Gold Line News

Thanks to Citizen Michael John Keenan for providing this news:

The Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) for the Metro Gold Line is complete. You can review the entire document at the Gold Line website. The Claremont Public Library also has a copy of the FEIR.

The Metro Gold Line Extension Construction Authority Board of Directors will be meeting at 7pm on Wednesday, March 28th to consider certifying the FEIR. The board will be meeting at the Arcadia City Council chambers at 240 W. Huntington Dr.

The board will still have to secure full funding to complete the extension.

The Gold Line website includes a map of the proposed line showing stops that have been determined so far. Claremont seems to be one of the few cities along the extension that has a stop located where people would want to visit. In Monrovia, for instance, the stop is located south of the 210 Freeway and west of Myrtle. That's probably too far to expect people to walk to Monrovia's Old Town area on Myrtle where their most interesting shopping and restaurants, as well as their Friday farmers market, are located.

The LA Times website maintains a blog about traffic and transportation called the Bottleneck Blog. As several of the readers note, one of the problems with light rail systems is that their capacity is too low to have much of an impact on car traffic. With the Gold Line, for instance, it would have made more sense to put in a heavy rail system like the Metro Link. Light rail, according to several of the Bottleneck bloggers, isn't really effective over the distances the Gold Line will have to cover.