Beverly Hills Students Protest Subway Construction

On Friday, Laura J. Nelson writes, "hundreds of students as young as 8 left their Beverly Hills classrooms and rallied at a public park, protesting Metro's plans to tunnel beneath Beverly Hills High School." L.A. Metro is currently in the process of extending its Purple Line subway from its current terminus in Koreatown through Beverly Hills and into Westwood.

The decision to route through the affluent city has been controversial, with officials from the city and the school district opposing Metro in court for years. "Teenagers who have grown up watching the Beverly Hills Unified School District's fight against Metro said they feared that tunneling beneath the campus could spark a methane explosion because the soil is studded with abandoned oil wells and pockets of methane gas."

But Metro says those risks are overstated. "More than five years of environmental analysis have shown that the subway can be built without risking students’ health, Metro spokesman Dave Sotero said." LA Metro subway lines already run beneath several LA Unified School District campuses.