Two rallies, one message: students and Angelinos call for justice for Trayvon Martin

March 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment


Listen to the audio story from Annenberg Radio News:

image“It’s been 32 days since neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman claims he acted in self defense. But USC student Matthew Gray doesn’t buy Zimmerman’s argument.

“Just self defense is just not going to fly with me,” said Gray. “Because he’s at least 100 pounds heavier than Trayvon. Through different people who have seen the incident, he attacked Trayvon verses Travyon attacking him so it all just doesn’t add up.”

According to the Sanford Police Report, Zimmerman claims Martin looked suspicious wearing a hoodie in the rain inside a gated community. Police say Martin was unarmed and was only carrying a packet of skittles and an ice tea. BUT Zimmerman chose follow him and an altercation ensued.

Eddie Jones Jr., the President of the Los Angeles Civil Rights Association, led a protest today in Crenshaw.

“How dare Zimmerman have the audacity take a loaded 9 millimeter weapon,” said Jones. “ That’s a premeditated conspiracy to commit murder on a young person that was completely innocent.”

But according to some eyewitness accounts and a police investigation, Zimmerman may not have killed Martin in cold blood. According to the Orlando Sentinel, the police reports say Martin punched Zimmerman in the face and then slammed Zimmerman’s head against the sidewalk.

However, the Orlando Sentinel released a video from a security camera that shows police escorting a handcuffed Zimmerman into an interrogation room the night after the killing. Zimmerman has no visible head injuries.

Rachel Zolensky is the president of a brand new USC club called the Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere (AWARE). She says Travyon’s case is a manifestation of American institutional racism.

“You know this isn’t the first case where something like this has happened. There’s a history in the United States of Black Life not being valued the same as White life.”

USC students will gathered on campus on Thursday night for a candlelight vigil in Trayvon’s honor.

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: , , ,

Judge in West Adams cleans graffiti every night for safety

March 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment


Listen to the audio story from Annenberg Radio News:

image“Wait a second, there was an urban legend that there was a judge that was painting out graffiti,” Totten said.

Judge Robert Totten’s not a stranger to someone calling him an urban legend. Every night, he walks the streets of West Adams with his three big great danes and cleans off the graffiti in his neighborhood.

Totten isn’t hired to do this. He does it purely to make it look better and safer for his family and neighbors. He summed up his beliefs by quoting former LAPD Police Chief Bill Bratton.

“It’s a broken window. If you allow the broken windows to remain, and the graffiti to remain up, then it attracts more,” Totten said.

He doesn’t need much. Only a couple of wash cloths, paint thinner and spray paint. If the graffiti is on a gray or white surface, he’ll just spray paint over it. Otherwise, he’ll scrub until it’s gone.

“So this will just take me two seconds and he’s gone,” Totten said.

Totten says the graffiti is gang related and he has caught people in the act.

“I remember stepping over and saying come on guys enough’s enough, and they go, white boy you’re next,” Totten said.

These types of vandals doing the graffiti end up in his courtroom. During the day, he is a commissioner for juvenile, ruling on cases like murder, robbery and vandalism.

One tagger I spoke with that wishes to not be identified says that him tagging an area illustrates his loyalty to his gang, their brotherhood and their territory.

There are some nights when Totten will clean an area, and the next day, there’s graffiti again. But, that doesn’t bother him. He just goes back and cleans it off again.

“I get satisfaction knowing they’re not getting anything out of it, except putting themselves at risk,” Totten said.

Totten has tried to bring the issue to police, but says police have to weigh what’s more important at the time: catching taggers or solving robberies and murders?

In 1990, LAPD created PACE, Police Assisted Community Enhancement Program. The program is designed to battle graffiti through different city agencies. When graffiti is seen, LAPD fills out a form and forwards it to the proper city agency to alleviate the problem. LAPD was unavailable for comment.

Totten hopes giving back to his community will slowly remove all the bad tensions in the area.

“Positive energy’s going to win out,” Totten said.

Until authorities can do more, Totten says he doesn’t mind people thinking he’s an urban legend.

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: , , , , ,

New LAUSD program makes breakfast a priority

March 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment


Listen to the audio story from Annenberg Radio News:

imageYou probably used to hear it from your parents all the time.

“It turns out our moms were right,” Mayor Villaraigosa said Thursday morning. “Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day.”

It’s so important, that Villaraigosa has joined the Los Angeles Unified School District and community organization, InnerCity Struggle, to form “Food For Thought.”

The new program is primarily funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and looks to offer LAUSD students breakfast in the classroom.

“Food For Thought” will give students free breakfast at the start of each day, offering healthy options such as fresh fruit, whole wheat muffins, and one-percent milk.

But isn’t it the parents’ responsibility to feed their children in the morning?

LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy says, “not necessarily.”

“It is a community’s responsibility,” Deasy said. “So that if a parent would not have the means, then we wrap our arms around the student and make sure that no one goes hungry.”

Monica Garcia, Board President of the LAUSD, believes “Food For Thought” will increase student attendance, decrease child obesity, and help students reach her ambitious goal.

“We said one hundred percent graduation and we meant it,” Garcia said. “Breakfast in the classroom helps kids get to graduation. Breakfast in the classroom help our employees maximize the service for our young people.”

Deasy shares Garcia’s goal of a perfect graduation rate, and says that poverty shouldn’t hurt a student’s chances of success.

“If great breakfast is good enough in Beverly Hills, it’s good enough in Boyle Heights. The idea that every student deserves [to] and will graduate college workforce ready is not a dream; it’s not unattainable. It’s the right of students.”

David Binkle, Deputy Director of Food Services for the LAUSD, knows that an empty stomach in the morning can lead to poor performance in the classroom.

“If you have a hungry stomach, then you focus on the hunger pains as opposed to focusing on whatever it is you’re trying to focus on,” said Binkle. “And in our case, in the educational day, the kids are trying to focus on learning life lessons; they’re trying to learn mathematics and science.”
Maria Brenes, Executive Director of InnerCity Struggle, is happy to help feed hungry children, but says that in the long run, “Food For Thought” can help more than just students.

“We have to play that role of being that safety net for these families and for these children so that they can succeed, go on to graduate, go on to college, and be able to come back to our communities and be those teachers and be those elected officials, and those doctors. So it’s a community investment.”

Now that is some serious food for thought.

You can follow Nick Edmonds on Twitter @NickEdmondsUSC

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Judge denies bail reduction for ex Miramonte teacher

March 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment


imageMark Berndt, 61, arrested on suspicion of committing lewd acts upon a child, faces 23 criminal counts involving children aged 7 to 10 years old.

A judge today refused to reduce the $23 million bail for Mark Berndt, the former Miramonte Elementary School teacher, accused of abusing nearly two dozen children.

The 61 year-old Berndt pleaded not guilty last month to 23 counts of committing a lewd act on a child.

Berndt’s public defender, Victor Acevedo, argued his client was not a flight risk, but according to a KNX radio report, the judge declined to lower the bail because some of his victims have been experiencing nightmares.

Berndt is due to appear in court on May 1st for a preliminary hearing.

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: ,

OpEd: LAUSD should fund schools in need

March 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment


imageDear LAUSD School Board Members, Superintendent Deasy, Secretary Duncan, and President Obama,

We all want to provide the educational opportunities for children and our communities. Please help me receive clarity on the following:

Instead of sending Title I, II, and III money to school sites, as is intended under these programs, LAUSD senior management has chosen to keep this money at central district offices in order to fund unproven, costly initiatives such as the Teaching and Learning Initiative, commonly known as the Value-Added Teacher Evaluation model.

Due to a lack of transparency (the dust hasn’t yet settled), it’s not even clear yet how much will be spent centrally on these unproven programs, but it appears to be well over $175 million.

Is this legal?

I am in no way questioning the integrity of LAUSD senior district management. Perhaps cutting these programs so we can hire more consultants was a mere oversight.

Isn’t this decision a clear violation of the 2011 Voluntary Resolution Agreement between LAUSD and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights? If not a clear violation, and I think it very well may be, at the very least, does it not violate the spirit of the agreement?

LAUSD’s English learners and African-American students disproportionally suffer when money is spent at LAUSD’s central administrative offices rather than at schools in our most under-served communities. Schools with well-funded PTAs that have deep pockets will be okay, but schools that can not provide these essential supports will continue to go without libraries, nurses, and counselors, among other services.

Is this really what we want for our communities? When children in affluent communities have all the best supports as they grow and learn, and children in our most economically depressed neighborhoods aren’t afforded the same opportunities — we can not even begin to approach using words to describe such an injustice.

I’ve taught in schools in our most under-served communities, and I’ve taught in schools where children have every kind of support service at their disposal, and the difference in opportunities provided is unconscionable.

It is simply disingenuous at best to suggest that we can bridge the achievement gap by simply raising expectations. Yes, expectations should be high, for students, teachers, administrators, and parents, but such an argument diverts attention away from the vast inequality in services afforded students.

A school is not a spreadsheet. A school is not data we can examine on a page so that a six-figure consultant who doesn’t even live or work in the neighborhood can make snap judgments about what the community most needs.

A school is a community where relationships form, and through these bonds, children, teachers, counselors, nurses, librarians, parents and administrators establish trust, and nurture, foster, and create an ever-changing, constantly growing, always tenuous environment where mistakes become opportunities, and the insurmountable becomes possible.

These relationships only form and grow when schools foster an environment where children who otherwise would drop-out have a reason to stay in school.

Children need libraries, nurses, counselors, arts programs, access to adult education opportunities, vocational classes, early childhood education, music, dance, band, and sports programs. For 20 years, leaders across the country have been saying that the first five years of life are vital to child development, yet right now, today, the LAUSD school board is poised to decimate early childhood education.

Instead of fostering and growing the above programs, LAUSD is proposing to cut all of the above programs, either entirely eliminating them or decimating their funding to roughly 10% of their previous levels.

They say they don’t have the money, but they recently found private foundation money to hire a social media director at a cost of $93,000 per year.

The argument that they don’t have money would make a little more sense if the district wasn’t proposing to spend $175 million at central district offices rather than providing this money as intended under Title I, II, and III to students in our most underserved communities.

Please tell me this was simply an administrative error. I’ll repeat the question once more:

Isn’t the decision to spend Title I, II, and III money at LAUSD central district offices rather than at school sites in our most under-served communities a clear violation of the 2011 Voluntary Resolution Agreement between LAUSD and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights?

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , , , ,

South LA councilman urges respect for legal process in Trayvon Martin case

March 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment


By Kunal Bambawale, Annenberg Radio News

Listen to this audio story:

Some of the pastors at McCoy Memorial Baptist Church on 46th Street in South L.A. wore hooded jackets to express their solidarity with 17 year-old Trayvon Martin—who was wearing a hoodie when he was shot.

As the twenty-odd churchgoers held hands in mourning, pastors called for the arrest of George Zimmerman, who says he shot Martin in self-defense.

imageBut Eighth District Councilman Bernard Parks urged respect for the legal process.

“I don’t think we right a wrong by having no investigation. I think the investigation will clarify in everyone’s mind what actually occurred and will then become the basis of what happens in court,” said Parks.

The shooting, on February 26th in Sanford, Florida, has sparked a national debate about so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws.

Here in California, you can only use deadly force to protect yourself in your own home, and only when an intruder is threatening you with severe injuries or death.

But in Florida, where Martin was shot, you can also “stand your ground” in a vehicle or public place. If the investigation concludes that Martin initiated the violence, then Zimmerman was legally allowed to use his gun to defend himself.

But Councilman Parks believes that even calling the law “Stand Your Ground” is confusing.

“When you hear these little slogans like ‘Stand Your Ground,’ it defeats the whole purpose of explaining the law. So I don’t think people are interpreting the law, as what I can see the intent is, because I’ve heard variations that say, you can just be frightened and shoot. I don’t know of any law on the books that says you can indiscriminately shoot people.”

The case has spurred civil rights protests across the country, as well as here in Los Angeles. Monday morning, a group of more than a hundred students from Fremont High School in South L.A. marched to demand justice for Trayvon Martin.

South LA preachers pray for Trayvon
by Lensa Bogale

imageMembers of the Baptist Minister’s Conference gathered together Monday to pray and oppose the injustices of 17-year old Trayvon Martin’s murder, who was shot dead last month while unarmed in Sanford, Florida.

28-year old Zimmerman, the shooter, has recently alleged that Martin approached him from behind, punched him, and then proceeded to bang his head into the sidewalk, causing him to shoot the teen out of self-defense.

Martin’s parents are now in the midst of defending their slain teenage son against these recent accusations and are also criticizing the police for providing confidential information about their son’s suspension from school due to marijuana possession.

Pastor Dr. Wendell Davis Sr., who preached during a church service following the gathering, is one of several that empathize with Martin’s parents.

“It was a grown man preying on a child and a child fighting for his life, that is what we have to keep the focus on,” said Davis. “I don’t care what he was [racially], it was a child being murdered.”

The case has ignited public debate on race, because Martin was African American and Zimmerman is of Caucasian and Hispanic decent. Civil rights leaders have led a number of protests in Sanford as well as across the United States.

Sybrina Dulton, the mother of the 17-year old, spoke before a congressional panel in Washington D.C. on Tuesday calling for justice for her son’s death and to talk about racial profiling and hate crimes issues.

Davis specifically addressed the isuse of racial tensions in South Los Angeles, “We know we have black [African American] on brown [Latino] crime in South L.A. and we know we have internal issues within our communities and we are working on that, that’s what this conference is partially about.”

The Police in Sanford maintain their stance that Zimmerman’s story is consistent with the evidence in the Trayvon Martin shooting and the 28-year old has not yet been arrested.

“Speak against violence to anyone or any person no matter what their race, dress, or sexual preference may be,” says Davis. “And say in solidarity ‘that was wrong.'”

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: , , , ,

Uncertain future for CRA projects in South LA

March 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment


image
Demolition on Marlton Square isn’t complete. There has been no construction on the site for more than 20 years.

More than 20 years after the California Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles (CRA/LA) invested over $17 million dollars to buy portions of Marlton Square, it has yet to see new construction. The failed redevelopment project has become a monumental disaster and for many, an example of the CRA’s inefficiency.

The agency has been mired in controversy due to its slowness in handling funding and approval and construction of projects, prompting even the CRA’s toughest critics to face the prospect that the 20 acre property, which sits just feet away from the Baldwin Hills Shopping Center, will remain in an indefinite state of limbo.

Marlton Square, previously known as the old Santa Barbara Shopping Center, is just one of many South LA projects whose future prospects are uncertain due to the closure of the CRA on February 1st. With the elimination of the redevelopment agency, there’s no knowing how long it will take to determine which projects must continue, when they’ll be given a green light or how soon they can receive the money to move forward.

“It’s going to be very detrimental to communities across the state, particularly in L.A., in areas that are poor,” says District 8 Councilman Bernard Parks about the CRA closure. “The way it was cut off is going to be devastating. There was no planning for contracts or moving forward on projects.”

When Governor Jerry Brown last year called for the dissolution of the CRA, the state was facing a $19 billion deficit. Eliminating the CRA was meant to alleviate the state’s financial woes by bringing property tax revenues, which were diverted to local redevelopment agencies, back to the state.

“Even if the governor closed the budget gap it, won’t do anything to help communities in low income areas,” complains Parks. “Looking down the road, shutting the CRA is a decision people will live to regret.”

image
Demolition on Marlton Square began in August of 2011.

The dissolution of the CRA means the independent agency, once authorized to purchase property, raze and build structures, develop affordable housing and provide municipal infrastructure such as streets and lighting, had to stop everything it was doing.

Successor agencies have taken over the CRA’s responsibilities, which include approving projects that will move forward and selling all of its assets to pay outstanding debt.

Many of the projects already underway have what’s called enforceable obligations and must be completed. These obligations include binding contracts. Additionally, construction was made possible due to the selling of municipal bonds, which have to be repaid. Even though the CRA/LA technically no longer exists, it’ll take a while for it to wind down and comply with all of its legal obligations, including paying back all of its loans.

“According to state legislation, repaying the bondholders is an enforceable obligation, so we will have to do that,” states Carolyn Hull, South Los Angeles Regional Administrator for the CRA/LA.

The CRAs were set up so that taxes generated from projects in a specific area would be reinvested in the area it came from. So Parks worries how oversight boards foreign to the needs of South LA will be able to adequately address the community’s concerns.

“They’re going to auction properties without taking into account the time and money spent on the projects, and the monies received from those auctions will go to different cities in L.A. [county], not the areas where the project originated. It’s a disaster.”

Marlton Square is in Parks’ district, so he’s concerned about its future.

“Marlton Square was a tremendously difficult project to move forward with because of the multiple ownerships,” explains Hull. “There were over 40 owners and 30 tenants that had to be relocated.” She says another problem is “there was an agreement in place with the city and county saying the Crenshaw project area could only generate $500,000 a year in tax increment. Capping the income severely limited the ability to reinvest in the community.”

So even though, according to Hull, the Crenshaw project area generated a much larger tax increment, the CRA couldn’t touch that money. That forced the agency to look for alternative sources of funding to move the Marlton Square project forward, delaying the acquisition process of the property.

About 80 percent of the land Marlon Square sits on is owned by Commercial Mortgage Managers (CMM), which bought it from foreclosure in 2008. The CRA owns the rest. Since so much money has already been invested and plans for construction are underway, the project is considered an enforceable obligation, so it must be continued.

“There are several developers committed to the project,” says Purvi Doshi, Economic Development Deputy for Parks. “Several bids have come in and the CRA and CMM are in the process of reviewing them.”

image
This vacant lot was scheduled to be the Vermont Manchester Shopping Center, but numerous obstacles stalled the CRA project. Now, the fenced lot only collects garbage.

Doshi says as soon as a developer is chosen to purchase the property from CRA, the money from the sale will be used to pay off a $12.5 million HUD loan acquired in 2008.

The CRA estimates once development begins, Marlton Square would generate 700 to 800 construction and 550 permanent jobs.

Marlton Square may have a happy ending, after all. But the Vermont Manchester Shopping Center, another project Parks considered important and invested significant time and resources on, won’t make the cut. The four-acre lot has been vacant 20 years and it looks like it’ll stay that way.

“It has been an eyesore for the community,” says Doshi. In 2008, the CRA tried to buy the land from its owner, but they couldn’t reach an agreement. “We found CRA funds to go into eminent domain proceedings. We were supposed to start the court proceedings in January, but when the CRA ruling came in to dissolve, we had to abandon that.”

Plans for the project included construction of a supermarket, a sit-down restaurant, a drugstore and a bank – all considered to be necessities in the area. The estimated CRA investment for the project was $9.5 million. Hull says the development of the shopping center would have created 150 construction and 200 permanent jobs. Among the community benefits derived from being a CRA project: mandatory local hiring and prevailing wage requirements.

Parks says a mixed-use senior housing and grocery store on 38th and Vermont is also likely to stall. “Those are the kind of things we’ve worked on and were just about ready to percolate, but now, since there’s no binding contract, they’re on the cutting block.”

Despite the controversy surrounding the CRA, Parks is a firm believer that without the redevelopment agency, many improvements in South LA would not have been possible.

“The ability to pull together a project on 94th and Broadway, a senior housing and mixed-use project with a grocery store, these are things that wouldn’t be there.” He also points to the recent completion of the Buckingham Place senior housing project, near Marlton Square, which will soon start accepting applications for tenants to move in.

image
Buckingham Place, with Marlton Square on the right.

But the Buckingham Place project wasn’t a complete success. Originally part of the Marlton Square redevelopment project, it was set out to be a three building complex with 180 units. Construction was halted in 2008 after the original developer filed for bankruptcy. A second developer completed one building with 70 units in March of 2012.

Redevelopment agencies across the state received over $5 billion of tax increment revenues annually. The South LA region only got an operating budget of $20 to 25 million for nine project areas.

“It had the least amount of the regions in L.A. to put into projects,” states Hull.

It’s currently unknown what the overall economic impact of unfinished redevelopment projects will be in communities across the state in terms of jobs and reinvestment in blighted areas. In South LA, Hull estimates hundreds of temporary and permanent jobs will disappear, causing a negative chain reaction of losses among the different sectors of the local economy.

Filed Under: Community, Featured Tagged With: , ,

LAUSD fighting to close Latino achievement gap

March 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment


Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , ,

Solis visits St. John’s to discuss health reform

March 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment


image
St. John’s President & CEO Jim Mangia leads the panel discussion, with Labor Secretary Hilda Solis getting ready to speak. (Photos: Andrew Zappin, St. John’s Well Child and Family Center)

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis today joined residents and health activists to celebrate the second anniversary of President Obama’s health reform at St. John’s Well Child and Family Center’s Louis C. Frayser Health Center in South Los Angeles.

Solis was part of a panel of speakers that included health leaders and patients that discussed the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

“Because of the Affordable Care Act, every single American, regardless of their circumstances will have access to affordable, quality health insurance,” said Solis during the event.

Jim Mangia, President & CEO of St. John’s Well Child and Family Center (SJWCFC), spoke about how the ACA has directly affected inner city and rural communities through significant funding for the expansion of federally qualified health centers.

Under the ACA, SJWCFC has received nearly $10 million to expand and renovate its facilities, adopt electronic health records, and open new community health centers in the poorest communities of South LA. This funding will enable the organization to provide tens of thousands additional patient visits each year.

“Here in our community, we see every day why health insurance reform was so desperately needed,” said Mangia. “We see firsthand the heartbreaking consequences when insurance companies defer treatment or deny coverage. Every day, our staff members interact with patients who couldn’t afford to see a doctor and had to go to the emergency department for something as simple as a sore throat.”

Members of the audience asked questions about how the ACA will help families reclaim their economic security, with one resident noting his family went bankrupt in order to pay his healthcare bills. Another resident told the audience and panelists that before the ACA, her insurance company denied her coverage because of a pre-existing condition.

Many patients thanked Solis for the significant expansion of community health centers under the ACA, citing that uninsured residents would not have received health services were it not for community health centers like SJWCFC and others throughout Los Angeles County.

Filed Under: Featured, Politics Tagged With: , , , ,

New Expo line to finally open to public

March 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment


image
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, MTA board member Richard Katz and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky were on board the Expo line’s preview ride with the media.

The mayor hopped on the Expo line this morning to take a preview ride on the new light-rail train scheduled to open to the public on Saturday, April 28. The public will get a chance to try it out for free during that first weekend.

In the first phase of the line, which cost $932 million, there will be passenger service from downtown’s 7th Street Metro Center station to La Cienega/Jefferson, with an extension into Culver City to be completed by this summer. The line features a total of 12 stations with two shared by the Metro Blue Line in downtown L.A.

The second phase, which will lengthen the line 6.6 miles with seven stations and provide service to Santa Monica, is expected to be a reality by 2015.

“Everything we expand is just going to keep connecting us all over the region,” said mayor Antonio Villaraigosa during the train ride. “I remember when we had the red cars. It’s back, everybody!”

Villaraigosa referred to the PCC Streetcar service inaugurated on March 22, 1937 and which was completely eliminated by 1963. It has taken 50 years for the South LA area to see another “trolley” on its streets.

image
The old PCC “red cars” connected the city with the valley.

“This is a milestone. One that we’ve waited for a long time,” said L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who was on board during the preview ride along with the mayor and Art Leahy, the CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).

Construction on the line began in 2006. The opening date has been postponed multiple times due to technical problems uncovered during the testing phase.

“Safety is the number one priority,” said the MTA’s Leahy. “During the next month, we’re going to continue making sure all systems work and that every supervisor and every operator has been properly trained for when we have customers on board.”

The ride from downtown L.A. to La Cienega is about 30 minutes, with the train running at 55 miles per hour. The trains will run approximately every 12 minutes, stopping at each station for 20 seconds.

image
Carolyn Kelly is one of the train operators of the new Expo Line.

The frequency of the trains will increase depending on the ridership. Leahy points out that when the Blue Line opened, it only had about 10,000 riders a day. Now, it carries about 80,000 people on a daily basis.

Carolyn Kelly, from Compton, is one of the line’s operators. A 22-year MTA veteran, she has been participating on the testing phase.

“We’ve been testing in the morning, afternoon and evening – at all hours for a year to make sure everything is safe,” she explained. “There are many safety mechanisms in the train that prevent us from going over the speed limit in the different areas of the line.”

For example, as the train nears the Farmdale station, it cannot run at a speed higher than 10 miles per hour, because there’s a school – Dorsey High School – just feet away from the station. If the operator were to exceed the 10 mph speed limit, a warning beep will sound off. If it’s ignored, the train automatically shuts down.

MTA will operate the Expo Line seven days a week from 5 am to 12:30AM. The fare for a one-way ticket will be $1.50.

You can check out video of today’s ride here:
Video courtesy MTA

image
image

Filed Under: Community, Featured Tagged With: , , , ,
Next Page»