Quote:
Originally Posted by Illithid Dude
The stations are actually shifted to the side so that they are adjacent to the freeway rather than directly on top of it. Still not great, but only a block removed from having the station directly on top of Sepulveda (which isn't that great either). My preferred alignment would have been to follow Westwood to Overland or cut over to Centinela, neither of which seem like they are likely to happen. What intrigues me most about the MRT is the low construction cost, comparable to LRT costs. While we can debate about if we prefer MRT or HRT for the Sepulveda transit corridor, I'm sure we all agree that we'd much rather have MRT than LRT, especially for something like the West Santa Anna Branch. If BRD can prove they are capable of construction MRT for a reasonable price, I wonder if Metro could be enticed into building fully grade separated lines instead of what would previously have been street running LRT.
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They are building it in the freeway because communities will not accept elevated otherwise. Metro board members are already complaining about the aerial segments of both proposals that don’t run in the freeway.
The West Santa Ana Branch line will be LRT and will not be MRT. It will start construction before the Sepulveda Line. The draft EIR for West Santa Ana is done and the FTA is already reviewing it, whereas the 3-4 year EIR process starts for the Sepulveda Line in March.
Here is a sense of the timelines:
https://metro.legistar.com/View.ashx...E-DB4ED08FE7E2
Tutor Perini’s proposal was only $1.1 billion more than BYD’s proposal, and it included underground stations for UCLA, Westwood and Expo Line, so it is actually cheaper than the monorail. BYD says they have a UCLA alternative but they don’t cost it out, artificially decreasing their price estimate. Tutor probably could’ve removed their UCLA station and underbid BYD, with a UCLA option that is not costed out. In that hypothetical, I think people naturally would be skeptical or cynical of such a blatant deliberately misleading underbidding process or that Tutor can build it that cheaply, especially given how it has been mired in controversy. I don’t see why you are so optimistic about BYD, which seems to have deliberately underbid, has no experience building a line in North America, and has been mired in political controversy.