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Electeds Keeping LA a Second Class City |
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Transportation Politics
By Harold Katz
Steve Hymon, one of the Times' finest writers wrote an article on his Blog about State Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, that highlights in one example why this city is in such bad shape when it comes to traffic and public transportation.
 There is one primary cause. Too many elected officials think parochial
instead of regional or they follow a personal agenda instead of acting
in the best interest of the metropolitan area.
For 38 years I have been a citizen activist in the area of traffic and public transportation. It has always amazed me as to why we have made such little progress dealing with traffic and public transportation, even though projections indicated the growth in population and development that has taken place during this period.
The Westside of Los Angeles has almost 500,000 jobs and most of those employees come from other areas. The Westside has almost as many jobs as Downtown Los Angels, about 60,000 jobs less and closing fast. The Westside is one of the primary factors that make California the 5th or 6th largest economy in the world, even larger than China. Yet the Westside has no rail lines while Downtown Los Angles has all the rail lines feeding it.
The MTA has recognized that problem and at last its long term plan includes two projects, the completion of Phase II of the Expo light rail line and the continuation of planning for the Subway to the Sea along Wilshire Boulevard through Beverly Hills and then turning slightly to Century City and its 40,000+ employees, then heading back up to Wilshire so it can service Westwood/UCLA where well over 75,000 people travel each day, then continuing to serve the Veteran's Hospital facility and points West going to the beach in Santa Monica. The primary beneficiaries of these two lines will be people coming to their jobs and going back home to areas other than the Westside. People on the Westside will be secondary beneficiaries.
Along comes a well organized effort by the people in the San Gabriel Valley to divert the money budgeted for the Westside to be used to extend the Gold Line in their area. I congratulate them on their organizational effort and I think extending their line would be wonderful, but on a priority list, it does not come close to the needs of the Westside's 500,000 employees who are looking for relief from gridlock, a cheaper means of transportation than paying $4.00 or more for a gallon of gas and a way to reduce the time spent commuting..
However State Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero of the San Gabriel Valley says she is opposed to the sales tax bill as it currently stands and she wants the San Gabriel Gold Line extension added and the Westside deleted, for all the usual arguments offered by the opponents of a Subway. Opponents ignore the fact that the London Subway was built in the 1860s, over 140 years ago and is still going strong. The Wilshire Subway is the spinal cord of what can be a great transportation system. It is my understanding that there are more jobs and more residences along the Wilshire corridor then any other area west of the East Coast.
What we have is parochial thinking instead of regional thinking and Senator Romero has the ability and the power to kill the Sales Tax Increase if she doesn't get what she wants. In essence she is going to hold the sales tax increase hostage until she gets her way.
Some might say that I shouldn't write a piece that angers Senator Romero, and I've given a lot of thought to that, but I've always lived by the rule that I stand by my principals and I'm tired of some of our elected officials keeping our great city a second class city.
If we are to become a world class and livable city we need a total transportation system and it must be built around the Subway to the Sea, the spinal cord of the system, with future extensions North to Santa Clarita and Palmdale Airport, South to Newport or even further. We need a connection to the subway line in Hollywood, which will service many of the people in the Valley who come to the Westside and finally we need to extend the rail service to the East.
The question is whose purpose will be served, the general public or an area that is lucky to have a state senator in a position of power? (Harold Katz is a long-time public transportation activist and a contributor to CityWatch.) ◘
CityWatch
Vol 6 Issue 58
Pub: July 18, 2008
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