Alternate Routes

Many people are distressed by Supervisor Antonovich’s insistence that an elevated monorail line be built along the Ventura Freeway. He and others should abandon the idea because it has unmitigable impacts and is unworkable.

According to the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, an elevated train on the south side of the Ventura Freeway would displace 69 single-family and 429 multifamily homes, 55 commercial-industrial properties, and require destroying two schools and a park. In addition, 700 residential units would remain within 100 feet of the aerial guideway.

An elevated train on the south side of the freeway is simply impractical, and is fatally flawed due to the safety concerns raised by Caltrans and the tremendous number of homes that would be impacted.

Some suggest that an elevated train be built down the center of the Ventura Freeway. Supervisor Antonovich will no doubt jump headlong behind this flawed idea, since Caltrans will not support the south side alignment. An elevated train down the center of the freeway is fraught with traffic problems, high costs and construction difficulties.

There is simply no room for support columns in the median for an elevated train. Caltrans is in the process of tearing out the median strip in order to install an additional lane along the freeway. At many places there will only be 24 inches between the roadway and the concrete barrier. An elevated train would require demolishing and completely rebuilding the median strip now under construction.

This has to be the world’s biggest transportation blunder. Millions of dollars are being spent to remove the median, which would be immediately rebuilt.

Widening the freeway will require sound walls along the entire Ventura Freeway. To compound the median blunder, it would be necessary to destroy and relocate the very same sound walls that are now being built.

Any thoughtful assessment will clearly show that the Ventura Freeway is the worst possible alignment for an elevated train. Construction would be costly, take years to build, and according to the Gruen Report of September, 1987, the structural requirements for a center-platform aerial transit station would mean widening the freeway by at least 17 feet, requiring major business and residential displacement. It would require major structures providing vertical access over the freeway lanes, and a second vertical access mode (including elevators) to the center platform.

At many locations, span box girder structures would be required, with resulting shoring and forms occupying at least two travel lanes for the duration of construction.

Perhaps it’s time to find ways in which congestion can be prevented, rather than curing it once it has begun.

GERALD A. SILVER

Encino