MTA Takes a Gamble on Remote Subway Station

The foot traffic is light at Santa Fe Avenue and 3rd Street, an out of the way corner of downtown bounded by a rail yard and the Los Angeles River on one side and empty warehouses on the other.

So why would the Metropolitan Transportation Authority plan to build a $55-million subway station there?

The site, MTA officials say, is as close as the engineers could take the subway to Little Tokyo and still extend the line to the Eastside. And an array of community members badly wanted the station even though it would be at least a 10-minute walk from the area.

Politics is as important as geography and geology when it comes to planning at the MTA, a place called “Alice in Transitland” because of its sometimes perplexing decisions.

This is, after all, the same agency that opened a rail line to El Segundo but not to the airport; plans to route the subway away from busy Wilshire Boulevard to run under sleepy Wilton Place; and calls a planned rail line to Pasadena the Blue Line, even though there is no money set aside to connect it to the existing Los Angeles-to-Long Beach Blue Line.

The planned station at Santa Fe and 3rd is known as the “Little Tokyo / Arts District” station--even though it isn’t in Little Tokyo. It is in an area with a number of artists lofts.

Robert D. Herman, a Pomona College urban sociology professor and author of “Downtown Los Angeles: A Walking Guide,” said that at least the noodle-like subway route is in keeping with “some kind of soup you might buy in Little Tokyo.”

Proponents of the station say it is an example of how the subway is not just a transit project but a potential economic catalyst to the city--or in the case of this station, an arts district aspiring to become the SoHo of the West, and Little Tokyo, described by an activist as “the heart and soul of the largest Japanese American community in the mainland U.S.”

Proponents also say the site--as with the entire subway--should be viewed not with an eye toward what is there today but as part of a vision of what could be there tomorrow.

“Who knows what may be there by the time the subway opens?” said Jeri Okamoto Floyd, an aide to former Assemblyman Louis Caldera, who represented Little Tokyo until recently.

Lisa Sugino, head of the Little Tokyo Community Development Advisory Committee, said the community--including old-timers who remember the Red Car trolleys that once plied downtown streets--is excited about the return of mass transit.

“They have far more faith in it,” she said. “They’re planning for the future.”

Albert Y. Muratsuchi, regional director of the Japanese American Citizens League, said the station is crucial to the long-term vitality of Little Tokyo.

Broad local support for the subway has been vital to obtaining federal funding, which is paying roughly half the $6.1-billion cost of the West’s largest public works project.

Politics is a major reason the subway route does not simply run from downtown to the Westside--along the same densely populated corridor as the world’s busiest freeway, the Santa Monica, and one of the nation’s busiest bus routes, Wilshire. Instead, it will bend to Hollywood, the San Fernando Valley and the Eastside. Thus, it will satisfy a number of different transit--and political--constituencies.

“Look at the map of the whole Red Line, and you’ll see a lot of political tugging and pulling,” said Jonathan Richmond, a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government who has studied the Los Angeles transit system.

Those pushing for the subway, Richmond said, have believed it as necessary for Los Angeles to become a great city--even if, in his view, the subway will serve far fewer riders than the bus system.

Wendell Cox, a former Los Angeles County transportation commissioner, has offered this Freudian analysis of this kind of transit planning: “infrastructure envy.”

The influence of politics on transit planning was noted by an MTA consultant who found that the Eastside route was “extensively modified to satisfy political demands.”

The result, the consultant said, was “an alignment which is longer and more costly to build than it needed to be and which has substantially more turns than desired.”

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The 3.7-mile billion-dollar extension would run from Union Station to the Little Tokyo / Arts District station, then take a pronounced jog to the east to planned stops at 1st Street and Boyle Avenue, Cesar Chavez Avenue and Soto Street, and 1st and Lorena streets. An additional three-mile extension to Whittier and Atlantic boulevards is planned but unfunded.

The federal government has agreed to fund about half of the first segment--to 1st and Lorena--but Congress still must allocate funds every year. The bulk of the remainder would be paid for out of state funds and local sales taxes paid by Los Angeles County residents.

But the project faces possible delays because of a court decision requiring the MTA to reopen bidding on a contract to supervise the tunneling and the federal government’s withholding funds until the agency prepares a plan on how it will pay for all of its promised bus improvements and rail projects.

The Little Tokyo station has been designed, and excavation is set to begin in May, followed one year later by the start of tunneling. The station--featuring a 42-foot-high fan-shaped canopy--is expected to open after 2004.

“We have commissioned an artist to compose a soundtrack that will play soft music inside the station,” said Ted T. Tanaka, the architect who designed it. “We’re trying to create a very serene environment in the middle of a very busy city.”

Earlier this year, representatives of the federal government suggested that the MTA consider dropping the station in light of its money troubles. They backed down after the Little Tokyo and arts district communities loudly protested, saying that the station has been promised for years.

One transit expert, citing the MTA’s plans to run a shuttle bus between Little Tokyo and the station, pondered: Why not forget the station and run a bus between Little Tokyo and the existing Civic Center station?

MTA planning chief James de la Loza said this is a case of “a community that wanted a station, and this is the best they could do.”

As an option, officials suggested extending the light-rail line from Pasadena past Union Station to a more central location in Little Tokyo.

But Little Tokyo groups preferred a subway station nearby that they felt could bring shoppers and tourists in from the Eastside, Koreatown, Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. They also believed that the approved subway station was more definite than a proposed light-rail stop.

As a result, the MTA reaffirmed its commitment to build the station.

The rail yard across from the proposed facility was the site of the Santa Fe train depot from 1893 until Union Station opened in 1939. Station supporters hope that it can become a rail hub again--in keeping with the transit thinking of “if you build it, they will come.”

“Transportation helps to build communities,” said Joel Bloom, owner of a general store and president of the Los Angeles River Artists and Business Assn.

“You’re building the station for the next 50 years,” said Nick Patsaouras, a transit board member. He envisions plum trees and sidewalk art around the station as part of his dream for a pedestrian-friendly downtown.

Los Angeles City Councilman and MTA board member Richard Alatorre, who has fought hard for the Eastside extension--including the Little Tokyo / Arts District station--said, “I’m sure politics has a role to play in everything, but also [Little Tokyo] is a significant area that should be served” by the county’s emerging rail system.

“It’s part of the bridge that needs to take place to bring the city together with its divergent population,” he said.

The neighborhood immediately around the station is dotted with “For Lease” signs. Elsewhere in the neighborhood, colorful banners have been strung announcing the MTA’s coming presence.

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On one side of Santa Fe sits the MTA rail yard, behind a barbed-wire fence.

An old, gutted freight terminal--owned by Catellus Development Corp.--is across the street on one corner, passersby unaware that it is what’s left of a historic shed built by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad in 1906.

A boarded-up warehouse occupies the other corner. A reporter who called a phone number posted on the building reached former City Councilman Art Snyder, who said he previously owned the building.

Al Taira, a real estate manager and developer who works out of a building down the street from the station site, said there is more to the neighborhood than meets the eye.

“You don’t see much, but there are 1,700 artists lofts in this area,” he said.

Snyder said the station is important to the development of the artist loft district, bounded by Alameda Street, the Los Angeles River, the Hollywood Freeway and the Santa Monica Freeway. He said the station also will allow for the expansion of Little Tokyo to the east.

Snyder also says that if politicians have pushed for the station, “that’s your job: to see to it when something good is around, that your community shares in it.”

The station location was approved in 1993 when there were big plans for a hotel, high-rise office buildings, a condominium complex and a shopping center at 1st and Alameda streets.

There also was hope that dividing more buildings into residential and working loft spaces would fill vacant commercial and industrial structures with artists and other creative workers, who in turn would attract galleries, cafes and bookstores.

The commercial developments were held up by the slump in the real estate market--although work is underway on expansion of the Japanese American National Museum near 1st and Alameda. The arts district, which never quite reached critical mass, was badly hurt by the recession and the 1992 riots, which made more people more fearful than ever of going downtown.

Keith Killough, MTA deputy executive officer for countywide planning, noted that when a station for the Washington subway was built in the late 1970s half a mile from the Pentagon, “there was nothing around it.” A decade later, “an equivalent of Century City sprang up around that station.”

But James E. Moore II, USC associate professor of civil engineering and urban planning, said the argument that the station will spur development is speculative, and he added:

Station proponents “aren’t going to be around in 30 years to be held accountable for their failures.”

Tanaka said that critics of the rail construction won’t be around either in 30 years if the subway isn’t built and traffic slows to a snail’s pace.

“Somebody needs to have some vision,” he said.