Fox Expansion Is Recipe for Gridlock

The city’s (and the developer’s) approach to the Fox Studios expansion (Times, Dec. 6) is typical of attitudes of recent years. It would be comical if not for the gross impact on the local community. It’s an old scenario:

City: “This development will add a burden to the streets. However, it’s so bad already that the additional cars won’t make any difference.”

Developer: “We’ll be adding 8,000 or so car trips a day, but we’ve planned mitigation measures so that it will be even better than before!”

Anyone of relatively sound mind--and our council representatives are certainly putting their membership in that group into question--who has driven on the main thoroughfares of the Westside in recent times must be appalled by the constantly increasing congestion.

We are at a point where the “short” drive west to the freeway (on Olympic, Santa Monica or Pico boulevards) from Century City and Fox Studios can now take 15 or 20 minutes, with frequent waits through several light changes at many intersections. And into this situation the city and developers will blithely put over 8,000 more cars per day on only one project! How can the community possibly trust people who behave like this?

Over the years, residents have attempted to balance development with sanity. The Fox project proves that we are in it by ourselves--that the city and developers couldn’t be less interested in the well-being of the whole community. Threatened by a government that is already functioning in a disaster mode and doesn’t care whether things get worse, and developers who are willing to say and promise anything--however absurd--to get their projects done, is it any wonder that community activists are up in arms?

ALLAN RABINOWITZ

Los Angeles