No Funds for Metro Rail

The Reagan Administration may be inadvertently helping the City of Los Angeles along the best path for the future by eliminating funds for the Metro Rail subway from its 1985 budget. As a relative newcomer of less than 10 years to the Los Angeles area, who yet loves its beauty and enjoys its interest, I respectfully suggest that your editorial (Dec. 21) protesting the cut, may be wrong.

For millenniums human beings have crowded into limited areas called cities, increasing stress through noise, pollution, violence and delays due to congestion. America, with her skyscrapers, increased this unnatural cramming, which she has glorified in hives like New York and Chicago.

For me, one of the wonders of the Los Angeles area is the space of mile after mile of low houses or apartments with lawns, trees, shrubs, flowers and birds, all of which add to humanity’s well-being. These stretches are broken here and there by main streets that are usually ruined by commercial competition of garish anarchic signs and no sense of design for the aesthetic comfort of hapless customers.

Also, due to the greed of developers who think only of profit and not for the people they have drawn together, there are scattered clusters of high-rise, offices, condos and “downtowns” where human living becomes more difficult and yet is taken for granted by thousands.

There is a healthy opposing tendency for businesses to move into suburban areas, perhaps across artificial county lines, with low attractive buildings nearer their workers’ homes. I understand future communication will permit more and more work being done at home or in local subgroups.

By delaying building a subway for so long and having its financing suddenly taken away, we may be helping to create the true city of the future!

MITCHELL BINGHAM

Pacific Palisades