Despite being LA Metro’s top project for federal funding, plus its inclusion in a top three list of rail projects in the agency’s application for state funding, the oddly named West Santa Ana Branch Transit Corridor project got zero dollars in the last funding cycle.
The proposed line, dubbed the West Santa Ana Branch Corridor project, gets its confusing name from an old right-of-way, still available and once used for the now-defunct Pacific Electric Santa Ana route in L.A. County.
The envisioned combination light rail and subway line would connect downtown L.A. with the suburbs of Artesia, Cerritos, Bellflower, Paramount, Downey, South Gate, Cudahy, Bell, Huntington Park, Vernon and unincorporated Florence-Graham, running roughly between the 110 and 5 freeways.
At a cost of $9.1 billion to construct, the line would serve majority-minority, lower-income communities in which 44% of the residents along the route live below the poverty line and 18% of households do not have access to a car, Metro reported.
Supporters noted the project checks the equity box, a top criteria among Democrats in both Sacramento and the White House, and is expected to be heavily used. But those factors have not landed the project any state of federal funding, only funds from LA Metro’s four measures that collect revenues from sales taxes.
Frustration over the lack of state funding reached the boiling point at an LA Metro subcommittee hearing last week, as critics pointed fingers at LA Metro’s staff for doing a poor job at strategizing, lobbying and marketing.
In an application for the state Transit and Intercity Rail City Capital Program that had $3.7 billion for statewide use culled from a state budget surplus of $98 billion — only one of the three projects submitted by Metro was funded: The East San Fernando Valley Light Rail project, awarded $600 million.
The West Santa Ana Branch, with an ask of $500 million, and the completion of the Foothill Gold Line (now “L” Line)…
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