A Baby Rail Network for L.A.

The last of Los Angeles’ Red Cars stopped running in 1961, so only a few of us remember how easy it was to hop a streetcar in the San Fernando Valley and get to Long Beach in less than an hour, passing downtown Los Angeles on the way. Nowadays our freeways are so crowded that the same trip takes well over an hour--with parking as an added headache when you arrive--so even those of us who don’t remember are lamenting the bygone days of the fabled Red Cars.

But if the Red Cars are gone forever, an efficient rail-transit system using the same routes could still work here. That’s why local transportation officials have been moving forward with construction of the first two legs of a new mass transit system for the city, the Red Line subway from downtown to the Valley and the light-rail Blue Line to Long Beach. If voters support the two state transportation initiatives on the June ballot--Propositions 108 and 111--this region will be even closer to rebuilding a rail-transit system that probably should never have been scrapped.

Last week, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission gave local residents a glimpse of what that system would look like when members approved a plan to build three new light-rail lines that would connect with the Red and Blue Lines. One proposed line runs from Pasadena to downtown. The second runs from the current terminus of the Red Line subway in North Hollywood to Van Nuys. The third would extend another light-rail line (the Green Line) already scheduled to be built along the median of the new Century Freeway. The Green Line would be extended past Los Angeles International Airport all the way to Marina del Rey.

The transportation commission is notorious for bickering on transit matters, so the fact that it voted to fund all three lines if the propositions pass is significant. In the past, residents of the Valley, particularly, feared they would be forced to wait for mass transit while other projects got priority. That won’t happen if Propositions 108 and 111 pass.

This new rail system would not be the old Red Cars, of course. In their heyday the Red Cars rolled all the way to Orange County and San Bernardino. But it’s a start. And the new light-rail lines would help many of us get out of our cars on those days when we just don’t feel like fighting the freeways to LAX or the seashore. That’s why we should support Proposition 108, which would provide $3 billion over the next four years specifically for mass-transit projects, and Proposition 111, to raise the state gasoline tax by 9 cents over the next five years. Both are good investments in a better-balanced transportation system for Los Angeles. Think of it as a vote for the old Red Cars.