‘Metro Rail Is Dead . . .’

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) is a friend; he has been a wheel horse in legislative battles in health and in environmental issues. It is a shock, therefore, to find him aligned with those who oppose urban transit.

There is much in his article (Editorial Pages, Feb. 19), “Metro Rail Is Dead--but L.A. Can Have Safe Sensible Rapid Transit,” that is misleading: the equating of “light rail” with the Metro subway and the statement that the Metro “. . . would pass close by” the Dodger Stadium.

Whoever is providing these “facts” is neither a friend of urban transit nor of the congressman.

His concern for the safety of construction crews is not dismissed lightly. A number of alternative routes are being examined; the most interesting would branch at Vermont, one branch continuing along Wilshire, possibly terminating at La Brea, the other proceeding north, to Sunset and Hollywood, rejoining the route to the San Fernando Valley at Cahuenga. This will serve equally important areas, generating as much patronage at about the same cost.

There is no reasonable alternative to the Metro. Assured patronage levels are more than an adequate argument for the project. Alternative systems, i.e. “light rail” would provide little better service than our present bus system, at far greater cost.

Construction in the median of the Hollywood Freeway, which the congressman suggests, would create gigantic traffic jams over several years, the cost soaring to unacceptable heights. Construction hazards, incidentally, would be at least as severe as tunneling in the gaseous zone.

An elevated version would be not only an abuse of the neighborhood, it would be much more vulnerable to earthquake hazards than the Metro tunnel. And costs would probably not be less.

Nor is there an acceptable substitute for urban transit. Our freeways are an expensive failure. Each year they grow more congested. Forty percent of our urban area is given over to the automotive infrastructure; it adds, unseen, to the cost of living and of doing business.

Economist Lester Thurow estimates that the invisible cost of automotive travel is 50 cents per mile. But his estimate was of the cost of the Interstate highway system alone--only 7% of the mileage of our highways. His estimate does not include the cost of parking.

Our automobiles and trucks, together with defense expenditures, absorb one-third of the U.S. gross national product. Is it any wonder that American household savings and investment rates are among the lowest of any industrialized country? Or that we find it impossible to compete with the Japanese and the Germans on our own turf?

STANLEY HART

Altadena

Hart is chairman of the Transportation Committee of the Sierra Club-Angeles Chapter.