West L.A. residents remain divided about whether the Purple Line subway extension into the Westside will be a "nightmare" or a terrific and long-awaited product.

When built, the high capacity alternative would provide easy access to L.A.'s "second downtown" including key job destinations such as the Wilshire Corridor, Century City, Beverly Hills, and the UCLA campus. The first of three community meetings took place across the street from one of the seven new station stops that will service Wilshire Blvd., perhaps by 2022.

"This meeting will be relatively peaceful and easy-going compared to the Westwood and Beverly Hills meetings later in the week," says Jody Litvak, Manager of Regional Communications Programs at Metro.

Many people living in Beverly Hills and Westwood are questioning the subway tunneling under residential properties and Beverly Hills High School. The subway tunnel alignment is dependent on the unresolved station locations for these two areas.

Metro is inching closer than ever to making this long-awaited Westside Subway Extension a reality. The $5.4 billion project is now in the final phase of the environmental review. The final EIR should be completed by this fall.

The Metro has received federal approval to enter Preliminary Engineering and a preliminary rating for federal New Starts funding. The project received a medium-high ranking for land use and economic development.

This is “quite good” and “reflects that the Wilshire Corridor has a lot of density already necessary for a project this scale," Litvak said. 

The federal New Starts program helps local areas pay for big transit projects. 

The Metro Board of Directors selected the Locally Preferred Alternative (LPA) with alignment along Wilshire Blvd. The Purple Line already runs from the 7th Street Metro Center in downtown LA to the intersection of Wilshire/Western at the beginning of the Wilshire Corridor. 

At the meeting Monday night, about a couple dozen residents showed up to express their excitement or anger towards the project. While some enthusiastically supported the idea of extending the Purple Line to the Westside, residents of the Fairfax area and Warner Drive expressed the “nightmare situation we will experience” and their “concern about methane gas”. 

“Wilshire Blvd. will be better with the subway underneath,” Fairfax resident Russel Brown said with agitated confidence after hearing the complaints. “I’m very excited, I’ve lived in L.A. for 30 years waiting for this subway.”

The Westwood community meeting takes place Wednesday, March 23 at Westwood Unified Methodist Church, Fellowship Hall, 10497 Wilshire Blvd.; and the Beverly Hills meeting takes place on Tuesday, March 29, at the Roxbury Park Auditorium, 471 S. Roxbury Drive, Beverly Hills.