The Trolley: a Step Out of Isolation?

I’d heard they were testing the trolley cars on the new Long Beach-to-Los Angeles commuter rail line. Always interested in anything that runs on rail, I headed to the maintenance yard to catch a ride.

I drove to the yard alone, oblivious to everything except the traffic on the San Diego and Long Beach freeways and the radio news. This is how most of us commute--isolated in our private worlds.

Commuting by rail isn’t like that. Trains stop in a variety of neighborhoods, rich and poor, white, black and brown. Strangers board--and sit next to you. They may even strike up a conversation.

The question is whether the freeways have become so crowded, the streets so impossible, the parking so expensive that we’re actually ready to leave the sanctity of cars and face our fellow creatures. Hoping so, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission will begin service July 16 on the Blue Line, as it calls the Los Angeles-Long Beach route.

The question of whether people will ride the Blue Line was in the mind of my tour guide, Norm Jester, a top project manager. Jester, who started in the transit business many years ago as a Philadelphia commuter train operator, knows what he is up against. We talked about Southern California’s psychic attachment to the automobile as we walked through the yards and rode the red, white and blue trolley cars.

From Long Beach, the Blue Line runs through some of the toughest and poorest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, including Watts, Willowbrook and Florence. The huge sprawl of the basin and our freeways have permitted large numbers of people to avoid these often neglected provinces. Speeding from the coast to downtown Los Angeles on the Harbor and Long Beach freeways, motorists are not conscious of the impoverished black and Latino neighborhoods on either side of them.

But the Blue Line will actually stop in those places. In a sense, it’ll be a desegregation line, bringing together Long Beach, South Bay and inner-city commuters.

The downside, of course, is that the Blue Line also will pass through gang country. From the day the line was proposed, there’s always been a fear that the gangs would take over the trains, a chilling thought to both affluent and poor passengers. Skeptics joked that the commission should pay the Crips or the Bloods to ride shotgun.

Neither gang got the job. In fact, there’s a dispute raging now over just who will be in charge of security on the trains. The Southern California Rapid Transit District, which will operate the line for the transportation commission, wants its own transit police. The transportation commission, believing the RTD police aren’t real cops, wants the Sheriff’s Department to have the job.

Jester said the fate of the Blue Line--and of future rail lines--will be determined by whether the riders feel safe. “During the first several months, people will be deciding whether to use the train,” he said. “They will have to feel safe.” Emergency intercoms are in every car. Closed-circuit television will supplement law enforcement officer patrols of the stations.

It’s more, however, than a question of hardware. I saw that when I traveled the Blue Line route. In downtown Long Beach, commuters from that city and from middle-class and upper-middle-class South Bay and Orange County communities will board. As the trains go east through Long Beach, passengers will board from both the working-class and more affluent sections of that city. The big homes around Country Club Drive, with their wide green lawns, are within a few miles of the tracks.

Among these potential train riders are many who have purposely fled Los Angeles, with its homeless and poor. Maybe the breadwinners still work in downtown L.A., but they go back and forth in their cars, friendly van pools, or even commuter express buses generally filled with their own kind. If they ride the Blue Line, it’ll be different. Will they sit still for occupying the same seat with a stranger?

Nobody knows, not even train-loving Norm Jester. For more than an hour, he had overwhelmed me with the virtues of the Blue Line. He’s a great fan and he was making me a believer. But as we left the maintenance shop and walked toward his vehicle, he stopped.

“Can I ask you a question?” he said. “You’ve lived in L.A. a long time. Will people ride it?”

Sure, I said.

I gave that answer because Norm had been such a good tour guide, and I wanted to please him. But it really wasn’t what I believed. I should have said I hope so, Norm, I hope so for the sake of the traffic and smog. I hope so because it’ll help us end our isolation and develop a sense of community.