Cracks Found in Subway Tunnel Near Sinkhole

Transit officials were forced to shut down Hollywood Boulevard once again Tuesday after discovering a cluster of serious cracks in a tunnel near a giant sinkhole that has become the latest symbol of the beleaguered subway project.

In an unusual appeal for calm, transit leaders called an afternoon news conference to counter what they say is a recent spate of alarmist and divisive statements from subway critics who have grown increasingly frustrated over missteps in the $5.8-billion project.

“The bottom line is . . . there is no cause for alarm,” said Franklin E. White, chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. “The tunnels are safe.”

But even as MTA leaders were offering public reassurances, crews were readying steel-rod reinforcements in the tunnel to encircle the temporary concrete liner and brace it. The cracks were found in a stretch of concrete that spanned about 20 to 30 feet, the second such incident that officials could recall in the history of the subway project.

“The tunnel itself is in no immediate threat of collapse, but it is obviously taking a high load” of pressure from excess water and saturated soil related to last week’s sinkhole, said MTA project manager Charles Stark. “The cracks have grown, and that’s cause for concern.”

Inspectors first discovered the cracks in the tunnel concrete Sunday--three days after the street near the subway construction collapsed into a 70-by-70-foot hole. The fissures have worsened since then, forcing the re-closure of the street for tunnel repairs.

Officials said that the area of Hollywood Boulevard near Vermont Avenue--which was just reopened to two lanes of traffic Sunday night after the sinkhole collapse--will probably be closed for several days as crews put in the steel reinforcements.

MTA officials said they believe that a broken water line triggered the sinkhole and, in turn, the cracks in the subway beneath it. But water officials have suggested that it was the MTA’s re-mining of the tunnel in an effort to correct alignment errors that made the ground unstable and set off last week’s chain of events.

Officials are continuing to investigate the cause of the sinkhole.

In the meantime, White said the MTA is reviving a panel of engineers representing various subway interests--including the city of Los Angeles, the federal government and the MTA itself--to ensure the quality of the work in the subway.

The MTA’s problems have not been limited to the sinkhole.

On Sunday, The Times disclosed that a section of tunnel just south of the sinkhole had been built with walls that were as much as 29% thinner than designed. White said that the problem has been fixed and that earlier studies have shown that thin walls do not necessarily pose a threat. But the defect has drawn scrutiny from officials at the Federal Transit Administration, which funds nearly half the subway project, who said earlier this week that they plan to step up their oversight of the subway project.

The news of the tunnel’s cracking caused exasperation among officials at a transit agency that is already under siege.

“The tunnel’s cracking now?” asked MTA board member James Cragin when informed of the new cracks. “Oh geez, what next?”

Political pressure continued to mount as well Tuesday, as the Los Angeles City Council called for a halt to subway construction in Hollywood until solutions can be found to the problems.

Mayor Richard Riordan took a noncommittal stance, saying, “We have to take a hard look at how we proceed ahead. And get a very new, independent look at it.”

But one of Riordan’s appointees on the MTA board--Hollywood area Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who serves as an alternate--issued her most scathing criticism of the subway project. She accused the MTA and its contractors of having “broken faith with me and my constituents” and said simply: “I’m fed up.”

Some state lawmakers warned that recurring problems--coming amid a Los Angeles County budget crisis--could lead to diversion of sales tax revenues from transit projects to county government. Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), chairman of the Transportation Committee, said such an action was unlikely but predicted more political problems for the subway.

“How do you go back and make the case for a Valley subway when folks in Washington have a picture of a sinkhole in their minds?” Katz asked.

The images of the sinkhole--pictured in newspapers and on TV across the country--could not have come at a worse time.

Congress is considering a $125-million appropriation for Los Angeles subway construction--about one-fifth of the rail construction funds to be allocated nationwide next year.

No one thinks that the MTA will be unable to finish the subway project through Hollywood. But Goldberg said the subway construction problems could jeopardize community and political support for proposed extensions of the subway to the Eastside, Westside and farther into the San Fernando Valley, and for other rail projects.

The sinkhole drew criticism from longtime critics of the subway project: County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who serves as chairman of the MTA board, and state Sens. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) and Richard G. Polanco (D-Los Angeles). But it also has galvanized new ones, including Goldberg and Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles).

“I know that whenever you’re doing a project of this size, you’re going to have some problems,” said Villaraigosa, a former MTA board member who was one of many politicians who visited the sinkhole last weekend. “But they have a modus operandi of denying that problems exist.”

U.S. Rep. Julian Dixon (D-Los Angeles) predicted Tuesday that members of the House Appropriations Committee, on which he serves, will raise questions about the subway project when the transit appropriations bill is discussed later this week. But he said he believes that the subway project still enjoys strong support in Congress.

He said that members of Congress recognize that “none of these major public works projects has gone without incident. . . . On the other hand, we have to look at whether we can continue to develop the transit system underground, and we have to cut out what I believe to be human error,” he said. “Obviously, construction is not a perfect science, but it is the accumulation of things that is causing people to lose faith.”

City engineers also expressed concern that problems may arise at street level--possibly sinkage of three to four inches--because of MTA’s rush to fill in the sinkhole.

But Gene McPherson, district engineer for the Los Angeles Public Works Department, said he was not faulting MTA for rushing to fill the hole, because he said that helped to prevent more of the street from collapsing.

But MTA officials said they are confident that the problem is in hand, and board member Larry Zarian, a Glendale city councilman who takes over as board chairman this weekend, said Tuesday’s news conference should be seen as a sign of the public candor he plans to bring to the job.

“We noted the cracking, we saw it expand, we came to you [in the media] and said we want you to know,” he said. Lashing out at critics whom he says seek to divide and dismantle the MTA, Zarian said his aim is to publicize developments on the subway project “so the public can be informed, not alarmed.”