The LA Metro board last week approved a heavy rail subway line for the Sepulveda Corridor, targeting the congested traffic corridor along the 405 freeway. The new line will run from Van Nuys to the Expo/Sepulveda Station, cutting travel from up to 80 minutes by car to under 20 minutes.
The subway will cover 13 miles, with tunnels reaching depths of 500 feet beneath the mountains. It promises a direct connection from the Valley to the Westside through Sherman Oaks, Bel-Air, and UCLA.
This plan from Metro’s planning and programming committee last week, would go from Van Nuys to Sherman Oaks, pass under the mountains and Bel-Air, stop at UCLA and ultimately end at the E Line’s Expo/Sepulveda Station.
The Sepulveda Pass and plans to improve traffic have been under discussion for decades, The Times’ Colleen Shalby wrote. Ethan Elkind, a rail expert and director of the climate program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at UC Berkeley, told her that a variety of political and logistical factors have slowed the project’s progress: a focus on downtown transit, opposition to high-capacity transit in the San Fernando Valley and geological challenges in the Sepulveda Pass.
“It’s a lot of land,” Elkind said. “And the more land you have to go through, the more expensive it is, the more logistically challenging it is.”
Lindsey Horvath, L.A. County supervisor and Metro board member, said the project would be a historic development for the Los Angeles region, affecting drivers who commute through the Sepulveda Pass along the 405.
Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, whose 4th District covers parts of Encino and Sherman Oaks, said that construction for the project would create hundreds of thousands of jobs and that revenue from ridership would help local businesses.
“We don’t have to accept sitting in traffic as our only choice,” she said, “and this is our pathway forward.”
The Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association, which previously rejected earlier proposals, supported this new route and design.
The association’s vice president Bob Anderson has expressed concerns over funding of the project, as billions of dollars still need to be sourced.
“We still have not heard from Metro how they’re going to pay for this thing,” Anderson told The Times. “We don’t need to know every financial detail, but we do need to know where they’re going to get the funding stream that feeds it and how much the financing is going to cost us.”
The estimated cost of the project has ballooned since 2016, when Los Angeles County voters approved transit improvements between the Valley and the Westside under Measure M. The subway was originally projected to cost $6 billion, which then turned into $9.4 billion with current estimates as high as $13.8 billion.
Construction of the entire line was originally estimated to be completed in 2033. Metro does not have a timeline for this new proposal, or a date that construction would start.
Metro cited the need for reliance on state, local and federal funding to fill the shortfall and has raised the idea of private-public partnerships — similar to proposals for the state’s controversial high-speed rail project.
Currently there is no specific plan for funding what has been approved.
