Letter

We’ve heard wrong. There is no choice of light-rail routes. When the facts are known, it is the categorical imperative that they be located on Long Beach Boulevard.

Most of the patronage south of Willow Street will come by bus and on foot. It has always been so. The Long Beach Boulevard corridor, bounded by Pacific and Atlantic avenues, is set up to handle it:

--There are no parking lots for Los Angeles patrons there.

--All bus lines, from the far corners of the city, serve this corridor, as did the predecessor local streetcar lines.

--The street now called Long Beach Boulevard was especially constructed wide enough for boulevard traffic and additionally wide enough to carry two tracks for what we now call “light rail.” This requires no condemnation of property.

--Restoring the mistakenly removed light-rail reserved median will not take away from the current number of traffic lanes, but instead will increase the capacity of the boulevard to move people.

--The landscape architecture of the boulevard serving its proper purpose will be both fitting and grand.

The Long Beach Boulevard alternative as presented in the supplemental report has the light-rail trains operating in mixed traffic south of Seventh Street; in other words, in mixed traffic downtown. This is clearly and totally and forever uncategorically unacceptable. We expect that the supplemental study would be for normal light-rail operation in reserved median all the way, and that is the categorical imperative.

ROBERT J. SWAN Long Beach