L.A. Metro releases five route alternatives to be studied for Sepulveda Transit Corridor

Five alternatives have been released by Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (L.A. Metro) staff to be studied as part of the Sepulveda Transit Corridor project’s environmental review process.

The five alternatives are:

• A monorail alternative along the 405.
• A monorail alternative that would use an underground segment to connect to UCLA, which is about one to two miles east of the 405 depending on campus location.
• A heavy rail (i.e. with trains similar to Metro’s B/D (Red/Purple) Line alternative that would travel underground with an aerial section along Sepulveda Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley.
• A heavy rail alternative that is underground, including along Sepulveda Boulevard in the Valley.
• A heavy rail alternative that is underground, including along Van Nuys Boulevard in the Valley.

The project will be a high-speed, high-capacity heavy rail line or monorail that will run between the Van Nuys Metrolink Station and the E Line (Expo) on Los Angeles’ Westside. The line will be the long-awaited alternative to the perpetually-congested 405 freeway between the San Fernando Valley and West L.A. area and will also offer access to the G Line (Orange), Ventura Boulevard, the UCLA campus and the Purple (D Line) Extension.

In March, the L.A. Metro Board awarded contracts to a pair of firms to do pre-development work on two different potential transit solutions.

• LA SkyRail Express is developing its proposed monorail concept that would follow the 405 freeway and take 24 minutes to travel between the Van Nuys Metrolink station and the E Line.
• Sepulveda Transit Corridor Partners – Bechtel is developing a proposed heavy rail line that would be 60 percent underground with the rest mostly aerial. That line would take 20 minutes.

The idea behind the selection of these five alternatives is to study the two proposed PDA transit solutions along with other options that emerged from the feasibility study. L.A. Metro says it thinks these five give the board the best options when it’s their turn to eventually select a final alternative, otherwise known as the Locally Preferred Alternative.

Regarding money, the idea behind the pre-development work is to bring private firms into the planning phase much earlier than is usually done. L.A. Metro believes this will greatly increase the likelihood that the project can be built via a public-private partnership (PPP) that allows innovations in design, engineering, construction approach, financing and operations. Without diving into the weeds, just developing the PDAs was a long and deliberative process that L.A. Metro says resulted in a smart approach that could result in a public-private partnership.

Why is that important? Because this is a very big, very complex and very expensive project. L.A. Metro has $5.7 billion in funding from a variety of sources—most prominently the Measure M sales tax approved by L.A. County voters in 2016. But the project is almost certainly going to cost more than $5.7 billion, which is the exact reason that L.A. Metro is exploring a PPP.

L.A. Metro is also working to make the project eligible for federal funding. Because L.A. Metro has local dollars from Measure M and three previous sales taxes, the authority says it has a good track record of using local dollars to receive federal funding. For example, the D Line Extension project received more than $3 billion from the federal government and the Regional Connector received another $670 million. With President Joe Biden having proposed to greatly expand infrastructure spending, the authority says it wants the Sepulveda project — arguably the most desperately needed of the future lines — to have a shot at future dollars.

And the best way to do that is study a variety of route options.