Feds Award Nearly $900M for L.A. Metro Expansion
The grant will help construct 6.7 miles of track in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley
By Nick Trombola September 9, 2024 8:07 pm
reprints
Believe it or not, car-loving Los Angeles does in fact have a Metro rail line, and it’s about to get 6.7 miles longer.
The U.S. Department of Transportation has awarded a $893 million grant to L.A. Metro to help build the long-awaited light rail East San Fernando Valley Line, which will stretch northward from Van Nuys to the city of San Fernando. Eleven new stations along the line will connect it to Metro’s G Line Busway, Metrolink‘s Ventura County Line, and Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner, according to Urbanize. The grant was initially announced in 2022.
“Thirty-five percent of households in the East San Fernando Valley depend on Metro for their transportation, and the East San Fernando Valley Line will give them faster and more efficient service than ever before,” Stephanie Wiggins, Metro CEO, said in a statement.
Metro will at least have a guideline for the new project in the former Pacific Electric Railway San Fernando Valley Line, which also ran between Van Nuys and San Fernando. Yet that line was relatively short lived, operating less than 40 years between 1913 and 1952.
The Department of Transportation will deliver the nearly 10-figure grant through a fast-track initiative for certain transit-oriented, long-term, high-value projects. The funds became available through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
“This project has been decades in the making, and it’s more than just transportation; it’s a commitment to uplift our community by connecting families to better jobs, schools, and essential services,” said U.S. Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.), who had pushed for project funding along with Sen. (D-Calif.), in a joint statement.
Construction on the $3.6 billion project is expected to begin in late 2024, with an estimated completion year of 2031. That’s years behind the 2028 estimate that Metro originally hoped for, even with the project reducing its scale from an additional 2.5 miles of track it wanted to build to the Sylmar/San Fernando Metrolink Station, per Urbanize.
The federal grant isn’t the only bundle of taxpayer funds the project has collected in recent years, either. The California State Transportation Agency in early 2023 awarded $600 million toward the build.
Nick Trombola can be reached at NTrombola@commercialobserver.com.
