Subway Or Monorail For The Sepulveda Pass? Metro And Local Residents Weigh Their Options

Metro's long-planned Sepulveda Corridor transit project is expected to bring some relief to beleaguered commuters in the San Fernando Valley and Westside, but local residents and the public are still hammering out what exactly that would look like.

That'll be the focus of a series of public feedback sessions, starting with one on Saturday morning in Van Nuys.

Metro's proposals for the corridor have already generated a fair amount of debate — and there are two main options. Supporters of building a subway crashed one of the last feedback sessions on Metro's monorail proposals, so we thought we'd break down the issue for you to understand what's at stake for the communities affected by the project.

At this stage, the sessions are aimed at getting feedback on alternatives to monorail, as well as the possible elimination of the monorail option with a people mover connection to UCLA, according to Metro.

Why the Sepulveda Pass?

If you've ever driven this span of the highway during rush hour, you can probably guess why the project's being built. The 405 Freeway is one of the busiest in the nation — though the 5 Freeway wins first place, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data.

What's more, the stretch of the 405 running through the Sepulveda Pass is consistently ranked as one of the slowest and most-trafficked freeways in the country — and so it's not hard to imagine why commuters would jump at the opportunity to ditch their car for a train commute.

"There's a concentration of housing in the valley and a concentration of jobs on the Westside and where I'm based at UCLA in particular," said Jacob Wasserman, a researcher at UCLA's Institute of Transportation Studies. "This line, according to the projections that Metro has run, has the potential to have tens of thousands of riders a day."

The proposals

Metro is studying the possible routes for the new line, as well as where to put new metro stations. Some of the proposals include new stations at UCLA, the Getty Center, and Ventura Boulevard — though not every plan includes stops at every location.

Metro had previously been considering building light rail along the 405 Freeway, similar to how the C Line runs along the median of the 105 Freeway. Light rail trains make up the majority of Los Angeles' Metro lines, with the exception of the B and D Lines, but they also tend to operate slower and have lower capacity than heavy rail. Wasserman said officials decided to nix that idea since it wouldn't be able to keep up with anticipated demand for the new line.

Note: Each of the proposals is called an "alternative" — as in, an alternative to taking the 405.

• Alternative 1: Above-ground monorail in the 405 corridor and electric bus connection to UCLA (LASRE)
• Alternative 2: Above-ground monorail in 405 corridor and underground automated people mover connection to UCLA (LASRE).
• Alternative 3: Above-ground monorail in the 405 corridor and underground alignment between Getty Center and Wilshire Bl (LASRE). This station would be the only monorail option to include a stop on UCLA's campus.
• Alternative 4: Heavy rail with underground alignment south of Ventura Bl and aerial alignment generally along Sepulveda Bl in the San Fernando Valley (STCP)
• Alternative 5: Heavy rail with underground alignment including along Sepulveda in the San Fernando Valley (STCP)
• Alternative 6: Heavy rail with underground alignment including along Van Nuys Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley and southern terminus station at Bundy Drive (Metro)

Alternative 2 — which involves the construction of both a monorail and a people mover to connect to UCLA — is the one that could be on the chopping block during the current round of public comment.

Notably, all of the proposed lines would connect the D Line expansion, which is slated to open in 2028, with Metro's E Line running from Santa Monica to East Los Angeles. They would also connect to Metro's G Line bus service, the Van Nuys Metrolink station, and the planned East San Fernando Valley Light Rail Transit Project.

Pros and cons

The project has brought out many stakeholders, and for many of them it's not as simple as building a monorail or a subway — though that's certainly something Metro will have to figure out by the end of the review process.

Wasserman identified some advantages for building a subway: increased capacity, shortened travel times, and interchangeability with other subway lines.

"The subway appears to, at least from the documents I've seen from Metro, have higher capacity, and this line will generate a ton of ridership," Wasserman said.

The subway would likely be able to travel through the Sepulveda Pass faster than a monorail — though eliminating a proposed stop at the Getty Center would cut down on travel times for the monorail. Metro projects the Getty Center stop would have about 1,300 weekday boardings, a fraction of the expected ridership at UCLA and connections to other rail and bus lines.

Building heavy rail would also open up an opportunity for Metro to use trains and even conductors from elsewhere in the system. Los Angeles already has two heavy rail lines: the B Line from Union Station to North Hollywood and the D Line from downtown to Koreatown (which will be expanded to Westwood by 2028).

The heavy rail lines would also be a guaranteed boon for people who attend or work at UCLA. All of the subway proposals would have a stop at UCLA, while only one of the proposed monorail routes, Alternative 3, would stop directly on campus.

"The UCLA community, from the administration itself to students, staff, faculty, in large part is supportive of options with a stop on campus," Wasserman said.

Much of the opposition to heavy rail has come from homeowners in Bel Air who oppose tunneling underneath their properties, according to Wasserman. Meanwhile, Sherman Oaks residents have voiced concerns about noise and impact on the streets.

However, Metro said in a statement provided to LAist that the agency is confident the tunneling will not pose issues for Bel Air residents.

"We have successfully tunneled under all types of private property -- and at shallower depths than what we would anticipate for any of the Sepulveda subway options now under study," Metro spokesperson Dave Sotero wrote in a statement provided to LAist. "To date, Metro has not had issues with noise, vibration, subsidence, or the ability of property owners to build above our existing subways in Los Angeles County."

Sotero pointed to recently completed tunneling projects in Los Angeles, including the expansion of the D Line into the Westside and the tunneling of Metro's Regional Connector project underneath Walt Disney Concert Hall.

"Metro is fully capable of conducting appropriate studies and design to ensure construction and operation of new transit projects can occur without issues," Sotero wrote.

The monorail would come with one big advantage: It would involve less — or potentially no — tunneling. That would likely lower Metro's construction costs and allow the project to get up and running sooner than the subway.

However, a potential disadvantage for the monorail is noise and air pollution, which has already proved to be a concern with the C Line along the 105 Freeway.

"If you commute on the [C] Line daily, you are prone to suffer permanent hearing damage because of the noise of cars that you have to deal with every day," Wasserman said. "A monorail might have the same thing, especially if there's a stop at the Getty Center or stops in the valley that are in the median of the 405."

Monorails are much less common in the U.S. than either light or heavy rail, but there are a few examples of cities that have operate them for public transportation: Seattle, Jacksonville, and the Las Vegas area all have installed urban monorail systems.

"Monorail is a relatively untested or at least underused technology compared to the subways, and so we don't quite know what changes might come up, whether the cost estimates are actually accurate to what's going to happen on the ground," Wasserman said.

Next steps

Metro is projecting that it will finish construction on the Sepulveda Corridor line between 2033 and 2035. Metro is still in the environmental review phase, meaning there will be more rounds of public comment to narrow down and refine the proposals — and Wasserman cautioned that the final project might look different from the proposal anyway.

"Things change in the construction process — you dig and you encounter a new sewer line that you didn't expect was there," Wasserman said. "Funding, obviously, could dry up or slow. And so the route that's selected and the design that's selected might not be exactly what's built, but it will look largely similar is my bet."

Metro is planning to release a draft environmental impact report, the next major step in the construction process, in early 2025.

Upcoming public comment sessions

• Saturday, May 11, 2024 – 10 a.m. to noon, Marvin Braude Center, 6262 Van Nuys Boulevard, Van Nuys, CA 91401. Transit: Metro Bus Lines 233 and 761 serve Van Nuys Boulevard; the Metro G Line (Orange) Busway Van Nuys Station is located three blocks to the south. Parking will be available under the building (entrance off Sylvan Street). 
• Virtual Meeting: Monday, May 13, 2024 – Noon to 1 p.m. Zoom Link: https://qrco.de/Sepulveda-May13. Call in: +1 669 900 6833. Webinar ID: 848 5610 6007.
• Tuesday, May 14 – 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., Westwood United Methodist Church, 10497 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90024. Transit: Metro Bus Lines 20 and 720 serve Wilshire Boulevard. Parking is available under the Belmont Village Senior Living Westwood, just east of the church. 
  

Metro is also soliciting feedback on proposals for East San Fernando Valley line. That session will take place at 12:30 p.m. at the Marvin Braude Center immediately following the feedback session for the Sepulveda Corridor.