L.A. Metro to connect three rail lines with Regional Connector project

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (Metro) Regional Connector project will join the A (Blue), E (Expo) and L (Gold) light-rail lines via a pair of 1.9-mile twin tunnels under downtown Los Angeles.

The three rail lines will continue to offer service during construction of the $1.8-billion Regional Connector project, which is currently 63 percent complete.

Benefits for the riders:

• Eastside L Line (Gold) riders will no longer have to ride all the way to Union Station first and then transfer to the subway to reach the heart of downtown L.A. Instead, trains from the Eastside will enter the new rail tunnel at 1st and Alameda and continue to 7th/Metro Station with stops along the way at 1st and Central (to access Little Tokyo and the Arts District), 2nd and Broadway (the Historic Broadway corridor and Civic Center) and 2nd and Hope (Grand Avenue, i.e. the Music Center, Disney Concert Hall, the Broad, etc).
• Similarly, L Line riders coming from Azusa will no longer have to exit their trains at Union Station and transfer to the subway. Instead, L Line trains will continue from Union Station through downtown to 7th/Metro and then beyond.
• A Line and E Line riders will not have to exit trains at 7th/Metro, the current terminus of both lines. Trains at 7th/Metro will continue north through downtown and then run either to East Los Angeles or Azusa.

The Connector fundamentally changes the way L.A. Metro operates its rail system, according to the authority. With more direct service and by reducing or eliminating transfers, commuting times for riders will be reduced by up to 20 minutes.

The project also creates new operational possibilities for L.A. Metro’s light-rail system. One example is via the new tunnel, L.A. Metro could run trains from Santa Monica to East L.A., or between Azusa and Long Beach, a distance of more than 40 miles. An operational plan for the project will be considered by L.A. Metro’s Board of Directors later this year.

“We could have easily maintained the status quo with these three rail lines and never tried to connect them because doing so would be too difficult,” said L.A. Metro CEO Phillip A. Washington. “Instead, Metro rose to the challenge. We’ve successfully tackled every obstacle this project has thrown at us — and we’ll keep doing so until the project is complete. The project will confer enormous benefits on riders with faster trips to and through downtown L.A. with far fewer transfers and one seat rides across huge swaths of Los Angeles County.”

The original plans for the Gold Line to Pasadena in the 1990s involved extending the line through downtown L.A. to 7th/Metro to connect with the A Line (Blue). Funding challenges and politics prevented that from happening, according to the authority. The idea was revived after voters in 2008 approved L.A. Metro’s Measure R sales tax which provided local funding that, in turn, attracted enough federal dollars (a $670-million grant and $160-million loan) to build the project.

In the early planning stages, L.A. Metro says the project was envisioned as being a street-level project, but that idea was scuttled after many stakeholders argued trains should be underground to avoid running amid vehicle traffic.

L.A. Metro says tunneling raises the cost of a project and, in the case of the Connector, tunnel depths range from 25 feet to nearly 120 feet below street level. At 2nd and Hill, the new tunnels cross under the Metro B (Red) and D (Purple) Line tunnels with just seven feet of clearance.

As for construction, one mile of the tunnels was excavated using a 400-foot tunnel boring machine, while digging from the street (cut-and-cover) was used to the build the tunnel under Flower Street between 3rd and 7th streets during weekends to minimize impacts to the Financial District. To connect the new tunnels to the existing 7th/Metro Station, walls were removed using wire concrete saws to avoid impacts to A and E Line operations.

“The complexity of building a transit project in a high-density area is always a great challenge, and building this type of complex transit project in the heart of downtown Los Angeles magnifies that ten-fold,” said L.A. Metro’s Chief Program Management Officer Richard Clarke, whose department is overseeing L.A. Metro’s contractor, Regional Connector Constructors.

Another challenge was building new rail tunnels through the maze of utilities and building foundations in downtown L.A. while ensuring utility service continues for businesses and the growing number of residents in the area. The utilities include electrical, telephone, fiber optic, sewer lines, storm drains and natural gas lines, some of which were more than 100-years old and badly in need of repair. For example, L.A. Metro had to replace deteriorated electrical lines in the Civic Center at a cost of more than $27 million.

To clear the way for the station at 2nd and Broadway, Regional Connector crews in 2017 had to excavate around a decades-old concrete storm drain. L.A. Metro replaced the pipe with stronger materials and then suspended the new pipe from the station’s temporary ceiling. This engineering allowed the storm drain to remain in service during construction.

L.A. Metro says excavating stations amid downtown has also been a big task. The bottom of the new station at 2nd and Hope will be 110 feet below street level, making it the deepest in the L.A. Metro system. L.A. Metro also had to create a 287-foot cavern under 2nd Street to accommodate switches between the tracks.

“Excavating the cavern is one of the construction milestones we’re most proud of,” said L.A. Metro’s Executive Officer for the Regional Connector Gary Baker. “This is a massive undertaking, the likes of which haven’t previously been seen in L.A. County.”

The work in Little Tokyo also presented unique hurdles, according to the authority. To build the tunnel portal in the middle of 1st Street for the Eastside Gold Line, tracks were shifted to the north side of the streets in 2016. That tunnel portal is now almost complete.

Now a second portal must be built for trains to/from Azusa. There isn’t the space required to move the tracks, so bus shuttles will replace rail service between Union Station and Pico Station this fall. That allows L.A. Metro to dig the new tunnel portal, demolish the existing Little Tokyo/Arts District Station and then build a new ramp to the bridge that carries trains over the 101 freeway. The work is expected to begin this fall and take 22 months to finish. When completed, full rail service from East L.A. will resume with trains running directly into downtown L.A.

After the tunnel structures and tracks are done, L.A. Metro will start integrating communication and signal systems of three rail lines built at different times and then testing the systems and trains.

“The Regional Connector provides the missing link between three separate rail lines — a project unique in our region and elsewhere,” said Baker. “There is not another transit project here in the United States that is currently building this type of underground system that will serve so many people and help them save so much time.”