L.A. Metro Board Approves Bus Rapid Transit through North Hollywood, Burbank, Glendale, Eagle Rock, and Pasadena

The contentious saga of Metro’s North Hollywood to Pasadena Bus Rapid Transit Line (NoHo-Pasadena BRT) planning process has finally come to an uneasy conclusion. At its meeting this morning, the Metro board certified the project plan (Environmental Impact Report – EIR). The final NoHo-Pasadena BRT design through downtown Eagle Rock’s Colorado Boulevard includes a dedicated bus lane, a protected bike lane, on-street parking, and a car lane – all in each direction. Metro’s Eagle Rock plan is largely based on the community design proposal called Beautiful Boulevard.

Metro’s planned NoHo-Pasadena BRT will be a new ~18-mile-long 22-station bus line spanning four cities: Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, and Los Angeles. In 2016, voters approved Metro’s Measure M sales tax plan which allocates $267 million for the BRT line, which was then scheduled for a 2020 groundbreaking.

In Eagle Rock and Burbank, the project faced some criticism over proposed bus-only lanes. In Eagle Rock, opponents said that Metro planned to manufacture gridlock. Pro-transit Eagle Rock folks gathered broad community support for the Beautiful Boulevard proposal that balances road space across multiple modes. Metro soon incorporated nearly all of the community plan into its project plans, which were ultimately supported by the local L.A. City Councilmember Kevin de León.

Today, the board heard more than an hour of public comment, which favored BRT by a ratio of about three to two.

The BRT item [staff report] had unanimous support of the Metro board of directors, many of whom held the project up as a model for additional BRT lines to follow.

There are still many steps before Angelenos will see the benefits of greatly improved transit service between the North Hollywood’s B/G Line terminus and Pasadena’s L Line stations. Metro will be working with the four corridor cities to finalize designs and permits, then put the project out to bid before construction would get underway.