LA Metro Opens Gold Line Extension, Releases Draft

摘要

Just weeks after opening the new Gold Line Foothill Extension, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) hopes to expand that light-rail system again, along with many other projects. It released on March 18 a draft spending plan that, if approved by the Metro board of directors on March 24, will ask voters to fund $ 12 0 billion in transit projects over the next 40 years. The $l-billion, 11.5-mile extension of the original downtown Los Angeles-Pasadena Gold Line, from Pasadena to Azusa, is the first light rail in the U.S. to be built entirely with taxpayer money, Metro says. It was funded by Measure R, which raised the Los Angeles sales tax one-half cent in 2008 and fueled a $40-billion road-and-rail program (ENR 7/25/11 p. 9). But, in 2012, a ballot Measure J's premise to extend that sales-tax increase by 30 years failed by a narrow margin.