More Debate on Valley Light Rail

In answer to Phil Mansfield of Glendale (Letters, Aug. 6), who knows what the San Fernando Valley needs, let me say that you can keep out of it. The Glendale-Burbank-Pasadena Airport causes us enough noise pollution, and now you want us to have more.

I have ridden the subways of Chicago, New York, Tokyo, Washington, San Francisco and a few others, along with the elevated in Chicago and New York and the light rail of San Diego and Sacramento, and I have seen what “light rail” looks like 20 years after it was put up and what it did to the neighborhoods that it was put up next to. Take a look at Seattle’s monorail.

If you attended any of the meetings regarding this topic, you would understand that the people of the San Fernando Valley--an area of less than one square mile smaller than the city of Chicago--do want mass transit, but we want it underground, not giving us any more noise pollution. We have had enough noise pollution from the airports and the freeways.

Subways in earthquake zones would strengthen those areas. Japan has earthquakes daily, and that small island is crisscrossed with subways.

Thirty-two people who don’t live along either of these routes are supposed to make this decision to lower our property values or take our homes or increase our taxes because we live along those routes, and even they can’t come to a decision.

I would invite you to spend a Sunday afternoon in my back yard listening to the airplanes, and then sleep in the master bedroom of my home and tell me we need more noise. This book is not yet written, and you can’t tell what will happen if they put a freeway 90 feet from your front yard and have the airplanes going over your home on a constant basis.

STUART M. SIMEN

North Hollywood