Public Places : Hollywood Boulevard--Just Like the Champs Elysees : Subway tunneling once caused the premier avenue of Paris to sink. And like L.A., its metro incorporates fine art--but far more visibly.

Parisians and New Yorkers have gotten around on subways for almost 100 years--Londoners for even longer. Subways provided another level of transportation for industrial age cities strangling with traffic congestion--at that time, horse-drawn. And their construction caused problems that sound familiar.

“There was much trouble with subsidence. At one time the main roadway over almost the entire length of the Champs Elysees sank several inches and had to be boarded off,” writes O.S. Nock in “Underground Railways of the World,” about the Paris line that opened in 1900. Shades of the sinkage on Hollywood Boulevard.

But Paris overcame that problem and, like New York and London, saw its subway system become both the backbone of a transportation system and an emblem of the city’s identity. This was especially true in Paris, where Art Nouveau subway portals came to symbolize the city.

Art is also an important element of L.A.’s Red Line subway project, with impressive and highly varying works, from “flying” people sculptures to neon art and colorful murals, enlivening the five stations on the initial 4.4 mile segment. Unfortunately, the art is almost all below ground. At most of the stations, all that shows at street level is the “rabbit hole” subway entrance amid a barren plaza.

KATHLEEN CHEVALIER, a professor of art and architectural history at the American University in Paris, grew up in Ventura County. She talked with Jane Spiller about the Paris Metro and L.A.’s troubled subway project.

Question: How does the Paris Metro affect your daily life?

Answer: It’s an integral part. There are so many lines that will get you most anywhere. For example, today I took the Metro across town to pick up some students for a field trip. Another line took us directly where we wanted to go, to the Opera, and then afterward I took the bus home. I have a monthly pass that costs about $40 and I can use any metro or regional train line or bus line inside Paris.

One of the things I like so much about Paris is that you don’t have to have a car. It’s the “anti-L.A.”

About 10 days ago I went to England. You take the Metro to the Gare du Nord, hop on the Eurostar [the “chunnel” train] and it takes you under the English Channel and brings you up in the center of London, in three hours.

Q: When people think of Paris, they think of Hector Guimard’s metro portals. How did they come to be?

A: Guimard’s design was selected in an 1899 design competition because they wanted a “new” style for the “new” metro. Art Nouveau was an attempt to break with tradition and use modern materials--glass and metal--and prefabrication. The forms are very organic and flowing, and it corresponds to a new philosophy of life. This was the age of Freud. There’s also an erotic component. The designs were very controversial.

Q: What do you think about Los Angeles’ new subway?

A: L.A. is starting awfully late. For a city that’s so sprawled out it will be extremely difficult, but if you don’t start, you’ll never solve the problems of mass transportation. My image of L.A. is sitting at a dead stop on the freeway.

I would like to see activity at the metro stops--things that draw you to it. In Paris, you systematically have a newspaper stand, you usually have outdoor cafes, so you set up an appointment in a cafe near the metro. Out at La Defense, one of the newer Paris Metro stops, they’ve made a sort of outdoor museum in the public space. L.A. could do that.