One Woman’s Fight to Tame ‘The Octopus’

Juanita McDonald first encountered “The Octopus” when she was vice mayor of Carson.

The Octopus is what they used to call the Southern Pacific Railroad when the company ran California in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Political reformers and the decline of the railroads have weakened The Octopus but, as McDonald found, the monster is still pretty strong.

For years, long freight trains have blocked rush-hour traffic at Carson and Alameda streets. While McDonald was vice mayor, she asked the city manager to find out if The Octopus, now known as the Southern Pacific Transportation Co., could reschedule the trains. “They took an arrogant attitude,” McDonald said. “Their response was they couldn’t do anything about it.”

Since then, McDonald, a former Garfield High School English and math teacher, has moved up in politics. She upset a union favorite and Capitol power, Assemblyman Dick Floyd, in the 1992 Democratic primary and was elected to the Assembly in November.

But in government, some things never change. Today she is still fighting The Octopus over freight trains on Alameda Street.

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This time, the fight is much bigger. The traffic jams at Carson and Alameda streets are symptomatic of a problem that is hurting the economy of the entire Southland.

The freight trains that slow McDonald’s constituents are carrying goods to and from the Long Beach and Los Angeles harbors, side-by-side installations that, together, constitute the nation’s largest port. The harbors can unload and load quickly. But the flow of goods to inland destinations is slow.

That’s because trains have to poke along as slowly as 5 m.p.h. on their back-and-forth trips from the harbors to Downtown Los Angeles terminals because the tracks cross street traffic.

The solution, backed by the state, several cities and the ports, is to replace the old Southern Pacific tracks on Alameda with the Alameda Corridor. New tracks would be laid in open trenches, crossed by bridges for existing city streets. Trains could travel 40 m.p.h., greatly increasing the capacity of the Alameda Street route. In addition, it would cut down traffic from the 20,000 trucks a day that now travel to and from the harbors on the Long Beach and Harbor freeways and on city streets.

The issue is bigger than fast freight. The project would provide thousands of construction jobs in the recession-struck region. In addition, the fast-freight corridor is expected to help increase trade with the Pacific Rim, creating even more jobs.

The trouble is, the involved government agencies have accumulated only $535.5 million of the $1.8 billion it will take to buy the land, dig the super-trenches, lay the tracks and build bridges for the many streets and highways now crossed by the present freight line.

One big component of the cost is the $261 million Southern Pacific is demanding for its Alameda street right of way. The State Board of Equalization says it is worth only $60 million.

Southern Pacific’s demand has angered Jerry Epstein, a history-minded member of the California Transportation Commission, which is in charge of the state’s share of the funding. Epstein recalls how the railroad earned The Octopus title in an era when railroads paid nothing for their rights of way.

He also notes that Southern Pacific and other railroads have received $945 million in public funds in the past three years for rights of way now used by the region’s new transit lines, but still available to freight trains. He calls The Octopus’ demand “The Great Train Robbery of the 1990s.”

Mayor Richard Riordan’s new appointees to the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners seem to agree. They pulled out of the deal, bringing everything to a halt.

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This is where Assemblywoman Juanita McDonald--now with considerably more power than when she was vice mayor of Carson--renewed her fight with The Octopus.

After talking to all the officials involved, McDonald introduced a bill giving the state what amounts to the nuclear option in such disputes--the power to acquire the right of way through eminent domain. That means railroad would have to sell at what a court determined to be the fair market value.

The bill passed and Gov. Pete Wilson signed it. More than a month later, Southern Pacific was back at the table. But the railroad refused to negotiate its $261 million asking price. Tuesday, I talked to The Octopus’ attorney, Tom Houston, a former Los Angeles deputy mayor and an unsuccessful candidate for mayor earlier this year.

“Both sides are optimistic,” he said. Then he went down a list of obstacles facing the negotiators. Houston was friendly, but he was as unbending as the old Octopus lawyers were when they were issuing orders to the governor and the Legislature.

Juanita McDonald may have gotten The Octopus’ attention, but she hasn’t tamed it.