Last-minute motion throws curveball at approval of South Bay rail extension

Metro’s Board of Directors is set to vote Thursday on a $2.7 billion project that would extend light rail farther into the South Bay.

The Board will also consider a competing proposal that takes a different route for the extension than the one staff for the countywide transportation agency recommended and studied extensively.

Three members of Metro’s Board formally asked their colleagues to approve the alternate route Friday, less than a week before the meeting.

Some transit advocates have warned that approving the last-minute motion, which would make the project more expensive and more difficult to construct, could set the extension back years.

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“All of a sudden, we have this alternative motion out of left field that did not come out of a committee process,” Scott Epstein, policy and research director of Abundant Housing L.A., said to LAist. “This is really concerning. I urge the Metro Board to return to common sense and stay the course on a high-quality project.”

The news of the motion inspired the opposite feeling in Chelsea Schreiber, who founded a group that’s in favor of the alternate route for which the motion advocates.

“I fell to my knees and cried when I read it,” Schreiber, a Lawndale resident, said to LAist.

The background

The goal of the extension as a whole is to improve connectivity between the South Bay and greater transit network. Metro staff said in a report to its Board that the extension would expand access to jobs, housing, and education.

Before any shovels hit the ground with regional transit projects, Metro studies several routes, collects public input and conducts technical analyses. Based on their work, agency staff then approach the board with their recommendation for the route they believe best serves the project’s goals.

In this case, staff recommended in 2024 a route that would operate on tracks already owned by the agency and includes stations at transit hubs in Redondo Beach and Torrance. In May the same year, Metro’s Board voted in favor of the recommendation and directed agency staff to focus on that route for further analysis.

The dueling route

Before last Friday, the Board was primed to approve those additional studies for the staff-recommended route and advance the project to its design and pre-construction phase.

L.A. County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, whose district represents some of the project area, and her Metro Board colleagues, Tim Sandoval and Jacquelyn Dupont-Walker, don’t want to see that happen.

Instead, according to the motion they introduced, Mitchell and her colleagues want the Board to further a different alignment for the extension that would have the train run along Hawthorne Boulevard, a major commercial corridor.

Their motion shares the concerns of the chief advocacy group in favor of the Hawthorne route, the South Bay Environmental Justice Alliance.

That group, which was founded by Schreiber, claims the staff-recommended route runs too close to homes and would eliminate green space. The group says pollution and noise associated with construction would negatively affect local residents.

The cities of Hermosa Beach, Lawndale, Hawthorne and Redondo Beach have also expressed support for the Hawthorne route whereas the city of Torrance has advocated for the Metro staff-recommended route.

In a statement, Mitchell told LAist she fully supports expanding transit access in the South Bay and thinks the Hawthorne option is the best way to do that “without having to make trade-offs on the safety and quality of life communities.”

Metro staff disagree. According to a report to the Metro board, agency staff determined the Hawthorne alignment wouldn’t provide the same access to local transit, would require additional environmental clearance and cost $737 million more than the route it recommended.

Metro staff also also put forward a suite of mitigation measures, including sound walls, sidewalks and bike paths, to assuage concerns over the route it recommended.

Metro’s board will vote on both proposals Thursday.

It’ll also consider selecting a route for the Sepulveda Transit Corridor for further study. That project would create a rail connection between the Valley and Westside.