Westside’s second chance

THE TRAFFIC GRIDLOCK ON THE WESTSIDE is not going to get better; in fact, with a number of big developments in the pipeline, it’s going to get a good deal worse. There is a solution, if the not-in-my-backyard forces that have torpedoed major public transit projects in the past will wise up.

Westwood residents were justifiably rattled this week after PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is consulting for the federal government on possible uses of the big Veterans Affairs campus, released a report exploring such options as building medical research centers or mixed-use residential projects on the site. That’s a terrifying prospect to those who already have to crawl through some of L.A.’s worst traffic.

Trends are ominous, with or without developments on the VA property. Century City is undergoing heavy redevelopment, a nearly 1-million-square-foot FBI headquarters is planned next to the Federal Building in Westwood, and there’s a good chance the nearby Santa Monica Place mall will be torn down and replaced with something bigger.

Presumably the good citizens of Westwood are rethinking the wisdom of having their congressman prevent subway construction down Wilshire Boulevard in the 1980s, and of a 1998 county ordinance that forbade local sales tax money for subway projects.

There is no corridor in Los Angeles where a subway arm makes more sense than Wilshire Boulevard, all the way from downtown to Westwood and beyond. Yet the Red Line only goes down Wilshire as far as Western Avenue, a victim of shortsighted politicians and NIMBY Westside residents.

Common sense may yet prevail. During his campaign, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa stumped for a Red Line extension down Wilshire, currently an impossibility under a law that bans federal funds for subway tunneling in the area because of the large amount of underground methane. Villaraigosa said he hoped to have a study in hand within four years to persuade Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), the ban’s author, to rescind it.

But it won’t take nearly that long. A panel of outside transit experts, two of them appointed by Waxman, are scheduled to study the matter and issue a report by the end of October. Waxman has signaled that if the panel concludes tunneling is safe, he’ll rescind the ban.

Few transit experts believe there are significant safety barriers to tunneling in methane-rich areas. It’s more than a little possible that Waxman had more than safety in mind when he proposed the ban; his wealthy Westside constituents didn’t want a subway in their neighborhoods, and they let him know it. With the traffic that has snarled their neighborhood streets, by now they ought to see the error of their ways.