Grants can cover about half the cost of major rail lines in Los Angeles. The project will improve travel times for commuters and will connect the jobs-rich Westside to neighborhoods in the Valley where housing is more affordable, he said. The Sepulveda line’s travel times and very high ridership estimates would make a strong case for state and federal grant funding, said Juan Matute, deputy director of UCLA’s Institute for Transportation Studies. The project’s tunnels could be more than 13 miles long. Tunneling is difficult and expensive everywhere, but particularly in densely occupied Southern California, where labor and material costs are high. very little was known,” said Peter Carter, Metro’s deputy manager for the line. “That was an estimate that was put together very early on. Since Metro officials planned the Measure M budget in 2015, the cost of the Sepulveda project has risen because of the sheer length of the route - most, if not all of it, underground - and a 2-mile extension to a Metrolink station in Van Nuys, officials said. Metro officials say they will seek federal and state grants to make up the funding gap and are considering a partnership with one or more private-sector firms to whittle down the project’s costs. The project has about $5.7 billion earmarked from Measure M, the sales tax increase that county voters approved in 2016. A 12.8-mile subway tunnel would be the fastest trip, at 16 minutes the monorail would be slowest, at 26 minutes. The four routes that Metro is studying - three subway, one monorail - could whisk riders between the Valley and the Westside in less than half an hour, far faster than driving during rush hour.
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