A 30-day closure of Crenshaw Boulevard between Jefferson Boulevard and Coliseum Street will begin Friday night to accommodate excavation work on an underground Metro rail station.
The stretch of Crenshaw will close at 9 p.m. and will remain closed until 6 a.m. Nov. 24. The street will be open that week for the Thanksgiving holiday, but it will close again from Dec. 1-14, according to Metro.
The excavation work is being done for the first of three underground stations for the Crenshaw/LAX rail line, which will connect the Metro Expo and Green lines, providing a more direct link to the airport.
Metro officials said the excavation work will also allow the lowering of a tunnel-boring machine, which will dig one of two roughly one-mile tunnels connecting two other underground stations on the line.
Traffic-control officers will be deployed at intersections in the area to direct motorists.
Southbound motorists will be directed west on Jefferson, south on La Brea, then east on Rodeo Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, back to southbound Crenshaw. Northbound motorists will be directed east on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, north on Western Avenue and west on Jefferson back to Crenshaw.
When completed in 2019, the 8.5-mile, $2.058 billion Crenshaw/LAX line will run from the Metro Expo Line, at Exposition and Crenshaw boulevards, to the Green Line station near the airport. LAX officials hope to build a “people mover” at the new 96th Street Station to connect the light rail line to LAX terminals.
— City News Service