MTA may propose 3-mile extension of city’s subway
By Peijean Tsai
Oct. 21, 2002 9:00 p.m.
On the heavily-populated UCLA campus, where an open parking
space has become almost an illusion, students are in need of better
transportation options to be mobile around Los Angeles.
A recent Los Angeles Times article generated excitement about a
proposal for a 3-mile extension of the city’s only subway
down Wilshire Boulevard to the Los Angeles County Museum of
Art.
However, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is far from
having a proposal on the table, as the prospect of a subway
extension is still in preliminary planning stages, according to MTA
officials.
“There is no project today (to build an extension).
We’re just trying to preserve the option,” said Marc
Littman, an MTA spokesman.
Though Los Angeles won’t be seeing a longer subway line
any time soon, the MTA is also working to improve other
transportation options.
As of Oct. 20, MTA buses will operate for an additional hour.
And although construction hasn’t yet started, plans are in
the works for extensions on other railways, including the
Exposition light rail, which will extend from its current stop at
Culver City, stretching from downtown to Santa Monica.
Meanwhile, the MTA is still exploring the possibility of
extending the line to the Fairfax district, and has just completed
safety and engineering studies surveying the feasibility of
tunneling.
In 1986, Congress rejected a plan to allow a track that would
run under the Fairfax district, citing underground methane gas
resources as potentially dangerous. The year prior, a gas explosion
erupted into a fire at a Ross Dress for Less in the area.
Safety concerns raised by the accident prompted Westside Rep.
Henry Waxman to sponsor a proposition in 1986 to forbid the use of
federal funds for construction in the Fairfax district. A
proposition in 1998 also banned the use of local funds for subway
construction, which includes the use of public sales tax.
Right now, MTA’s main goal is to secure funding by getting
this legislation overturned, according to Littman.
If built, the 3-mile extension would cost over $200 million per
mile. But the extension would only be possible if these limits on
funding could be lifted, Littman said.
“You can connect all those “˜ifs’ and think
there’s a project in line, but it’s really premature to
make that assumption. The (Los Angeles) Times got a little
excited,” he said.
A subway is not only a transportation necessity but also a
symbolic necessity, said Jorja Prover, a social welfare professor
at UCLA.
“We seem to be against public transportation in Los
Angeles. We may be a car culture, but we’ve got to (extend
the subway).
“We have too many cars and the traffic problem is
increasing. At some point we will have to undertake a radical
change toward public transportation,” she said.
Public transportation is an essential ingredient in building a
community, said Jim Rawitsch, the associate vice president of
external affairs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where the
extension would meet.
Though LACMA currently serves 700,000 visitors a year, a subway
extension might make the museum more accessible to the
community.
“L.A. is a difficult city if you don’t have a
car,” he said.
