A City Divided : Plans for Boost in Rail Traffic Bring Howls From Compton

The two railroad lines that cut through the heart of Compton are carrying increased train traffic these days, as well as loads of worry for officials struggling to redevelop a community besieged by poverty, drugs and gang violence.

For years the rail lines, which run north-south along Alameda Street and Willowbrook Avenue, were nearly empty. But a recent boom in freight traffic that has an average 12 trains a day running through Compton is causing traffic jams that city officials say will keep shoppers out of their new downtown.

The city redevelopment agency has helped build one shopping center downtown and has another on the drawing boards. Both centers lie between the rail lines, and traffic on the tracks is projected to become heavy enough to strangle the revitalization efforts, city officials fear.

“The amount of money we spent to clear that land is down the drain if we can’t get people down there to shop,” Mayor Walter R. Tucker said.

Plans are under way to divert all freight traffic originating at the prospering ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach onto one line in Los Angeles County--the one that runs along Compton’s Alameda Street. That track would be expected to carry 106 trains a day by the year 2020, according to studies by the port, the railroads and county transportation agencies.

Two blocks to the west, along Willowbrook Avenue in front of City Hall, the second track would begin carrying commuters from Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles next year. By the year 2000, the light-rail passenger line operating on the Willowbrook track would bring a train through Compton every three minutes.

‘Going to Destroy Our City’

“They are going to destroy our city,” City Councilman Maxcy D. Filer said.

Both the light-rail and freight lines will pass through parts of other cities, but no community, Compton officials insisted, will suffer as Compton will suffer. The difference, Assistant City Manager Edmundo Sotelo said, is that in most other cities the rails go through industrial areas. In Compton, they cut through commercial and residential districts.

“There is nothing that would compare with Compton, absolutely nothing,” Filer said. “It’s our soul, the downtown.”

Along with other corridor cities along both lines, Compton has been fighting for bridges and underpasses that would route trains over or under major automobile arteries. The city’s major east-west traffic streets are Rosecrans Avenue and Alondra, Compton and Greenleaf boulevards.

But one grade separation, as the bridges and underpasses are called, can alone cost $5 million to $10 million, which is why railroads and state and county transportation officials try to avoid building them.

Compton is trying to cooperate with both the light-rail and freight projects, city officials said. The city has pledged $10 million toward a grade separation being built where the Alameda line crosses Rosecrans Avenue. A $67-million track diversion project is being built there by the Los Angeles County Transportation Authority.

But Compton needs other grade crossings, its officials argued, or the city’s redevelopment will wither. And city officials consider redevelopment a key to a brighter future for Compton, where at least a quarter of the more than 94,000 residents are on public assistance.

Development’s Role in Future

“That’s one of the reasons we have drugs and crime,” the mayor said. “We don’t have a shopping area downtown. We haven’t had economic development to provide jobs.”

Some city and transportation officials have argued that the light-rail line will boost Compton’s economy because passengers will get off to shop in its downtown commercial area. But with only a grocery store, some specialty shops, a hamburger chain store, a pizza parlor and one sit-down restaurant in the first redevelopment shopping center, Filer scoffed at the notion.

“There’s nothing to offer,” he said. “I love Compton, but there’s nothing to offer.”

Meanwhile, Filer and other city officials fear that shoppers will be deterred by traffic jams caused by rail traffic.

Even if grade separations are built, Filer said, “It will be 10 years from now, and they will have shut the city down by then.”

Obvious Problems

It’s obvious that Compton will suffer traffic problems if 106 freight trains travel the Alameda line at street level every day, said Royce Green, public projects engineer for Southern Pacific Transportation Co. in Los Angeles County.

“In the matter of grade separations, the railroad is definitely in favor of them,” Green said.

Money is the issue. Green said the railroad typically pays just 10% of the cost of a grade separation. The bulk of the cost must be covered by taxpayers at various levels of government.

Several local government representatives make up the Alameda Corridor Task Force, a committee that is studying rail consolidation and the impact the Alameda line would have on cities. Green said he is cautiously optimistic that Compton will get its grade separations. One proposal is to lower the entire track below street level.

Meanwhile, county transportation officials say they are confident that the light-rail traffic will not have a destructive effect on Compton. The trains, which will be one or two cars long, will move so quickly that they will have little impact on traffic, said Edward McSpdon, director of design and construction for the system, which will be operated by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission.

Compton officials complain that other cities got grade separations at their crossings, but McSpdon said traffic flow and other factors were carefully studied along the line to determine which crossings needed separations the most.

Compton also wants representation on the bodies where decisions about the light-rail and freight lines are being made. For example, there are plans to form a joint-powers authority that would make all decisions concerning the Alameda freight corridor. The plans call for Long Beach, Los Angeles and the ports to be represented.

Other Corridor Cities

Compton and the other corridor cities--Lynwood, South Gate, Vernon, Huntington Park and Carson--are arguing that they should each have seats, too.

Already Compton is feeling the effects of increased freight traffic. Trains tie up crossings, emergency vehicles find it increasingly difficult to cross from one side of the city to the other, noise permeates residential neighborhoods and parents and teachers worry about the safety of children who cross the tracks to go to school.

There have not been any deaths to children, said school board member Kelvin Filer, the councilman’s son, but he said he knows of many injuries that have occurred because older boys tried to jump aboard slow-moving trains.

The school board, he said, has written several letters to the railroad pleading for safety measures. The railroad is promising to fence the line that runs along Alameda Street, a solution that the elder Filer finds abhorrent.

‘The Berlin Wall’

“It will be the Berlin wall as far as I’m concerned. . . . It will just divide the whole city,” he said.

In an especially grisly incident outside City Hall a couple of years ago, a despondent man laid his head on the tracks and let an oncoming train end his life.

There are other kinds of life-threatening situations caused by train traffic. There is just one fire station on Compton’s east side. It takes just one freight train to block all the downtown crossings. When more fire trucks or paramedics are needed on the east side and a train is blocking the crossings, they race almost three miles north to a service road along the Artesia Freeway before crossing.

And it isn’t unusual to see police cars racing alongside a moving train, trying to get to an open crossing first.

“There have been numerous occasions where police and fire units have been delayed five to seven minutes, depending on the length of the train,” Battalion Fire Chief James Murphy said.

Butane Train Derailed

Two years ago, a train carrying butane derailed in front of City Hall, shutting down the government and forcing evacuation of the library, the post office, the courthouse and the city’s main shopping and commercial area.

Traffic was light to non-existent until recently on the two Southern Pacific Railroad tracks running parallel through Compton. The Big Red Cars, which used to carry commuters along the Willowbrook track to Los Angeles, stopped running in 1961. And little freight moved from the ports along either Willowbrook or Alameda because trucks were used for transportation.

That changed with the christening two years ago of the Intermodal Container Transfer Facility in Wilmington, where cargo containers are moved onto rail cars by the thousands. Today, about 31 trains go in and out of the facility.