Transportation

Light Rail Against Traffic and Sprawl

Why does the Sierra Club support light rail? It is both a fast, comfortable, exhaust-free alternative to traffic congestion, and a key tool in the campaign against sprawl. Not only does sprawl consume open space and agricultural land, but by spreading out everything, sprawl makes trips longer and driving mandatory, creating more pollution, energy use, and traffic.

Light rail is the “backbone transit” that makes pedestrian-and transit-oriented development possible. It enables people to travel without a car, and allows us to use land for livable communities rather than for more roads and parking.

As Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy write in Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence (Island Press, 1999), “The sustainability agenda demands transit, especially the development of rail systems that are competitive with the car in passenger appeal and speed.”

Light Rail Success

Across the United States, more and more cities are combining new light rail lines with transit-oriented communities. West of the Mississippi, nearly every major city has and is expanding light rail – Portland (left), Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Denver, Dallas, and St. Louis – or is planning it. Dallas riders like their light rail so much that 77% voted in 2000 for bonds to expand it faster!

In Los Angeles, the Long Beach Blue Line is the most successful new light rail line in the US, carrying around 70,000 passengers per day. The Pasadena Gold Line will open this summer, and Eastside light rail will begin construction. The Red Line subway carries as many as 150,000 passengers per day. We will have a regional rail network, enabling Angelenos to travel for miles and miles throughout our region, without ever getting in a car. Think of how different life would be for so many people!

Exposition Light Rail

We are supporting the next key link in the Los Angeles rail network – the Exposition line from downtown L.A. to Santa Monica. Following a major grass-roots campaign, the MTA Board approved the first section of light rail from downtown to Venice/Robertson – with the intent to reach Santa Monica – in 2001. Preliminary engineering is underway, but with state budget cuts funding is an issue. More on the Expo Line

California High Speed Rail

More information coming soon. A state bond issue is scheduled for November 2004. See the California High Speed Rail Authority's website for current planning information: www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov.

Federal funding reauthorization

More information coming soon. Reauthorization of the multi-year federal funding bill is a key issue this year. Following ISTEA and TEA-21, the new bill had been called TEA-3 and is now SAFETEA. For information from the USDOT see www.fhwa.dot.gov/reauthorization/safetea.htm. For information from Surface Transportation Policy Project, see www.tea3.org.

Get involved!

Sierra Club transportation activists have been key members in the grassroots campaigns for Exposition, the Pasadena and Eastside Gold Lines, and other local transportation issues! Get involved with next steps on L.A. transportation – come to our regular monthly meetings at the Angeles Chapter office, 7:00 p.m. on the first Thursday of the month. Address is 3435 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 320 (the tall Equitable building – park free under the building off Mariposa for the Sierra Club after 5:30 p.m., or ride the Red Line to Normandie).

• E-mail the Angeles Chapter Transportation Committee