‘Big Yellow Taxi’ vs. MTA’s Subway

Privately, the staff was cringing. Their boss, state Sen. Tom Hayden, had invited his wife--not the famous ex, but an actress you’ve never heard of--to perform at a town hall meeting at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The public had come to bury Metro Rail, not to hear Barbara Williams sing.

Guitar slung over her shoulder, she stepped to the mike and said she wanted to play something appropriate. “I thought about ‘Eve of Destruction,’ but that would be too depressing.”

Instead she sang Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi,” the one about how we “pave paradise” and “put up a parking lot.” Her voice turned out to be just fine, and she adapted the lyrics to the occasion:

Some getting fat on the MTA payroll.

We got a train goin’ nowhere, and a big sinkhole.

There was laughter and applause. She sang the verse one more time, to more applause.

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Paradise isn’t a word associated much with Los Angeles these days. Sinkhole has become the popular metaphor, ever since that massive 70-foot-deep cavity opened up on East Hollywood Boulevard in the wee hours of June 22. Given its credibility problem, it little matters that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has blamed a broken water main, not its nearby tunnel. Here was a graphic, made-for-TV image to symbolize the collapse of a region on the brink of bankruptcy.

Seldom has Los Angeles faced such a glaring case of what’s-wrong-with-this-picture? With a $1.2-billion county deficit, we can’t even afford to keep criminals in jail. The state and cities are strapped. Law enforcement, public health, education--all are in critical condition. Yet meanwhile, the MTA, with a penny of sales tax to call its own, with vast sums of federal transit dollars, has spent at least $3 billion to build and bungle a subway that many thought was ludicrous from the outset and is now inspiring escalating cries of “boondoggle” and “fraud.” The house is falling apart, the plumbing’s shot--and we’re buying a Porsche.

And so as political will gets sucked into the sinkhole, there are serious questions whether the subway, as officials have promised, will ever reach North Hollywood, and much less stretch west beneath the San Fernando Valley floor, or eastward from Union Station.

Hayden, a Democrat whose district encompasses the Westside and the West Valley, wants to call it off right now. An early critic of the subway, Hayden points to the litany of MTA troubles--the shoddy tunnel construction, the 9-inch subsidence of Hollywood Boulevard--and argues that L.A. is now just throwing good money after bad. He urges a halt to funding and construction to provide time for an investigation of transit troubles and a reordering of priorities--which, in Hayden’s view, would include greater subsidies for downtrodden bus riders.

In part because he’s Tom Hayden, the old anti-war protester, his attack from the left hasn’t received much attention. Conservative County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, until recently the MTA board chairman, made front-page news with a post-sinkhole letter urging House Speaker Newt Gingrich to halt Metro Rail funding. “I think Mike Antonovich is a valuable ally since I’ve noticed the Speaker of the House is a Republican,” Hayden said with a grin.

Lacking such access, Hayden’s style is that of a political muckraker, hammering away with reports, press releases and now a video detailing MTA’s sins, such as its $145-million, 26-story headquarters under construction near Union Station--”a Taj Mahal,” Hayden says, noting the Italian granite hand-selected by MTA on a shopping trip to Europe. At one point, he likens the transit powers-that-be, public and private, to “the military industrial complex.” So much money is at stake in transportation, he notes, the MTA has more registered lobbyists--1,068 by a recent count--than the state Capitol.

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In Hollywood, more than 150 people came to voice their wrath about a project that seems as welcome as a newly active fault line. Problems with the project that was billed as a temporary inconvenience, but a long-term boon, has united hundreds in a giant lawsuit to recover damage to their property and livelihoods. They’ve already been joined by 75 business people along Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood where, after a small patch of subsidence, southbound tunneling has resumed.

But another 1960s term also may be appropriate-- quagmire. If it’s decided that the subway really was a stupid idea after all, then what? How best to cut our losses? Even Hayden concedes a good argument can be made for completing the work to Hollywood, but is it worth it to push on to the Valley? Would that money be better spent on options such as light rail or better, cheaper bus service?

And, most obviously, how can we stop payments on the Porsche and get our house in order?