The Subway Mayor

Photo by Ted Soqui

In March 1985, a worker punched a time clock at a Fairfax-area Ross Dress for Less and ignited a basement full of odorless methane gas. The freak explosion shook the earth and ripped through the building, blowing off most of the roof and throwing burning debris hundreds of feet in the air. Four square blocks of shops on the south edge of the Farmers Market were evacuated.

For the next few days, TV viewers in Los Angeles watched in amazement as fiery cracks in the earth opened near the explosion site. It looked as if the city, poked with hundreds of gaseous, oil well–size holes for a century, was about to be consumed from within. The fires soon died down, the seeping gas was vented, and the injured were treated and sent home.

As the methane story receded from public consciousness, it left behind an unwitting victim: a long-envisioned, citywide mass-transit system. The explosion was one in a series of setbacks that broke the Metro Rail system’s spine before it was even born, ensuring that many of the burdens of America’s most polluted and traffic-congested city would remain unsolved — right up to today.

The derailing of a state-of-the-art mass-transit system did not begin or end with the 1985 explosion. Indeed, the methane eruption merely gave cover and impetus to a more subterranean drive to block the subway system Los Angeles so much needs. Blame for the failure to build such a network rests on the shoulders of some of the city’s most powerful politicians, past and present, and on inept institutions, from sloppy subway contractors and a bumbling Metropolitan Transit Authority to opportunist politicians pandering to racist Westside NIMBYism, to a tiny pressure group like the Bus Riders Union masquerading as a tribune of the poor, to former Mayor Richard Riordan, who capitulated to the BRU’s pressure, and to a recently departed Jim Hahn, who dozed at the wheel as L.A.’s hideous traffic continued to snarl.

In this saga of missed opportunities and conscious denial, some of the most progressive faces in local politics have hindered, rather than led, the charge for traffic relief. To placate his wealthy constituents’ fears of “those people” riding trains into their neighborhoods, powerful Westside Congressman Henry Waxman stopped the subway at Western Avenue, blaming his lack of support for a Wilshire Boulevard subway on fears of another methane fire. Claiming to speak for poor transit riders, the BRU argued that rail transit should be abandoned because it is racist. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky channeled the public’s frustration with the MTA’s mismanagement into a countywide vote banning local funds for subways. Liberal icon Tom Hayden joined the fray, attacking the subway as a gravy train for developers and contractors.

Through all the noise, one message came through loud and clear: In this gridlocked city, it somehow became politically correct to hate the subway and embrace buses as the only solution to crawling traffic. Two decades later, it’s now clear that a huge increase in bus service — with more than 500 buses added to a fleet now topping 2,000 — hasn’t solved anything, and Los Angeles flounders along with a subway-and-rail transit system that is irrational, misshapen and inadequate. The naysayer Hayden gloats: “We’re stuck with what we’re stuck with. It’s what we deserve for supporting mindless growth without leadership.”

Just as the city’s traffic seems to be getting worse by the hour, the landslide election of Antonio Villaraigosa comes along to fortuitously scramble the ideological lines of the transit debate. Now, finally, after decades of balking, Los Angeles might have a shot at building the subway system it needs. Endorsed by many of the key subway opponents, including Waxman and Yaroslavsky, Villaraigosa talked of a “subway to the sea” during the campaign and staked a big chunk of his political capital on a promise to expand the rail system. “It would be the most utilized subway in the nation, maybe the world,” the mayor recently said. “It would also be the most cost-effective public-transportation project in America.” Villaraigosa took the first step by assuming the helm of the MTA. Now, the question is whether he will have the clout to move the political mountains required to get Los Angeles the transit system it deserves.

The changes in Villaraigosa’s own views on transit reflect the journey of a politician coming to terms with the city’s genetic traffic ills. In the early 1990s, a young Antonio stood with the subway detractors and argued for cuts in rail funding. Villaraigosa also backed the BRU’s civil rights lawsuit against the MTA, which alleged that rail serves wealthy whites at the expense of “transit-dependent” people of color. But that was before a 10-year, $1 billion investment in buses failed to unclog L.A.’s streets or attract new riders. By championing the subway, the mayor has recognized the shifting mood of commuters, who have become downright hostile about the logjams. He sees that the anti-rail movement is weakening in the face of 24-hour gridlock.

Before one more foot of subway tunnel is in place, Villaraigosa and his new rail coalition must conquer the demons that have derailed L.A.’s most ambitious transit plans, even before the smattering of subway and light-rail lines were built. For decades, battles have been fought over transit policy in Los Angeles, and mountains of dollars spent designing space-age systems that never got built. The lessons of the past may help a new leadership finally deliver a more complete rail-and-subway system.