A Train Not Bound For Glory

If only the Los Angeles subway had as many riders as it does critics . . . If only the Metropolitan Transit Authority could dig tunnels as fast as it digs political holes for itself . . . If only the gaping sinkholes and equipment entombments and other darkly comical snafus had come much earlier in the project, before billions were spent laying such a little bit of line . . .

The regrets run on and on when it comes to L.A.’s infamous Red Line, the little subway system that couldn’t. Oh, if only the planners had focused on less expensive, above-ground rail lines, or even buses . . . If only all that money had been spent instead on hospitals, or police, or schools . . . If only . . .

It began with such promise. The freeway city, choked by smog and congestion, was going to remake its transportation system, and in a larger sense its municipal culture, by building a subway. The centerpiece, the Red Line, would run, initially, 18 miles--from downtown, under the Hollywood Hills and into the San Fernando Valley. It would cost $1.2 billion.

“This is a sensible plan and it’s economically feasible,” the president of the transit district declared as the plans were first made public. “The people of Los Angeles are ready for a rail line like this. And those in the San Fernando Valley--well, they die a bit every day on the freeways. They would like the kind of fast, smooth trip a subway would provide.”

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That was almost 20 years ago. Today, of course, the freeways--and smog--can be as deadly to the spirit as ever. The $1.2-billion cost estimate has been lapped many times; the going rate now is $300 million a mile. Estimated. The burrowing has yielded a thousand lawsuits, many lodged by businesses which couldn’t survive the long disruptions caused by construction. And the subway has made it, just barely, past MacArthur Park.

Almost every day, it seems, Times reporters Richard Simon and Jon D. Markman deliver yet another installment in the subway’s serial obituary: One morning it’s the federal government, a financial partner in the project, demanding proof from Los Angeles that both the vision and the know-how exist to carry on. The next it’s MTA directors themselves openly questioning whether to finish the subway.

The political abandonment is all but complete--no doubt a reflection, in these days of leadership by focus group, of current taxpayer skepticism. Asked who on the MTA board itself still supports completion of the subway, the chairman can produce not a single name, explaining: “It’s just like trying to find someone who voted for Richard Nixon.”

This must be a bittersweet time for those prophets without honor who saw trouble from the start. Being seen as right today does not retrieve any of the money, does not roll back the tunnels. Peter Gordon, a professor of urban planning at USC and an early subway doubter, said that the nonstop reports of mismanagement and even malfeasance mask a more important point. It’s not that a good idea has been botched. Rather, this simply was a bad idea--bad for the 10 other cities that since World War II have pursued, with uneven results at best, “sensible, economically feasible” subway systems; bad especially for Los Angeles.

“Even if they were squeaky clean,” he said of L.A.’s subway builders, “it would still be a bad idea. It’s still a horrible waste.”

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And still, the digging goes on. For all the easy criticism, suggestions about how to corral or even kill the beast remain scarce. One is reminded of a Molly Ivins’ Texas-ism: When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. Said Gordon: “Economically, the best thing they could do is shut the whole thing down tomorrow. But, politics being politics, and contracts being contracts, that won’t happen.”

At the same time, there is the historical lesson of one Theodore D. Judah to consider. He was the pioneer engineer who determined that the Sierra mountains could be crossed and the continent linked by rail. His grand vision, ultimately realized, was easy at first to dismiss as folly. On the streets of Sacramento, passersby would greet him mockingly as “Crazy Judah.” The point: Persevere, and down the line the Los Angeles subway builders might come to be seen, again, as visionaries.

The better bet, though, is on a middling outcome, vague and unsatisfying to all. The city will be stuck with a half-built subway and an unending fight across the basin over which piece of the project to pursue next. There will be no glorious final act, no driving of a golden spike. It will be one more subway that never quite got finished, and as they click along the abbreviated tracks, the trains will sing an unending song of regret: If only, if only, if only . . .