey. Of course, it’s also fair to point out that to get New Starts money one must first ask and fill out several forests’ worth of paperwork. New Starts funding doesn’t just fall out of the sky and until recently Metro hasn’t asked for more New Starts money because: 1) until Measure R passed there weren’t many big projects in the works, and; 2) the Metro Board had not agreed what to ask for.

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