Like Kobe Bryant to a woman in a hotel room, Metro today told Beverly Hills that this is gonna happen.

Parts of the city had been dead against running the Westside subway extension underneath Beverly Hills High School, but the objections had little to do with science and much to do with NIMBYism.

Today, Metro's board ...

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Automotive Rhythms

It looked like the fine folks of Beverly Hills had a little momentum in their opposition to a subway running under their public high school.

As we reported, Metro bent its planned Westside subway extension so that it would stop under a planned high rise being built by a contributor to L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, whose allies hold sway on the Metro board. The Beverly Hills Courier newspaper even went so far as to suggest that the developer will see millions from Metro for its stop under his property.

Well, that didn't last long. Let the backlash begin:

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LAist

$100 for sleeping in on street-sweeper day?

Let's see. What's the most unpopular budget solution that L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa could possibly propose during his city's disastrous $238 million shortfall?

Aside from reinstate that evil fleet of red-light cameras, the clear consensus (between, uh, us and everyone we know) would be to up the fine for parking violations.

And so, with his veracity vanishing quicker than ever...

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The Beverly Hills Unified School District Parent-Teacher Associations have released one heck of a doomsday video to protest a possible subway tunnel underneath the Beverly Hills High School campus.

With a solemn voiceover that declares, "Methane gas, toxic chemicals, and teenagers don't mix," it rivals the infamous "Daisy" political ad President Lyndon Baines Johnson used against Republican candidate Barry Goldwater -- the ad strongly suggested that nuclear war was likely if Goldwater was elected president in 1964.

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Update: MTA Board defies labor and votes to award the contract to Kinkisharyo. More below.

The state's most powerful labor leaders are urging the MTA not to award a $890 million rail-car contract to a Japanese company, arguing that the money should instead be pumped into the U.S. economy.

Labor leaders want the contract to go to Siemens, a German-based firm which plans to do more of the work in California. Last week, Speaker John Perez and 33 other Assembly members sent a letter urging the MTA to go with Siemens.

Siemens' bid, at $940 million, was $50 million more than the winning bid. The MTA is expected to vote on the contract today.
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Expo Line stop at La Cienega

After years of delay, the Expo Line is finally opening today. But within the last few days, there was still some question about whether the line would open on time.

MTA engineers have been working over the last several weeks to correct a persistent signaling problem, which can cause trains to stop automatically -- sometimes in intersections.

The problem does not pose a safety risk to passengers. Nevertheless, state Public Utilities Commission officials were sufficiently concerned about it that they considered it a potential "show stopper." Engineers appeared to have ironed out the problem over the last week, and the PUC gave its final blessing on Thursday.
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Wikipedia

The Expo Line, now from downtown to La Cienega.

The inimitable John Walsh, L.A.'s favorite gadfly (unless you work at City Hall), will show up to protest the triumphant Expo Line opening at USC today, where the train will reportedly break through a welcome banner as confetti and cannon fireworks go off in the background.

The Bus Riders Union is similarly displeased with the county's priorities. After much prompting, they even got the feds to tell the L.A. Metropolitan Transit Transportation Authority...

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L.A. Weekly

When it comes to the Westside subway, the city of Beverly Hills may officially be playing hard ball in the very near future.

According to The Beverly Hills Courier, the Beverly Hills City Council may call a public hearing to examine the proposed Westside subway route, which could delay the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's possible plans to finalize that route at a April 26 board meeting.

The newspaper reports that the City Council may invoke an obscure state law that allows such a last-minute move to take place. The bad blood between Metro and Beverly Hills has been playing out for over a year.

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wn.com

Lesson: Don't pass out on the Dash to Echo Park.

Have bus riders in Los Angeles become so jaded and antisocial that no one thinks to help a passed-out woman with vomit running down her chin for almost an hour-and-a-half?

The Eastsider L.A. reported yesterday that Echo Park resident Jamie Goodwin boarded one of the L.A. Department of Transportation's "Dash" buses on Monday afternoon, only to find an "African-American woman with a walker" slumped in her seat.

The most disturbing part of Goodwin's testimony:

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Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wants to build a rail link over the Sepulveda Pass -- part of a proposed expansion of the city's transit network that would form a key part of his legacy.

The mayor is unveiling his plans in his annual State of the City speech. which is posted after the jump. The centerpiece of the speech is an indefinite extension of Measure R, the half-cent sales tax voters approved in 2008.

If voters approve the extension in November, Villaraigosa says the Sepulveda Pass rail line and the Wilshire subway could be complete "in a little over a decade."
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Metro

Will we see a "Subway to the Sea" in this lifetime -- or just pay for it?

Were you one of thousands of Angelenos drooling over the fantasy L.A. subway map we rediscovered last week?

If so, here's your chance to make it a reality. (Sort of.) At his "State of the City" address tonight, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa reportedly plans to ask you, the voter, to make permanent a half-cent transportation tax that you already approved through 2039.

So really, you'd more be bestowing the tax onto all future generations of L.A. taxpayers...

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L.A. Weekly

Update, 3:10 p.m.: Congressman Henry Waxman weighs in, after the break.

The brouhaha over the Westside subway keeps getting more interesting ... by the prodding of the Beverly Hills Unified School District, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has agreed to extend its public comment for the multi-billion-dollar project to May 22.

"Given the importance of the project," writes FTA regional administrator Leslie Rogers to Beverly Hills Unified attorney Margaret Strand in an April 6 letter, "FTA will grant the requested extension of the FEIS public comment period."

That decision begs the question, will the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority do the same?

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Update, 12 noon: Beverly Hills Unified School District responds to Metro, after the break.

Update, 12:55 p.m.: Metro responds to L.A. Weekly, after the break.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority unsurprisingly gave the thumbs down to a report commissioned by the city of Beverly Hills, which found it would be unsafe to construct a subway tunnel underneath the campus of the Beverly Hills High School.

Metro sent its response to Beverly Hills Mayor William Brien yesterday, stating the report does not "alter" its own findings that tunneling underneath the campus would be safe.

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Numan Parada

Over Beverly Hills' dead body.

Numan Parada, an L.A.-area mapmaker, created a "fantasy public transit map" for Los Angeles in 2007 -- and it appears the map has gone viral again this spring.

Were not surprised. No matter your position on Metro's budget priorities, it's hard not to drool at the prospect of instant rail transportation from any corner of L.A. County to another.

Click to enlarge:

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L.A. Weekly

Beverly Hills City Council members have taken the first step to possibly challenge the controversial and proposed Westside subway route that would run underneath the Beverly Hills High School campus.

Beverly Hills Courier reported last night that the City Council voted to hire "a lawyer in preparation for litigation against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (Metro)." If a lawsuit is filed, it could delay any construction of the multi-billion-dollar public transportation project.

"The City Council ... directed the city to engage special legal counsel to fully assert the city's rights and to protect the city's interest through the administrative process as Metro considers the final [environmental impact report] and, if necessary, pursue litigation," Beverly Hills Mayor Willie Brien said in a written statement.

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Juan Ocampo/ Metro

The La Cienega station on the Expo Line

​At long last, we have an opening date for the Expo Line, the $932 million project that will connect the Westside to the city's light-rail network.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced this morning that the line will open to La Cienega Boulevard on Saturday, April 28.

The Expo Line has been fraught with delays and cost overruns. When it opens, it will be two years behind schedule and $292 million over its original budget.

It will also be incomplete. The last station, in Culver City, won't open until sometime this summer.
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L.A. Weekly

Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority staffers have just released final recommendations for L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's $5.6 billion vanity/legacy project -- variously known as the Westside Subway, the Subway to the Sea, or the Subway to Westwood -- and guess what? Beverly Hills Unified School District attorney Kevin Brogan is throwin' up his dukes and spitting out fightin' words.

"Metro is putting process and politics ahead of substance and safety by recklessly pressing ahead with a so-called 'final' EIR," Brogan said in a press statement today. "Metro's continued reliance on flawed studies and information to justify a more expensive station that benefits politically-connected developers at the expense of everyone else -- including future generations of public schoolchildren -- is unacceptable and will not go unchallenged."

Whoa! Among the recommendations is to place a subway station in Century City at Constellation Boulevard -- or the "center of the center," as L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky would term it -- against the wishes of Beverly Hills Unified officials.

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Good luck, China -- first you'll have to deal with Beverly Hills.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is getting desperate.

His ambitious plan to squeeze 30 years of public-transit construction into a mere 10 -- by borrowing $10 billion or so from the federal government -- has been scoffed at and dismissed by Congressmembers for a few years now.

But seeing as the in-limbo "30/10" plan has been one of his top bragging points as mayor, Villaraigosa knows he has to find the money somewhere. "I don't quit..."

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blog.tsa.gov

OK, who out there knew about the Transportation Security Administration's frighteningly hip news blog, and didn't tell us about it?

Or have we just crossed over into some creepy parallel universe, where the TSA is not in fact the ultimate symbol of privacy-infringing evil in post-9/11 America, but instead a friendly neighborhood team of Gawker hipsters joking about all the awesome crap they found while rifling through baggage yesterday?

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Josh "CuriousJosh" Reiss

Hope that seat's been cleaned since last year.

It's that time of year again, when freak winter heat waves start hitting L.A. and pants start dropping on the Red Line.

Say what? This Sunday marks the 11th annual No Pants Metro Ride, that liberating holiday celebrated on public-transit systems around the country. But for the sake of some city-pride banter, we'd like to argue it's best celebrated here in Los Angeles, where Hollywood booties run rampant and goosebumps far between.

Here's the lowdown on where to be and when (you know, so you don't end up naked in San Pedro), via Improv Everywhere:

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