Bradley’s Hard Line on Green Line

“The mayor’s asleep,” Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky told me.

Standing a few feet behind Tom Bradley at Wednesday’s Los Angeles County Transportation Commission meeting on the commuter train controversy, it was impossible to see if the councilman was right.

But I assumed he was. The mayor often seems to be dozing during long, tedious meetings. Watch him, though. He’s like an alligator, eyes closed, waiting to snap up unsuspecting prey.

What got Bradley snapping this time was the threat to the project he loves best, a driverless commuter train for the Metro Green Line, which will run 23 miles from Norwalk to near Los Angeles International Airport.

Not everyone shares the mayor’s love for this concept. Riding from Norwalk to LAX without a driver seems a little risky. The mayor says it’s as safe as riding an elevator. But I’m with John Walsh, who heads a transit riders’ group. When Walsh testified, he asked pointedly, “Mayor, have you tried the elevators in City Hall lately?”

But the mayor’s a big-project kind of guy, a throwback to the dam-building, rocket-to-the moon politicians of 30 years ago. He was enthralled by the 1984 Olympics. Downtown high-rises give him a thrill. He really believes L.A. is the ultimate Space Age city.

And he believes in a Space Age train for his Space Age city--speeding driverless past aerospace plants on its journey to the airport. Pure poetry.

Others are blind to the poetry. Los Angeles City Councilmen Joel Wachs and Zev Yaroslavsky and Assemblyman Richard Katz oppose the system, arguing it is unreliable and expensive. Organized labor, usually Bradley’s great backer, also is opposed. No drivers means fewer union Metro Rail jobs.

Wachs, Yaroslavsky, Katz and labor also fought another aspect of the Green Line project, construction of the train cars by Sumitomo Corp. of America. They blasted away at Sumitomo and automation so hard that the issues became intertwined.

Bradley had opposed Sumitomo, favoring the American firm, Morrison-Knudsen. But as the attack heated up with simultaneous blasts against Sumitomo and automation, it looked like driverless trains would go down with the Japanese firm.

Knowing that, the mayor was wide awake when the meeting began.

His voice was loud with unaccustomed emotion. “There is no graceful way to make a wrongheaded decision,” he said. If his oratory had been this good in 1982, he’d have been elected governor.

Bradley is just one of 11 Transportation Commission members and holds the job by virtue of his position as mayor. But he seemed to take over the meeting, ignoring the chairman, Long Beach City Councilman Ray Grabinski, and calling witnesses to support him.

His point made oratorically, the mayor slipped into his customary silent mode. Many witnesses droned on, most of them blasting the Sumitomo contract, the hot news in the meeting. It was then that Councilman Yaroslavsky noticed Bradley snoozing.

But late in the afternoon Bradley snapped back into action.

His prey was Supervisor Ed Edelman, who introduced a motion that would cancel a contract vital to survival of the automated train. It was for $57.8 million to Union Switch & Signal Inc. for a complex control and switching system.

Cancellation would have meant an end to research and development work on a control system that is at the the very heart of the concept.

Sensing danger, Bradley’s voice again rose to oratorical heights. Most of the other commissioners went along with him and the contract was retained, 8 to 3.

Now, the entire Green Line issue goes to a special committee, which will come up with a report on Feb. 19. The 8-3 vote makes it a certainty that the automated train concept is still alive.

I suppose you could say this is merely bureaucratic mumbo jumbo. More committees. More reports.

But Bradley, the veteran City Hall bureaucrat, knows better.

By mid-February, with the controversial Sumitomo contract dead, attention of the press and public may wander from the Green Line. It’s conceivable that one day, the driverless train may quietly emerge from the bureaucratic depths of the committee as part of a revised Green Line plan.

It happens in the Pentagon with bombers and tanks. Why not in the Civic Center with the train?

That’s what Yaroslavsky’s afraid of. He expects Union Switch & Signal to join with Bradley in a high-powered lobbying campaign. This is a project, he says, that the mayor will not permit to die.

He could be right. Our mayor is a dreamer, like many of us. And in those moments when meetings get dull and he dozes off, I’ll bet he’s dreaming of riding the Bradley Train to the Bradley Terminal at LAX before taking one of those Bradley Trips abroad.