The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 334

ZMiJOS ANGELES TIMES SATURDAY, AUGUST 12, 1995 A1 7 Starts 4 The England family of Torrance, far left, watches a train arrive at its destination during a test run. For jT most of its route 1 the Green Line traverses the Century Freeway, left. Each station along the new commuter line features a work .1 I I 1 I Mil I I 'C5 I i I i i of art, such as tiJil stories from residents displayed on muracoiorea uies. fe The Green Line trolley, connecting Norwalk and Redondo Beach, is the third leg of a county wide rail system. The line opens Saturday, $nd is free to the public this weekend.

Commuter runs will begin Monday at a two-week introductory cost of 25 cents. Most of i the 20 -mile route runs down the middle of the Century Freeway (1-105). at tne uensnaw I -S-Hi I i-i-f. i 1 -ol SEND I' I II I 1 IllMAtfrtNRhVr--! MANCHESTER AVE. Arizt J.

I I -HLX, CslK Wn If tT jcENTURYBim -LU-I 1 South Gate fWf WOSECRANS AVE. ijj 1 lf r-M "I It pllwl'7' INE rr 1 11' I fj "si ly "Inr I fsn j-1 VWn Cm LongBerh k) -vac 4ii Where It goes: Between Norwalk and Redondo Beach. Where ft doesn't go: Stops a few miles short of LAX. Ph. -Jf Overall cost: About $950 million.

i4jf Construction time: 4 12 years. jit Trains: Fifteen trains, each accommodating 230 'passengers. The new cars look like Blue Line cars, Including the blue stripes, allowing them to be used on either line. 0 Hours: About 4 a.m. to 11 p.m.

jr Frequency: Trains will arrive every 712 minutes during rush hour, every 1 2 minutes otherwise. Speed: 55 m.p.h. Fare: Beginning Sept. 1, the Green Line will cost $1.35 ach wav. Token users Dav 90 cents.

Blue Line and MTA 'bus transfers will be 25 cents. 1 Artwork: Each of the stations, designed cooperatively 23y artists and architects, bears a different theme, from 1-6051-105 Station 12359 Hoxie Norwalk. Harbor Freeway1-105 11500 S.Figueroa Los Angeles. 220-space park-and-ride lot' At Aviation Boulevard and Imperial Highway, the line turns south to Redondo Beach. Motive American myths to images of children at play.

nniuwrHniM Pnaaonffpra pan trancfor tn tho rno inl ml area. Heacn-LiOS Angeies Meiro ciue ai uie imperial KBighwayWilmington Avenue station. Numerous MTA Mariposa AvenueNash Street 555 N. Nash El Segundo. No parking lot.

Serves El Segundo employment and business bus lines offer service to individual stations; call i-800-COMMUTE for schedules. Parking: Twelve stations offer park-and-ride lots. Vermont Avenue1-105 11603 S. Vermont Los Angeles. 275-space park-and-ride lot.

Crenshaw Boulevard1-105 11801 Crenshaw Inglewood. 521-space park-and-ride lot. Serves residents of Gardena and eastern parts of Inglewood and Hawthorne. Hawthorne Boulevard1-105 1 1 132 Hawthorne Hawthorne. 750-space park-and-ride lot.

park-and-ride lot. Lakewood Boulevard1-105 12801 Lakewood Downey. 450-space park-and-ride lot. Long Beach Boulevard1-105 11508 Long Beach Lynwood. 573-space park-and-ride lot.

Imperial HlghwayWllmlngton Avenue 11651 Wilmington Los Angeles. 500-space park-and-ride lot Transfer point to the Long Beach-Los Angeles Blue Line. 5 AvaJon Boulevard1-105 11667 S. Avalon Los Angeles. -185-space park-and-ride lot i Security: Uniformed and plainclothes MTA security will patrol parking lots, stations and trains.

Sensors between the rails at stations will allow trains to be stopped El Segundo BoulevardNash Street 2226 E. El Segundo El Segundo. 90-space park-and-ride lot. K) Douglas StreetRosecrans Avenue 700 S. Douglas El Segundo.

No parking lot hr' automatically if something falls onto the tracks. Ml ft Airport snuttie: unerates Detween ine. Aviation stauon 1.4U Dniilmanl L4AII ind the airline terminals. Free shuttles will operate seven tlays a week during Green Line operating hours. will be a 90-space park-and-ride lot 0 niMimi a-w Marine AvenueRedondo Beach Avenue 2406 Marine Redondo Beach.

340-space park-and-ride lot. liauu Aviauon mva, Lios Angeies. 525-space park-and-ride lot. by CECILIA RASMUSSEN Los Angeles Times i i v. Lot Angelas JTimes 13 ii minutes) and every 12 minutes at other times.

estimated 1 1 Cojitlnued from AI promised. It is expected to carry an I. 16,000 passengers a day a tenth of origin; mt Noise, Artwork and the Yen ifions and fewer than ride Los Angeles' short subway it II jt I ilfiifi or the Disneyland monorail. 1 .1 ri -1 1 1 .1 ...1 I. wnue Doosiers promiseu uiai uie line wouia uecume tke nation's first driverless system, it won't be, at least pinot light away and perhaps never because of costs tj5M labor union opposition.

yhe Green Line is the first rail line built on a Los Angeles freeway the Century since the Red Car 1 1 It- .4. jf tracks were ripped up from the center of the it, Hollywood Freeway in the Cahuenga Pass in the early The 20-mile Green Line increases to 46 miles the county once-ambitious but now scaled-down rail i for the 21st Century. actually does go somewhere. It runs from Norwalk to El Segundo, and then leaves the freeway viaHecome a Chicago-style elevated train ending just J) inside Redondo Beach. iM pfficials say the line should be viewed as an investment in the future one that will gain stature 'fhd-rider8 as other rail segments come on line and America's No.

1 car-loving town becomes ever more Jpicuocked. "In 50 years, let's talk about whether the Green Line was a good idea," said Jacki Bacharach, a member of -j Jhe" now-defunct Los Angeles County Transportation tommiS8ion' which planned the line. "Let's not talk I "about it now." II AVhyNottoLAX? The Green Line has undergone a bumpy journey; It was the subject of an international political dispute when local transit officials awarded and then canceled a contract with Japan's Sumitomo ConJI for the train cars during the "Buy America" frenzJl of what some characterized as Japan-bashing. In the end, the MTA bought the cars from Sumitomo for millions of dollars more than the original deal. IS Early brochures promised "the first fully automated rail rapid transit line in the United States." Bufrthe trains will have drivers at the controls, even though the MTA spent more than $60 million for driverless technology.

The.chief advocate of the driverless trains was former Mayor Bradley, who touted them as a state-of-the-art showpiece for the region's Aew transit system. But the effort faded when Bradley retired two years ago. 1 The stations on the freeway are noisy. The 85-decibel average sound level is equivalent tolthe sound of some older airplanes on takeoff. MTA engineers say the noise is no louder than a bus stop near an overpass.

For the speaker system, the agency has used a technology developed for aircraft carrier flight decks. 1 Officials boast that the Green Line, which! is separated from street traffic, is safer than other lihes, such as the Blue Line, where 26 people have bpen killed on the tracks in its five years. Trains are separated from freeway traffic! by concrete barriers and a fence. To warn operator of climbers, the fence is equipped with electronic intrusion detectors. Sensors should detect anybodyi or anything that falls on the tracks.

Stations feature colorful artwork. A large polychromatic bee sculpture decorates the station at Norwalk, which was once known by Sejat Indians as" the "Place of Bees." And a 26-foot wire-mesh hand poised to launch a paper airplane stands at a station in1 El Segundo. Some critics, citing low ridership estimates, have suggested that the Green Line sit idle. The plaintiffs in a court case seeking increased funding for the bus system complained that the transit agency will spend $21 million a year to shuttle 10JD0O passengers a day on the Green Line, a taxpayer subsidy of $7.03 per ride. In contrast, the MTA will spend $6 million a year to move 40,000 passengers a day on the most crowded bus line, the Vermont Avenue line a subsidy of $1.15 per ride.

As ridership on the Green Line increases, the subsidy will decline, MTA spokeswoman Andrea Greene said, adding, "We build for the future." Some of the Green Line's inflated costs could have been avoided, officials concede. The MTA estimates that it spent an extra $2.1 million because, at the Please sec GREEN, A18 CAROLYN COLE Lea Angela Tinxs Leaving Aviation station, tain passes uncompleted segment that was to have linked up with the airport. As transit officials stage a gala opening today, one qugstion they prefer not to hear is why doesn't the line I goto Los Angeles International Airport s.The line was originally Duut to serve commuters first, say those involved in the planning a decade ago. tSJft wasn't like we didn't notice the airport was itrre," Bacharach said. LPlanners figured there was greater need for a commuter line, serving the then-burgeoning and high-tech center in El Segundo.

They -always envisioned a spur going to LAX, Bacharach said, but they didn't think commuters would use the Urie if they had to go through the airport on the way to ork. When planners later tried to extend the line to LAX, and transportation officials could not agree on 1990 is the third segment of a planned 95-mile rail system to be put into service in Los Angeles County over the next 20 years. The Green Line connects to the Blue Line, which hooks up with the Downtown subway. The subway is scheduled to open to Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue late next year and eventually run through Hollywood, into the San Fernando Valley and to the Eastside and Westside. A trolley line from Downtown to Pasadena also is under construction.

Today's opening will begin with trains leaving Redondo Beach at 9:51 a.m. and Norwalk at 10:21 a.m. with VIPs aboard. They will stop at each of the 14 stations for a ceremony, arriving at the Imperial Highway and Wilmington Avenue station for the 10 a.m. grand finale.

Trains will open to the public at noon, The MTA is offering free rides for the first weekend. A 25-cent fare will be offered until Sept 1, when the regular $1.35 fare will take effect (90 cents with a token). Trains will run every day from about 4 a.m. to about 11 p.m. every 7V6 minutes during weekday rush hours (fared down from the promise of eyiry two chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, was more blunt "It's scandalous," he said.

Even some MTA board members shake their heads. "It's kind of like having an elephant with no tail and no trunk," said James Cragin, a Gardena city councilman and MTA board member. He, nonetheless, believes the line was a good idea. "In time, it will be a success." Rail riders can get to the airport from the Civic Center, but only by transferring three times: from the Downtown subway to the Los Angeles-to-Long Beach Blue Line, then to the Green Line and finally to an airport shuttle bus not an easy feat for anyone with more luggage than a briefcase. Officials from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority say the line will draw riders over time.

"Build it, and they will come" said MTA construction chief Stanley Phernambucq. "I remember them saying, 'Why the hell would we put a road to dad-gum Phernambucq said, recalling the building of the transcontinental highway. "It's just a damn desert 'Who would want to go to This is an investment in the future." The line funded largely by a pair of half -cent sales tax increases approved by county voters in 1380 and to do it even though then-Mayor Tom Bradley 'welded clout witn coin agencies. 11 aia not neip tnai 1 UaMt officials representing other parts of the county JjPere more interested in bringing lines to their neighborhoods. Finally, money ran out i'Jt surprises me that it doesn't go to the airport," said Robert director of the University Transportation Research Center at City College of 1 1 New York.

"There's a big opportunity that's been missed here." rotate Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San. Francisco),.