VIA EMAIL AND U.S. FIRST CLASS MAIL
May 9, 2024
Los Angeles County MTA Board
One Gateway Plaza, Mail Stop: 99-22-3
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Email: [email protected]
Re: No ROW C-Line Extension of any kind
Hawthorne Routing of Metro C Line Extension delivering
equity, highest ridership, and largest potential economic stimulus to region Dear Honorable L.A. County Metro Board Members:
For the third time in recent years, the Redondo Beach City Council and Mayor voted without opposition against the Hybrid ROW routing of the C-Line extension to Torrance.
Once again, we repeated our endorsement of the Hawthorne Blvd. alternative similarly supported by our neighbors in Lawndale and Hawthorne.
Currently, we recognize that insufficient funding exists for any C-Line extension route.
However, we ask that the Board select the best routing delivering the most equity, highest ridership, and largest potential economic stimulus to the region. Hawthorne Blvd. is the LPA – and we are sure that we and our neighbors will work with Metro to attain full funding of the C-Line down Hawthorne Blvd.
In our last letter of October 3, 2023, we expressed the many virtues associated with the Hawthorne Blvd. alignment. Today, we detail our thorough opposition to the Hybrid ROW because:
• The Hybrid ROW dangerously crams an unprecedented number of uses – fuel and gas movement on freight trains and underground pipelines with passenger light rail trains – in a model untested anywhere else in LA County. • The proposed Hybrid ROW requires the relocation of nine fuel or gas pipelines1 currently buried under the ROW to accommodate the below-grade metro trains at certain locations;
1 Per Metro’s Advanced Conceptual Engineering, Sheet 4 of 9: 10” Crimson Pipeline Crude Oil Line; 3” & 4” Chevron Butadiene (Abandon); 8” Shell Ventura Products Line; 8” Torrance Logistics Oil; 8” Shell LAX Products Line; 16” Zenith Terminals Oil; 20” Chevron Oil; 16” Plains All American Gas Line; 8” City of Redondo Beach SD.
City of Redondo Beach October 4, 2023
Metro C Line (Green) Extension to Torrance Project, No to ROW Page 2 of 4 • The proposed Hybrid ROW places the twice-daily heavy freight train carrying fuel up and down the ROW at grade-level tens of feet above and directly adjacent to the below-grade metro trains in dense residential neighborhoods. • The Hybrid ROW seizes from the predominantly Latino, park-poor, diverse population of Lawndale – with median home values of $687,200 and household income of $76,213 (in 2022 dollars) –the green open space in which Lawndale has invested about $60,000 annually.
• The Hybrid ROW does nothing to allay the persistent fear and anxiety from which the diverse residents along the ROW in Lawndale and Redondo Beach will suffer during and after the construction of the project there. The Hybrid ROW requires our Breakwater Village seniors to live a significant chunk of the balance of their lives with the heavy construction required to stabilize the soil for all of the contemplated uses and relocate many fuel and gas pipelines there.
• The Hybrid ROW requires the chopping down of 40+ year-old mature trees in the ROW in Lawndale, only to replace them with nascent trees. Lawndale residents estimate 173 mature trees will be removed, 23 at risk, and only 19 preserved. The replacement of mature trees with nascent trees is the type of systemic, and inequitable suppression that provides these communities with persistently poorer health outcomes. The mature trees in Lawndale furnish the ROW community up and down that city with much more shade and cleaner air than any new trees would furnish for the current generation of Lawndale residents.
• The hundreds of Breakwater Village (50-year-old plus), Ruxton Place and Ruxton Ridge residents reasonably expect depreciation of their homes if your construction plans for their backyards are announced. They will want to move away but, for one, will not get the current fair market value of their property prior to the Metro Board’s decision and, second, even if they take a haircut on their homes sale price, will be unable to attain a new home in this high interest environment while many of them are retired and on a fixed income. • Metro’s assertion that the ROW options’ proximity to Redondo’s new Transit Center increases ridership is belied by Metro’s own ridership projections in the DEIR. These projections show ridership would exceed 1.25 million additional annual rides and 47% more boardings at the Redondo Platform with the Hawthorne option compared to the hybrid ROW option. • The South Bay Marketplace that Metro Staff touts as a location ripe for economic opportunity is better served by a C-Line stop along Hawthorne Blvd. As future Metro Riders walk to and from the South Bay Marketplace to the Hawthorne Blvd. stop, they could stop at the open-air South Bay Social City of Redondo Beach October 4, 2023
Metro C Line (Green) Extension to Torrance Project, No to ROW Page 3 of 4 District which will host restaurants and coffee shops, including a Time Out Market. These types of shops would help grow ridership and foster a hip Metro transit culture. Under the Hybrid ROW plan, there is no space for a similar opportunity to be developed between the South Bay Marketplace and the Transit Center.
• Placement of the C-Line stop at the back of the Redondo Beach Transit Center, instead of in front of the South Bay Social District - where it would be located along the Hawthorne Blvd. alignment - pressures our City to make more intense, transit-oriented residential uses of the properties the City currently owns and uses for our pallet shelters for the unhoused. Soon, the City of Redondo Beach will host 45 pallet homes on two parcels. With the State’s recurring RHNA obligations, the pallet shelter sites could quickly be sold or leased to easily satisfy a major part of our housing obligations, with much needed revenue flowing to the city. Residential intensification opportunities, however, abound along Hawthorne Blvd. in Redondo, Torrance and Hawthorne without comprising the little land we have for the unhoused. • The land in the area is compacted sand, and has been the site of sinkholes and earth movement. It is unsuitable for these heavy simultaneous uses right next to dense senior and other affordable housing.
• Placement of the C-Line stop at the back of the Redondo Beach Transit Center would make it one of the most unappealing and inherently dangerous stops in all of L.A. County. The area is dark, adjacent to a cemetery to the west of it. Adjacent to the cemetery further west is one our most dense residential neighborhoods. But, pedestrian access from that neighborhood along Inglewood Avenue directly to the Transit Center is unavailable, and would remain unavailable. To the east of the Transit Center stop would be a Target, a parking lot, our pallet shelter sites and future bus depot. The amount of land available for transit-oriented development is scant there. • Of course, the data collected by Metro Staff favors use of the ROW. Torrance has campaigned its residents to support the ROW. There are 141,000 residents in Torrance compared to only 69,000 in Redondo Beach and 30,500 in Lawndale. The Board should expect the City of Torrance’s influence on the poll to be outsized; not assign that outsized influence additional weight and reliance. Equity requires heeding the concerns of the smaller, more affected communities. Torrance residents are unaffected by any of the proposed routes.
As we have stated before, the Metro Board’s prior success in Culver City with the ELine (formerly Exposition Line) stands as a model for economic achievement Metro could attain routing the C-Line extension down Hawthorne Blvd. Please do not cheat City of Redondo Beach October 4, 2023
Metro C Line (Green) Extension to Torrance Project, No to ROW Page 4 of 4 our region out of the same opportunity. Please select the best alignment - along Hawthorne Blvd.
Thank you for your anticipated serious consideration of our comments.
Sincerely,
Mayor James Light
Joined by:
Nils Nehrenheim
Council Member, District 1
Todd Loewenstein
Council Member, District 2
Paige Kaluderovic
Council Member, District 3
Zein E. Obagi, Jr.
Council Member, District 4
CC: L.A. County Metro Board
Mike Witzansky, City Manager
Luke Smude, Assistant to the City Manager
Ted Semaan, Public Works Director
L.A. County Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell
L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn
Attachments:
• Official Comment Letter from City Council October 4, 2023 • Official DEIR Comment Letter from City Council March 22, 2023 • Redondo Beach Planning Commission Recommended Comments 2/16/2023 • Redondo Beach Public Works & Sustainability Commission Recommended Comments 2/27/2023
• Public Comments received by City Council in discussion of the DEIR • City of Redondo Beach Comments and Request Letter on Metro C Line Extension to Torrance Project May 17, 2022
• City of Redondo Beach Letter Submitting Comments on Revised and Recirculated Notice of Preparation Dated March 16, 2021 • City of Redondo Beach Support Letter Green Line Alternative 3 Signed July 18, 2018