BHUSD President Questions Metro's Subway Studies

While questioning Metro's report that it could safely dig a tunnel under Beverly Hills only high school, Beverly Hills Unified School District President Brian Goldberg said Monday that he was "very pleased" the City Council has that may delay a final decision on the route of the Westside Subway Extension.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board of Directors is slated to approve the project's Final Environmental Impact Statement/Report at its Thursday meeting. But on Sunday the Beverly Hills City Council unanimously voted to ask the board for a public hearing, which City Attorney Larry Weiner said Metro will be required to schedule in 15-60 days.

Metro officials have yet to respond to the council's action.

"It is our belief that the city's actions will force a delay, but that has yet to be seen," Goldberg said. "Until we get confirmation that the vote has been delayed, we are proceeding as if a vote will take place on Thursday."

The Metro project seeks to tunnel under  to reach a subway station on Constellation Boulevard in Century City. That plan is .

Goldberg said studies commissioned by BHUSD came up with different findings than the report Metro is relying upon as it moves closer to deciding on whether to route the subway under the high school.

BHUSD has spent about $2 million on trenching, boring and seismic studies to determine if are safe. Metro has not done trenching as part of its safety studies.

"The MTA [environmental impact] report's seismic data say that there are three active faults converging underneath Beverly Hills High School," Goldberg said. "We actually dug a big swath of our campus in order to definitively determine whether or not we had active faulting on the campus. We do not have active faulting on the campus."

Metro's studies said that, based on the positioning of faults under the high school, a subway tunnel could be routed safely—even if the school district follows through on a plan to build underground parking there.

"It calls into question almost every piece of data that MTA's relying on for their seismic studies," Goldberg said.

According to Metro's studies, the presence of active faults along Santa Monica Boulevard make that location unsafe for a subway route to Century City, which it had initially planned to do.

Goldberg said that if Metro is wrong about seismic safety at the high school, it may be working with inaccurate information about Santa Monica Boulevard. The school district has done boring as part of seismic studies on its campus near Santa Monica Boulevard and found no active faults in the area, he said.

"We've asked MTA to go ahead and do trenching," he said. "It's important for the city [of Los Angeles] to know if there's faults there, particularly with all those high rises on Santa Monica Boulevard. And Westfield Mall’s got plans to expand and develop some of their sites as well. Don't we all want to know?"

The Beverly Hills City Council's action to request a public hearing came after Metro denied a request by BHUSD to extend the environmental impact report's public comment period. The school district wanted more time to complete safety studies it had commissioned on the Beverly Hills portion of the subway route. 

"When there's [a final environmental impact report], you generally have a public comment period," Goldberg said. "MTA is doing the bare minimum, which is 30 days of public comments, which just isn't enough time for us to get all of our reports regarding the seismic data." 

To gather support for the school district's effort to stop a subway from traveling under the high school, Beverly Hills' public K-8 students were sent home with a petition with the headline "No Subway Under BHHS." Parents were asked to sign the document and return it to their child's homeroom teacher or school office. The move, which was initiated by the district's PTAs, has received some criticism for involving students in the heated issue.

"This is part of civil discourse and is a life lesson that I think we're trying to impart on our students about civic engagement and civic involvement," Goldberg said about the petitions. "It was a completely voluntary thing." 

As the school district continues to rally around it's position that a subway should not go under BHHS, Goldberg said that the action taken by the council to delay the Metro board's vote will be a "huge help" in the district's efforts to get the facts out.

"The district has no position on where the subway stop should be in Century City," he said. "We're only concerned about the route they take in order to get there. And that route right now tunnels underneath an 80-year-old academic building."

Editor's Note: This article has been changed to state that boring, not trenching, was done at El Rodeo School.

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