The last battle line in the effort to build the Expo light-rail system has been drawn at Farmdale Avenue and Exposition Boulevard — a small intersection about 20 yards from Susan Miller Dorsey High School in central Los Angeles.
If state regulators sign off on a grade crossing and station there, it will clear the way for completion of the first modern rail link between downtown Los Angeles and the bustling Westside.
But the plan to lay track at street level by Dorsey has run into intense opposition from neighborhood associations, students, teachers, Dorsey alumni and community activists who have fought for almost four years to change the project's design.
Unless the rails are elevated or put below ground like other sections of the project, they say the line will create an unacceptable risk for pedestrians and motorists, especially when students head to class in the morning and leave campus in the afternoon. The school has about 1,600 pupils.
At a recent public hearing at Dorsey, some activists and residents from the predominantly black neighborhood also bristled when whites from the Westside turned out to voice their support for the line and its safety features.
"I've noticed lots of whites coming into the community to tell us how to live," testified Clint Simmons, one of 300 to 400 people who crowded into the school's cafeteria and an annex reserved for the hearing.
Critics of the project are concerned because at certain times of the day, hundreds of Dorsey students cross Exposition at Farmdale as parents drive past on their way to pick up or drop off their children. Plans call for light-rail trains to pass through the intersection every few minutes.
"All it would take is one car making a wrong turn at the wrong time and it would go right into a group of 100 students," said Damien Goodmon, a community activist who chairs The Fix Expo Campaign, a coalition of community organizations, Dorsey alumni and civil rights groups.
If done today, the estimated cost to put the line underground at Farmdale would be at least $100 million, and an elevated section would cost at least $30 million. The amount does not include $1 million for every month of delay completing the project.
Trying to ease neighborhood concerns, the Expo Construction Authority revised its original plan for the Farmdale grade crossing and submitted it for approval to the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates certain rail issues.
