Letters to the Editor

Subway would be source of pride

It’s not enough to sit silently and let Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa and Councilman Tom LaBonge do the leg work to push for
this subway extension. It takes a village. That village is
Westwood, but it needs a vision (“Get wheels rolling on
subway,” Nov. 2).

Imagine if Westwood got organized and started a student advocacy
coalition that brought students together with the community to
create a dialogue and develop a strategy to help assist the mayor
and other elected officials in the effort to build mass transit
from Wilshire to the ocean. This effort wouldn’t stop there;
the 405 freeway would need a similar alternative from the San
Fernando Valley to LAX. This base of support would get these things
moving.

Imagine if the School of the Arts and Architecture were to
create a conceptual transit plan for the area and design the
potential stations for it. This would bring new enthusiasm and
interest in the project to UCLA and Westwood.

Imagine a large active and vocal student body along with local
residents along the Wilshire Corridor personally calling, writing
and visiting the offices of Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and
Congressman Henry Waxman in large groups once a week until those
measures and bans are lifted. Civic activism in action ““
that’s what defined Berkeley in the 1960s; it should define
UCLA at the turn of the century.

Wouldn’t it just upset you, as future Bruin alumni, if 20
years from now UCLA still has no mass transit option other than
slow, crowded Metro Rapid buses while USC gets a fast, comfortable
Rail Line proudly serving their campus?

That’s entirely possible, if you do nothing. If
there’s any Bruin pride like there is when there’s an
athletic showdown, you wouldn’t want USC to be the college
campus with rail service, would you?

Jerard Wright

Los Angeles resident