Watch the decking take place over the past couple months for the station that will serve Leimert Park and will be located at Crenshaw Boulevard and Vernon Avenue. This is one of three underground stations on the northern part of the project — the others are Expo/Crenshaw and Expo/Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Crenshaw/LAX Line is an 8.5-mile light rail line that will run between the Expo Line and the Green Line. It is funded primarily by Measure R, the half-cent sales tax increase approved by Los Angeles County voters in 2008. All construction notices are here. The project is forecast to be complete in 2019.
As part of a separate project, an additional station will be added at Aviation/96th that will allow passengers to transfer to and from a people mover being built by Los Angeles International Airport. The people mover will connect to three stations near airport terminals as well as a planned new ground transportation center and consolidated rental car facility.
Categories: Projects
[…] not lots of work to watch going on above ground. Metro produced this time-lapse video (via The Source) showing the work done on the Leimert Park station “over the past couple months,” […]
Tsk, tsk, lazy American construction workers. Can’t you people work harder like the Japanese construction workers who manage to convert an above rail line into a subway in 3.5 hours?
https://youtu.be/wIbZqqLra9k
We should just let the Japanese build the entire Metro system for us. Bet they’ll be able to build them faster, better quality, and at a fraction of the cost of Metro, and they have the experience to build stuff that can withstand a magnitude 9.0 earthquake to boot.
Regarding the interesting piece on the future rail maps, what happened to the idea of a one-seat ride from LAX to downtown? I remember politicians talking about that. Is that concept not being considered anymore? I thought they might split the new east-west line and have some trains go to Santa Monica and some go to the airport.
Hi Jim;
There was some talk about that (if memory serves correctly) in the early 2000s, with some of the push coming from the L.A. City Council. I think they were even looking at a magnetic levitation train. The problem was money, or complete lack of it. As part of the Crenshaw/LAX Line project, the decision was made to use the old rail right-of-way east of the airport and to build a separate project (now the airport’s people mover) to connect to Crenshaw. For most DTLA destinations it will eventually be a three-seat ride: people mover to Crenshaw/LAX Line and then transfer to what is now called Expo Line. After the Regional Connector opens, that line will stop at Pico Station (i.e. Staples and LA Live), 7th/Metro, 2nd/Hope, 2nd/Broadway and 2nd/Central and then continue to East L.A. under current operating plans.
Steve Hymon
Editor, The Source