NBC/Universal Red Line Project

Today is the last day to send feedback on the Environmental Impact Report to jon.foreman@lacity.org about the NBC/Universal Project planned on top of the Metro Universal City Red Line station.

This particular topic hits close to home for me because this project is planned on top of the subway station I use every day to get to work and home. After reviewing the Environmental Impact report I was rather stunned in the lack of consideration for the people that are already using the Red Line in this neighborhood. I know there are those statistics floating around from a few years ago about people not using the Metro Rail Line in their neighborhood despite living close to the stations, but that still doesn't mean anyone is using them. If any of those people are like me, I honestly had no idea I lived near a Red Line station for about a year. It wasn't really advertised and frankly a little weird looking elevator structure that I passed on the street didn't scream "Public Transportation HERE" to me.

The project has no planned pedestrian or bicyclist mitigation that I can find besides a potential Pedestrian Bridge leading from the Red Line to the current Universal Studios property. Even that isn't a definite. Many of the project's significant and unavoidable impacts directly affect those that walk and bicycle to the train station. The project is expected to generate 15,000 additional car trips in the area per a day (they only expect 2000 public transportation trips from their employees per a day). The resulting traffic issues will spread all through the area past all path ways that bicyclists and pedestrians must walk. There are about 8 or 9 nearby freeway on and off ramps that will have additional traffic on as a result. Some of these ramps are already extremely unsafe as drivers are both exiting and entering at high speeds and are generally not looking for slow moving bikes and pedestrians. There is also 7 years of construction planned that would at one point include moving hundreds of trucks of dirt out of the site and onto the freeway, every day.

Air quality levels around the construction sites (that are on top of the Red Line) during the 7 years of construction will be affected negatively. Multiple air quality measurements will exceed safety thresholds. This is where people must walk and bike to get to their public transportation without the covered safety of a car. There is no mitigation planned to deal with this.

The planned project will also include excessive noise, which again pedestrians and bicyclst are particularly susceptible to since they do not have the closed in car to protect them. Construction is set to go on for 21 hours a day at some points of the project.

The end project also includes a huge number of animated, moving and illuminated signs, which again come with no mitigation to ensure that pedestrians and bicyclists will be safe while moving through this area. These sorts of signs have a tendency to draw people's attention away from the street, which is a major safety issue.

For a project that is being touted as LEED certified, I am amazed at the lack of consideration for the already existing "greeness" of the surrounding community. This project also has a stated goal of encouraging use of the transit system and as the plans stands, there is a very real possibility of this project discouraging those that are currently using the system to continue. The train stop where I get off for work has been under construction for the past 2 years. As much as I hate driving, I found driving to be less stressful than dealing with some of the construction near the rail stop, so I stopped riding the train for a period of time until the construction was completed. There was no consideration taken for those that had to walk along the sidewalks without closure warnings, past people using jackhammers, sidewalks were closed and left with huge open trenches for weeks on end. Sidewalks were constantly littered with screws, nails, stray pieces of metal and wood and who knows what else. I got my tetanus shot as a precaution. Marked sidewalk closures only lead people to even worse sidewalk conditions. Cars were equally confused by closures, which then puts pedestrians at a higher risk. If we want people to use the public transportation systems we need to not treat those riding them as 3rd class citizens. Walking and biking through construction for 7 years with a result of increased traffic and no safety measure for bicyclists or pedestrians is an alarming development for a "green" company.

I urge you to please write to jon.foreman@lacity.org and email him any questions or comments you have on this project and what they plan to do to preserve the current metro ridership and help keep people out of their cars.