An ambitious proposal to connect Los Angeles’ Westside and the San Fernando Valley was approved by a Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro) committee Wednesday, sending the plan to the full Metro Board for approval to build a subway along the 405 Freeway.  

The pitch is to build a public transit rail that could help people easily travel through the Sepulveda Pass, which is considered to be one of the most congested areas in the nation, with nearly 289,000 cars traveling through the corridor everyday.

Under the proposal, the subway will be built through the Santa Monica mountains, either via underground or aerial methods, to connect the 9-mile distance, helping transit users to travel from the Orange G Line in the San Fernando Valley to the Purple D Line, which is scheduled to be extended from downtown LA to Westwood by 2027. 

An LA Metro official confirmed to NBC Los Angeles that the proposal will go before the Metro Board next week.

Source: LA Metro

“It does everything transit advocates had been lobbying for. Fast, high ridership, serves UCLA with a station right on campus,” Joe Linton with StreetblogLA.com told NBC Los Angeles.

As far as where and how the subway rails will be built, LA Metro has a couple of alternative ideas: building a monorail above the 405 Freeway or an underground subway.

The monorail, which driverlessly would carry some 90 passengers along a concrete beam above the freeway, would travel 56 miles per hour, according to LA Metro.

The underground alternate would require LA Metro to build stations 80 to 110 feet underneath the ground level along the Sepulveda Pass.

The current proposal would build a station at UCLA as officials feared the campus would be bypassed in a vigorous campaign from multiple advocacy groups, such as STC4All.

““An on campus station isn’t just important. It is essential for our future,” said Michael Russell, executive director with the Westwood Village Improvement Association. “It’s the third largest employer in the county.  40,000 students each day, thousands of employees at the (UCLA) Medical Center. It’s just important to get there as quickly as possible.”

LA Metro estimates the cost to be anywhere between $15 billion to $20 billion as officials pledge to pursue federal and state funding.