Southern California Rapid Transit District - Metro Rail

Metro Rail

In 1980 voters passed Proposition A, a half-cent sales tax for a regional transit system. The measure succeeded after proposals in 1968 and 1974 had failed. The map that accompanied the initiative showed ten transit corridors with the Wilshire subway line the "cornerstone" of the system, according to former SCRTD planning director Gary Spivak. County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn was the author of the proposition, declaring, "I'm going to put the trains back." The Los Angeles County Transportation Commission's first light rail line was on the old Long Beach Red Car route from Los Angeles to Long Beach, which passed through Hahn's district (This would become the Metro Blue Line.)

In 1985, local residents formed a coalition of homeowner groups opposing the project.

On September 11, 1985, Congressman Waxman added an amendment to that year's Federal Transportation Budget removing all subway construction funds, citing safety concerns after an unrelated methane explosion in the Fairfax District.

By 1986, due in part to last minute lobbying by RTD president Nick Patsaouras, compromise was reached between Waxman and Representative Julian Dixon. The deal allowed funding to go through as long as it did not pass through the Wilshire corridor. With a Wilshire corridor alignment prohibited, the Metro Red Line was reprioritized and routed north up Vermont, the next highest projected ridership corridor, to Hollywood. Because of the change in alignment, there is now a 1-mile (1.6 km) stub on Wilshire between Vermont and Western.

On October 27, 2005 an independent group of experts stated that there was no significant problem with methane explosion. Congressman Waxman then proposed legislation to lift the federal ban on subway construction in the Wilshire Corridor, which passed. By 2007, this lifting of the ban, along with several other factors such as traffic congestion, lessening racial prejudice, increasingly progressive and environmental attitudes, have rekindled interest in what has come to be known as the Metro Purple Line.

However, a separate measure passed locally in Los Angeles has prohibited use of Metro's local sales tax revenue on "new subway construction". This has deterred Metro from building underground, although the Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension light rail has a 1.8-mile segment where it runs underground.

In the following years, several light-rail and subway lines were opened:

• In 1990, RTD opened the Metro Blue Line, a 22 m (35 km) line that is the region's first modern light rail line.
• In 1993, the first segment (known as MOS-1 for Minimal Operable Segment 1) of the Metro Red Line opened running from Union Station to MacArthur Park. 3 years later, the Red Line was extended to Wilshire/Western in Koreatown. Until late 2006 when the Wilshire branch of the Red Line was re-designated as the Purple Line, the Red Line was Los Angeles's only heavy rail subway line and Metro's only mass transit line aligned entirely within Los Angeles's city limits.

RTD pioneered experimenting with alternate fuel buses in what the Transit Coalition derisively called "the fuel of the month club." At the start of Metro's existence, there were buses running on ethanol, methanol, regular diesel, low-sulfur (clean) diesel, and CNG. Battery-operated buses and trolleybuses were proposed but never operated in regular service.