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The planned terminus of the Expo Line is in a great location, near the “Promendae” and the Santa Monica Pier and the civic center area. As an above ground, light-rail project, there would be no natural way to extend it to 4th/Wilshire.

Actually, as someone who lived in Santa Monica, I suggested the reverse. That the Purple/Pink terminal be where the Expo Line ends in a grand Coney Island type station.

Moving the West Hollywood branch up to Phase 4 was the right decision and I hope that Metro commits to building at least the first four phases in my lifetime.

Wad’s right that the Pink Line has a much bigger payoff than doing the last few miles into Santa Monica.

General principle: When your proposed line has an outermost segment that’s weaker than the rest, and you don’t have a compelling region-wide interest in building that segment (e.g. to make an important connection in the network) you might as well put that city on the spot. Tell them that if they want the line to get to them, they’ll have to add enough density so that their segment pencils out. That’s what I call empowering local government. I hope similar conversations are happening around proposed Gold Line extension east of Pasadena.

What it will do is distribute traffic among multiple stations, instead of have people from Santa Monica ride buses to the Westwood terminus and saturate the station’s turnstiles and passageways.

This is primarily why Metro is planning on adding a west-of-405 station to what would have been the end of the line at Westwood. Since it is central to UCLA, the Federal Building, the Westwood business district of high-rise offices on Wilshire and the retail district of Westwood Village, the expected passenger flow may exceed the physical capacity of the station. The operational constraints of the subway are maximum headways of 90 seconds for signals and platform capacity of a train of six 75-foot cars, so this is probably the passenger capacity of a certain level of demand.

As you’ve said, the natural boundary is the sea, but Metro is projecting this as the last MOS. The gold-medal option of $9 billion includes the “Pink Line,” the branch through West Hollywood. That leapfrogged the west-of-405-Santa Monica MOS to be fourth priority — even though it was a late addition.

For the same tunneling distance, the West Hollywood branch is likely to produce more boardings than a west-of-405 extension. Also, the windward side of the 405 won’t be rail-poor; the Expo Line will open by about 2015-2016. West of the 405, the subway and the Expo right-of-way run closer together — close enough that two rail lines may split the difference among passengers and end up reducing productivity on both lines.

This does not eliminate the subway’s merit, though. Wilshire is still a dense, attractive corridor up until Bundy Drive. In Santa Monica, it becomes a low-rise auto-oriented linear corridor, albeit surrounded by medium-to-high density housing. Santa Monica’s central business district is not in downtown but near its eastern edge. Expo will take care of this.

Santa Monica primarily employs low- and medium-wage services and professional careers, so it’ll draw from people using transit already. Santa Monica is also a very important tourist and recreation destination, so it’ll produce robust weekend and holiday ridership.

To some extent New York has this issue with all lines that stop before they hit water or the city line. On one line, the 7, the terminus is the busiest station in the Outer Boroughs as well as the busiest with fewer than 4 tracks, and is about as crowded as you’d expect. The lines whose termini aren’t so crowded are those that terminate a few stops beyond the main traffic generators. For example, the E/J/Z terminates one stop after Jamaica Station, splitting traffic between Jamaica Station for passengers from the LIRR and the terminus for bus riders from Eastern Queens. Together the two stations have the same ridership as the 7’s terminus, but they’re less overcrowded.

Returning to Los Angeles, the natural terminus of the subway to the sea is the sea. Santa Monica won’t generate the same traffic as Westwood, but once the line to Westwood is there, the Santa Monica extension will also cost less. What it will do is distribute traffic among multiple stations, instead of have people from Santa Monica ride buses to the Westwood terminus and saturate the station’s turnstiles and passageways.

A line of this magnitude needs a really strong western anchor — a bit mass of density and activity — and that’s really Westwood+UCLA.

At a recent round of community meetings, Metro representatives said they are anticipating such a high level of activity at Westwood that it would need to go west of I-405 as part of the minimum operable segment. It may either be the VA Hospital campus or even a mile west of that at Barrington Avenue.

How much does it cost to drill under Willshire as opposed to Second Avenue?

I believe Wilshire is $300,000,000 per mile. Second Avenue is $2,000,000,000 per mile.