A Moving Debate : Activists Argue Merits of Mass Transit During Subway Ride

San Fernando Valley residents, who have been debating the merits of mass transit for decades, kept arguing Saturday--even as they rode a new subway set to begin daily service next year.

During a sneak preview ride for community activists on the subway line that will ultimately stretch from downtown Los Angeles to Warner Center, several Valley residents debated whether Southern Californians would ever forsake their cars, no matter how bad the traffic.

“L.A. is not like Tokyo, where the city was built along the rail lines,” Gerald Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino, said as the silver-colored cars rolled smoothly under downtown Los Angeles. “L.A. was built along freeways. . . . My own point of view is that it never should have been built.”

Dennis Zine, a Los Angeles police officer with the Valley traffic division, conceded that Valley residents resist getting out of their cars, but he said traffic congestion is so bad that a new approach is necessary.

“You have to get people retrained,” Zine said. “You need inducements.”

“What are you going to do, social engineering?” Silver shot back.

“We have to do something ,” Zine countered.

The debate rumbled along intermittently as 150 San Fernando Valley residents rode for several hours over portions of the new mass transit system that will open its first downtown stations next year. Besides touring four subway stations on the Red Line that will extend into North Hollywood by 2001, the tour members rode on a separate above-ground Metrolink train that is part of a system linking Ventura County to central Los Angeles.

Some people could hardly believe their eyes.

“I wondered if I would live long enough to ride a subway in L.A.,” said George Battey, 65, a Burbank city councilman who for 38 years worked as an engineer in downtown Los Angeles.

“I’ve made over 9,000 trips from Burbank to downtown L.A. I’ve spent over a year of my life in traffic,” Battey said after pounding out the figures on his pocket calculator. “Think of how much reading I could have gotten done if didn’t have to drive.”

The tour, sponsored by the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, allowed many business people and leaders of civic groups in the Valley and Glendale to preview service on both systems. About 9 a.m. they boarded a Metrolink train at the Glendale Amtrak Station and proceeded to Union Station.

Once there, they only needed to walk 150 feet to board the Red Line subway for the ride to stations at Civic Center, Pershing Square, 7th Street/Metro Center and MacArthur Park/Westlake. The 4.4-mile segment to MacArthur Park is scheduled to open next year. Another 6.7-mile segment, which will travel under Wilshire to Vermont Avenue and then to Hollywood Boulevard near Vine Street, is scheduled to open by 1998. The valley segment opens after the turn of the century.

At each stop tour participants waited eagerly for the sliding doors to open, then climbed up escalators that are not yet operating to orient themselves on the street. Several shook their heads in disbelief at the distance they had traveled.

“With the subway you can get from downtown to MacArthur Park in 5 1/2 minutes. I timed it,” Battey said. “By car, that’s impossible.”

Transportation Commission Executive Director Neil Peterson served as tour guide, pointing out that the Pershing Square station has already been seen by millions of moviegoers who watched Mel Gibson scramble through its darkened tunnels during a chase scene in “Lethal Weapon III.”

Some people predicted a bright future for subways in Los Angeles.

“We’re seeing the evolution of transportation here,” said Dennis Moran, 50, a consultant from Woodland Hills. “Subway trains are one thing I really miss about New York. But this system is really beautiful.”

Others, who were old enough, said the subway brought back memories of a bygone era when travelers in Los Angeles routinely rode the Red Cars, the city’s early rail system that was removed in the ‘50s.

“It was a mistake to get rid of the Red Car,” said Bill Dodson, 67, a retired firefighter from Glendale. “That system pretty well covered the L.A. Basin.” Dodson took the train while growing up in Glendale and later when he was stationed at a Naval base in Long Beach during World War II.

But Dodson’s experience paralleled that of many Southern Californians who enthusiastically adopted the car culture in the postwar years, a trend that sped the decline of mass transit throughout America.

“I got a car when I came out of the service--a 1934 Ford Model B,” Dodson said. “After that, I never took the Red Car too much. . . . I guess I didn’t appreciate it at the time.”