Existing Rail Alignment Ideas Miss the Mark : A subway along Ventura Boulevard, rather than one under Burbank and Chandler boulevards or a Ventura Freeway elevated line, makes the most economic sense.

An absurd battle is under way between proponents of a cross-Valley monorail along the Ventura Freeway from Universal City to Warner Center and, on the other side, those favoring a subway from North Hollywood along Chandler and Burbank boulevards.

It is absurd because both of these proposals have serious deficiencies, the sort that call for a halt or delay of construction on the Cahuenga Pass/Lankershim segment of the subway.

When light rail along Chandler became a highly charged issue in the late 1980s, when religious and homeowner concerns forced then-state Sen. Alan Robbins’ mandate of an underground solution, the brakes should have been engaged and the Metro Red Line segment from Universal City on to North Hollywood deleted.

The best plan at that point would have been to split the subway into two directions just beyond Universal City. One route could have swung east, to the media district in Burbank and then north to a new terminal at the Burbank Airport. Air passengers would have had the convenience of accessing the airport from the east by light rail or from the south and west by subway.

Another route could have gone west under Ventura Boulevard.

It is obviously too late for a split. But the east-west route is still undecided (consultants are to report in mid-1994), and there is time to replace those routes under study with one having the best features of both: a subway along Ventura Boulevard.

If there is to be any form of east-west heavy mass transit in the Valley, it should serve the most densely developed part. Putting a costly subway beneath miles of single-family homes and strip commercial land along Chandler and Burbank boulevards makes no economic sense.

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The only possible justification would be future development of substantial nodes of office, hotel and residential space at each station. This would surely be prevented by activist homeowners all along the Chandler alignment.

An east-west subway would begin to make sense if it were under Ventura Boulevard. Ventura is the only artery in the Valley with a sufficient density of office, commercial and residential land uses to support the long-term economics of subway operations.

The Disneyland solution of an elevated monorail track above the 101 Freeway median is too dangerous. Would the driver be able to stop in time if a gasoline tanker truck were to explode beneath the guideway? Would a support column be able to withstand being hit by a truckload of steel I-beams? How much damage would such an elevated system suffer in the event of a major earthquake? (And how long would it be out of operation?)

And finally (another too-late suggestion), wouldn’t it have been great for East Valley residents to have been able to board the subway and go south under the hills to Hollywood and, instead of only riding east toward Downtown, also be able to go west to the Sunset Strip, Beverly Center, Beverly Hills, Century City or beyond?

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This would have made far more sense than an east-west subway through the relatively sparsely populated center of the Valley. The cost-benefit ratio of the mid-Valley alignment is simply too high. If the east-west line cannot be routed to serve the Ventura Boulevard corridor, it should not be built at all--better to use our limited resources where the need is greatest.