Westwood subway stop would do wonders for UCLA

Do you ever wonder what it would be like if there was a subway stop in Westwood? In the context of Los Angeles right now, it’s hard to imagine. But just for the fun of pretending, let’s say there’s an underground line with a stop at Westwood Boulevard and Wilshire.

Indulging this fantasy further, pretend there’s a whole system that’s fast, efficient and serving everywhere you’d want to go.

Now charge a piddling $1.25 fare or a delusional $24 monthly fare for students.

In the hallucinatory spirit of Dumbo the elephant and batches of LSD, let’s call our fictitious UCLA line the “Purple Line,” and run it eastward from Santa Monica where it connects to everywhere in Los Angeles you could ever want to go.

It’s a student’s dream for Los Angeles to become “car optional.” Anyone who’s ever spent time in New York, D.C., Tokyo, London or any other large city with an efficient underground transportation network knows this.

I know, it’s almost difficult to imagine such ease of travel here in Los Angeles.

Then I found a pamphlet on the upcoming ballot initiative “Measure R,” a half-cent sales tax projected to generate $40 billion over 30 years to fund transportation initiatives that include bringing a metro rail line through Westwood and connecting us with the rest of Los Angeles.

I had to pinch myself when I looked further into this. Was I high? Have city planners been reading my dream journal?

With so much good stuff going for us in Los Angeles, it seems public underground transportation has been our curse ever since the city council abstained on a Union Station proposal for a citywide network of subways in 1926, declaring cars the wave of the future and instead facilitating automotive movement within the city.

Starting in 1990, the Metro Rail system slowly began construction. It’s probably a shock to many UCLA students that there actually is a subway system in Los Angeles. Go ahead, look it up. The prices mentioned above are real, as is the planned expansion of the purple line.

Construction has been slow, expensive and bogged down by seismic and political challenges. Right now this small network mostly serves places like Pasadena, Long Beach, downtown, North Hollywood and getting only as far west as Koreatown. Looking at a system map, you’d think rail lines are allergic to the Westside.

The “subway to the sea” phase of proposals that potentially extend the purple line through Westwood are still being planned, and details of a Westwood/UCLA stop are not concrete.

Neighborhood or political opposition could affect where lines run and where stations are placed. It is critical that students encourage UCLA to continue their public support for rail expansion, and the ramifications are just as important to the UCLA community socially and symbolically as they are practically.

To urban colleges and universities, public transportation systems have been seen metaphorically as a social vehicle, just as they are literal vehicles to help campus-goers commute efficiently.

To illustrate this point, let’s look at a tale of two schools: Georgetown University and USC.

In the 1960s and 70s, residents of the affluent Georgetown neighborhood vehemently opposed construction of a station or subway line on grounds that doing so would allow the poor, criminals, minorities and D.C. riff-raff into their exclusive community.

It’s been debated whether the blatant race- and class-based elitism was actually a factor in deterring the metro away from Georgetown (it’s been suggested other political and logistical challenges were more to blame).

The GU community, however ““ particularly the student body ““ were disadvantaged by this, as accounts from car-less students with internships in our nation’s capital can be found throughout the archives of the GU newspaper, “The Hoya”.

Neighborhood attitudes have shifted in Georgetown, as proposals have floated the idea of an expansion to be completed around 2030 ““ the same time the L.A. Metro is projected to be complete.

USC is a different story. The West Adams district is not especially posh, but historically, and maybe still in the spirit of our institutional and sporting rivalry, they were the University of Spoiled Children. Keys have been jingled mockingly.

Wisely, USC President Steven Sample and university leadership have supported expansion of the “expo line.” Their only quibble thus far involved preferring the stretch of rail on the south side of their campus to run underground versus on the surface, as planned.

It won’t happen their way, but the line, currently being constructed, will run west to Santa Monica, parallel to the projected purple line that will hopefully stop in Westwood decades later.

Our noble mission of service as a public university should rightly prevent elitist pitfalls as in Georgetown’s case.

But we are in an upscale part of town where opposition is predictable ““ Beverly Hills was slow to warm to the purple line, and Culver City has qualms about the expo line.

We need to recognize the potential to connect students, jobs and people to campus.

If USC can get behind this, so should we, and for the same correct reasons.

Let’s also face it: UCLA does not want us to have cars. It’s not cruel or without cause ““ there’s just no place to put them all.

In addition to gas, parking permits and parking tickets are prohibitively expensive for a reason; a quarter now buys you eight minutes at the meters on campus.

Practically, we can’t afford to reject initiatives like Measure R. Symbolically, opposing a rail line stop near campus goes against who we are.

Out of the many compelling ballot initiatives, propositions or philosophical reasons to vote, Measure R is a no-brainer for the future of UCLA students.

If you support a subway stop near UCLA then e-mail Aikins at [email protected]. Send general comments to [email protected].