Race and Rail Infrastructure

Correction & Clarification: First, Damien Goodmon and Bart Reed both pointed out to me that the case has not actually been filed yet. Second, Damien posted a rebuttal to my post in the comments below.

Last week, Fix Expo filed their lawsuit against the Expo Authority alleging poor design that compromises the safety of the line through South LA. It's now up to the courts to decide whether those accusations are true or not. However, I think the larger issue here is the question of how resources in LA have historically been distributed and how they are to be distributed in the future. This is what fuels the politics of resentment we now see Fix Expo tapping into (or exploiting, depending upon your view); that resentment is very real and not entirely unjustified considering South LA’s history of paying the costs of the region’s growth while seeing little of its benefits. Regardless of the validity of Fix Expo’s claims, it behooves Metro and transit advocates to be mindful of this history in the planning and execution of a transit system for the metropolis. At the same time, it's unfortunate to see all the time and effort that has gone into the Expo possibly squandered just because an individual activist chooses to pursue his own agenda rather than work with the larger community to achieve common regional goals.

In its fundamental conception, the Expo is loaded with assumptions favoring Santa Monica over South L.A. (as well as many other areas). It serves largely as a surrogate to the 10 freeway with an emphasis on creating the quickest and most direct link possible between Santa Monica and Downtown. Comparatively less thought has been given to the usefulness of the segments running through South LA and Cheviot Hills. While this lack of thought is attributable to the narrow conception of the project as a whole, it does make more understandable some of the concerns that some Cheviot Hills and South LA residents have about being pressured into having this line run through their neighborhoods.

Westsiders have hardly helped matters with their foot-stamping sense of entitlement towards anyone they see as standing in the way of the greater good. I vividly remember at last November’s transit conference arranged by former Santa Monica mayor Denny Zane when Zev Yaroslavsky, the person most responsible for stopping the Purple Line dead in its tracks because of community objections, bemoaned the possibility that “we are at risk of losing [the Expo] line”. Expo proponents often cite the greater good as reason for objections to the Expo line to be overridden. But rarely do we hear acknowledgment of the disproportionate share of “the greater good” that places like South LA have historically shouldered. Nor do we hear much examination of the degree to which the definition of the greater good dovetails with the Westside's own self-interest.

With all that said, Damien Goodmon’s grandstanding carries more than a faint whiff of cheap political opportunism. He makes his intentions perfectly clear in the subhead at Fix Expo’s website: “It’s not over, until it’s under.” As I’ve said in a previous post, transit structure is not going to be spread out evenly throughout the region, nor should it be if it is to be effective. Racism is not the reason the Expo won’t be a subway in South LA, and transit planners and advocates should rightfully be insulted by Goodmon’s accusations that it is.

But even if the court determines that the current design does compromise the safety of nearby citizens, this begs the question of why Fix Expo hasn’t been advocating on their supporters’ behalf before the final approval of the EIR had been given and construction started? Why are they showing up now with their insta-outrage, NIMBY boilerplate, and race-baiting? If they intend to be taken seriously, self-proclaimed leaders like Goodmon need to step up and show some real leadership on transit planning when it actually matters. They should be proactively working with Expo and Metro and advocating on their communities’ behalf rather than just trying to score political points attacking problems they should have been working to prevent. They should be working now to ensure that the design of the Crenshaw-Prairie line is not only up to safety standards but will also optimally benefit the communities it passes through. They should be priming the land and preparing local residents to reap the benefits of nearby transit infrastructure. They should be addressing residents existing concerns rather than sowing their discontent after the fact. Yes, it is unfair that Santa Monica and the Westside are dominating transit priorities and that South LA has to fight so hard for a seat at the table. But if the leadership is not forcefully making South LA's case when it could actually make a difference, that leadership should not expect much sympathy when it doesn’t see the results it desires.

Like I said before, it’s now up to the courts to settle whether the Expo’s design constitutes environmental racism. However, this lawsuit threatens to be merely one in a series of skirmishes if we as a metropolis fail to take these larger issues head on. Like it or not, the Westside and South LA are ultimately going to have to work in good faith with one another as well as with the rest of the metropolis if LA is to have any hope of getting the transit system it so desperately needs. Every blanket accusation of minority baby-killing and every attribution of deaths on the Blue line to the stupidity of the decedents serves only to further polarize debate and make such good faith cooperation that much more difficult to reach.

This is why Metro must take the lead and conceive an overall transit plan in advance rather than haphazardly building random projects with no relation to one another. The piecemeal strategy currently being pursued is one direct cause of the planning disruptions we now face. With no an overriding plan, LA transit will continue to be drawn and quartered by individual communities who view transit as nothing more than a zero-sum competition for their share of limited resources.

A comprehensive transit plan should stake out from the start the geographical reach of the rail system, then engage all areas within that reach in the plan's development. It should consist of smaller component parts that can be constructed as and in phases, with alternate phase sequences strategically planned to keep construction and momentum going even when complications arise. Completion of each phase should yield a fully functioning system so that existing infrastructure is not dependent upon future expansion to be useful. Advance planning should establish regional transit priorities that allow each community to know their place in line and therefore have an interest in seeing the successful execution of each phase. Advance planning should also set precedents that show all parties what is reasonable to expect in terms of construction, design and safety standards.

There have been numerous flaws in the strategy, design, and implementation of the Expo line, but I don't believe any of them should necessarily doom the project a long as we take the right lessons from our mistakes. In the desperate rush to get something built, we are setting ourselves up for the kind of setbacks we are seeing now with the Expo line. Transit development and the resultant transformation of LA that many of us seek is a long-term strategy that will likely reach fruition long after our own time here. Our vision must look beyond current assumptions and immediate political opportunities, while at the same time we need to acknowledge past inequities and injustices in order to prevent institutionalizing those same patterns in our future transit plans. No one said this would be easy, but worthwhile endeavors rarely are.