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  Main News |
Light Rail
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.”
In Los Angeles, the Long Beach Blue Line is the most successful new light rail line in the US, carrying over 80,000 passengers per day. The Pasadena Gold Line opened in 2003, and the Eastside Gold Line will open later this year. 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!
updated 4/12/09 |
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Light
Rail Against Traffic and Sprawl
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 (right), Sacramento,
San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Denver,
Dallas, and St. Louis – or is planning it. 
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. Phase 1 construction and phase 2 environmental
study are now underway. 